Make that arbor weekend

Two (more) new trees in the ground make a total of seven now in our back yard. It is beginning to feel like the oasis we had in mind three years ago as we stood looking at a yard of grass, grass, and more grass. I don't find grass overly appealing. When it's soft it's nice to lay in or walk across barefoot, but to keep it soft all summer long requires copious amounts of water and fertilizer, which in turn also calls for continuous mowing. Everything about lawn grass seems rough on the environment.

We didn't actually take out a lot of grass today, but I got to spend a lot of time looking at the gardens we have put in, and remembering the yard as it was three years ago before all the back breaking labor of sod removal. I can imagine, when our house was built four years before that, the workers unrolling sod blanket after sod blanket to carpet the entire relatively large lot, but I doubt they imagined how much work we would eventually go to in order to undo theirs. I need to mention that we've had lots of help along the way, mostly from our parents. Today, for the task of putting a ten foot tree with a 24 gallon root ball into the ground, we have Jon's dad to thank. And Calvin, who had a wonderful time getting muddy, muddy, muddy.

So that was our weekend, spent mostly in the yard and gardens, mowing, edging, weeding, and planting two trees (not to mention settling Calvin's seedling into a pot so it can get a little more size before we put it in our ground), and finishing just in time to enjoy the sun that finally came out in the last few hours of Sunday.

These last two photos are courtesy of Calvin cam.