I'm boring.: Making a Mess

My neighbors love me. Ha. Hopefully I won't make a big enough mess for someone to actually complain.

So I've decided to make a mess of my yard. The previous owners had it all nicely landscaped and pretty. Well, since I bought it, I didn't water the lawn so I let the grass die and the weeds take over.

I never really cared for that planting strip at the front. What purpose does it serve? So I decided to plant some tulips last fall. Directly into the grass because I didn't feel like figuring out how to get rid of the grass.

Well, then spring came along and the tulips started coming up.... and I realized I needed to do something. So I laid mulch. To kill the grass, I put newspaper down under the mulch to help suffocate the grass.

So far this hasn't worked out so well. First, I didn't buy enough mulch and so I ran out and the newspaper was peeking out from under it. At the time I didn't think it was that hideous but the next day, as I was leaving or work, I realized how absolutely horrendous it was. So that night I went and bought more mulch and laid that down.

Well, now it's been a few weeks. The grass is peeking out at the edges. And in places where the paper has shifted, leaving a gap for the grass to come through. And next to the plants.

I also decided to cut some babies off a spikey plant closer to the house and plant those. No clue what it is other than a spikey plant. I transplanted 4 of them and it looks like 2 of them should survive. I'll probably try another 2 or so again. The original plants are pretty big and over grown and haven't appeared to have been harmed by my earlier attempt so I have more material to play with.

If you take the picture at the right place and angle, it doesn't look too bad. Look! I have flowers. What's that thing next to the flower? It must be some glare or something. It couldn't be newspaper peeking out. Why would there be newspaper there? hah

The garden center is not a good place for me. It's a really nice garden center and they have tons of cool stuff. It's really hard for me not to spend an hour just browsing what they have. It's also really hard not to walk out of there with way more than I have any reason to buy.

Case and point, the tree I bought. It's a persimmon tree. The reason this is relatively good is because it's only one tree, where I had 3 others I was also seriously considering.