Backyard Landscaping

Our backyard right now is just dirt. Boring. Of course, we've been planning to landscape it, but it was sort of far down on the priorities list. #1 was a car for Tyler. #2 was blinds. #3 was couches for the front room. #4 was a piano for me. #5 (now #1, I guess) is landscaping the backyard.

We knew we wanted some bricks and some grass... but now that it's next on our to do, I can't decide how I want it. So I thought I'd leave it to the internet. Now, I know you're not surprised that Tyler built a scale model in SolidWorks of our backyard, because you shouldn't be. (Even the BBQ and patio set are to scale.)


These first two shots are of option one- Extending our current small patio.


Pro: it would be a larger flat area. You could just walk right out of the house to put stuff on the table for dinner and not have to walk around the BBQ.

Con: the table would mess up the line of sight to the lake if we wanted to have a porch swing and swing on it at night, or whatever.

And, option #2:

Pro: clear shot right out of the house to whatever swing set or climbing apparatus we want to put out there. Also, clean line of sight from future porch swing.


Con: left turn out of the house, seems to eat up more grass area.

I think we've mostly decided to get fake grass. Tyler was very anti fake grass until he accepted the fact that to have a lush, green Northern-California-type lawn, you'll lose your shirt to the water company. And, the Arizona grass that goes brown dormant in the summer is unacceptable, apparently.

I also want him to put a planter out there, but we've talked about that before. I'm still not sure that I'll grow actual food in it... maybe just some nice flowers.

It's official

This year, because I'm righteous like that, I've been trying to follow commandments that heretofore I didn't feel really applied to me, namely, planting a garden and amassing my year's supply of food.

The food storage is going pretty well. We went to Sam's Club and spent about $200 on our 3-month supply, which Tyler has already broken in to for the Lucky Charms. But we now have enough pancake mix, syrup, flour, sugar, raisins, oil, oatmeal, cereal (minus the Lucky Charms), yeast, spaghetti, and chocolate chips to last in the event of disaster.

The garden is going less well. You may remember I planted a garden a few years ago. It looked so great at the start, but, in the end, it was a flop. The birds ate all my tomatoes, the zucchinis had tough skin, our watermelon rotted from the inside before it ripened, the radishes and lettuce died, and the yellow squash plant turned out to be a cucumber, which I had no use for because they're gross.

Try, try again, right?

Our backyard is unfinished, and in discussing the landscaping, I asked Tyler to put in a planter, so we could have a garden. One day. Because my last gardening attempt went so well, ahem, I decided to prove my prowess by growing an indoor herb garden. I bought a little kit with a container, dirt, parsley, chives, and basil seeds. I kept it on my kitchen counter right by the sink. I planted the seeds and they sprouted. I faithfully watered them, and even had Lillian spritz them with water, on account of the dryness.

The parsley didn't last a week.

The chives made it maybe two.

The last of the basil finally succumbed yesterday. They weren't looking good (they were almost dead) and I was too embarrassed to ask anyone to water them while we were in California. The 4 days without water were too much for the little guys.

I told the ladies at church yesterday about how my garden died-

Ladies: That's because you don't have a drip irrigation system. All my gardens died until I got one. You need one here in the desert.

Me: Oh, um. It was my indoor container garden.

Ladies: Well, um... Better luck next time...?

So, what do you think? Should we spend the money to put in a planter (and drip irrigation, apparently), not to mention sacrifice space in our already not-that-big backyard, for a garden that is probably just going to die?

Hungry Cowaparrot

When typing the title to this post, I asked Lillian to say "caterpillar" at least 10 times so I could get it exactly right. I'm not sure I did... It's somewhere between cowaparrot and carapillet. You might remember the last time we went to Character Story Time at the U of A. I thought enough time had elapsed that we could try it again. I prepped Lillian for a solid week to get her ready for this:

Nora, as you can see, was completely fearless. Lillian was pretty ok, she didn't want to touch him even though the bookstore helper assured her that he was very soft.


When we drove home, we took the back way. This back road follows the path of the Santa Cruz river, so every business is like... The Santa Cruz Mobile Park, or Santa Cruz Landscaping, or La Iglecia del Rio. Tyler and I joked that it should be called La Iglecia del Rio Sin Agua, because I've never seen a river in Arizona with water in it.


Not 10 minutes after we were laughing about our 'Sin Agua" joke, we actually drove over the Santa Cruz, and lo and behold... that hurricane has paid off.


Then, it turned out that there was a Safety Fair going on. We checked out the fire engine, a strapping young fireman offered to help Lillian get in the cab and look around... but he was a bit too strapping for her, so she declined..


Then we took a ride in Thomas. It was pretty awesome.

Well, we have done SOME things.

Back in September, we decided how we were going to do up the backyard. That was pretty much all we did about that. Then we got this dog. If it were up to me, the dog would be a 99.9% outside dog. I realize that we do have some extreme temperatures here where we'd have to let her inside, like the 6 months where it's so hot, you want to take off your skin and soak your bones in a bucket of ice water. But, it's a short haired dog... right? This prejudice is probably because my dogs growing up were 99.999% outside and the concept of an inside dog is completely bizarre to me. But, I think Tyler likes the dog to lay at his feet while he watches Dead Like Me (by himself because I'm sleeping). This means that we let her in. Which means she jumps on the counter. And pees on the carpet (although, not anymore). And steals the kids snacks. And jumps on the couch. I have thought about shooting the dog with our shotgun, but I don't know where the shells are. I would use the .57 magnum, but because of my irrational fear of pistols, I don't know how to use it and I'd probably end up killing myself or one of my small charges that I actually like, which would look bad.

Canineicide aside, the dog brings in a lot of dirt into the house during these jumping, stealing, peeing ventures. Dirt from our backyard, that is still dirt.


This dirt grossness was the catalyst for us actually getting in the car and going to the landscaping place to look at pavers. Tyler decided on this pattern, and I think we're going to go with this color which is actually kind of a gray-purple, if you can't tell from the pictures..


I realize that we're still not all that much closer to being done, but it's one small step towards finishing, one giant leap towards getting started. I think the next step is renting a jackhammer to dig up our hard-as-rock dirt. So... that will be fun, not that I'll get to use it. Dumb pregnancy; it ruins all my fun.



Also, this is how Lillian spent all of dinner last night. We had ravioli. She likes ravioli. Usually.