Saturday, May 26, 2012

Backyard: The good, the bad, and the UGLY!!

Yesterday you got a sneak peek at the disaster that is currently serving as our back"yard":



You may obviously noticed how awful things are looking back there.... :(  Let me show you a bigger picture  of what exactly we're working with:



Yeah... there really aren't any words.....


Let me introduce you to the culprit.
If she wasn't sooo cute...

Yeah, you may remember that we laid down sod last summer.  Then we had our first winter with a female dog! 

You can see that in the winter, she tried to do her business as close to the bottom of the stairs from the deck, as possible.



What to do?

About 2 weeks ago, we decided that our first option would be to spread a combo seed/fertilizer out.  I apologize as I don't recall which brand we used.  It says it takes about 5 weeks to start seeing results  :(   We were being patient and even got a bit of rain the last 2 days, however, I'm starting to think it might be a lost cause as the pretty little girl above seems to enjoy rounding her laps on the dead parts and enjoys how her paws kind of tear up the dead parts.

Cory thinks there's enough small areas of green peeking through the dead so he wants to stick with it for a little while longer though.  We laid down some more fertilizer tonight so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

In the meantime, we're obviously not allowing Finley  in the yard while the fertilizer is out there, but we have taken steps to (hopefully) eliminate her killing any MORE grass:



I spoke with a friend at work who also has a female dog and he said that they have always used pills for his dog and they have no problems with the grass getting killed.    We weren't sure exactly which brand out of the 3 or 4 they had would work, but so far, we haven't really noticed any NEW patches, so we think it is doing it's job!

Anyhow, we've decided we're gonna stick with it and see whether the grass wants to pull through after all.  If nothing comes to fruition, we've decided that we'll rip up the one half of the yard and lay down new sod. 

While we're being patient, I've decided it's time for me to decide exactly where I want to eventually put my flower beds.  Since some of the beds will be where the grass is already dead, it doesn't really make sense to buy sod for an area we're eventually going to rip up anyhow. 

There was however, one bright part about checking out the backyard!!  Last year, we also planted a lilac (which I ABSOLUTELY LOVE!!).  But we made the mistake of planting the small bush at the back of the yard with just a hole in the ground, and nothing else around it, or protecting it.  So Finley thought it was there for her to chew up.... and DESTROY!

Cory was convinced it was dead and was even asking me if he could dig it up and just fill in the hole or plant something else.  I wasn't quite ready to give in so I said not yet, and sure enough, tonight when I was perusing the yard, I noticed this:

That baby was NOT ready to give up yet!!  I don't know exactly what I'll get out of it this year, but I am very glas that it wasn't a complete waste!  I think we will have to figure out a way to protect it this year!

Plus, the parts of our grass that aren't completely dead, are so dark green and LUSH!!  So at least we know we CAN grow a beautiful lawn :)

Anyone else got a yard that looks less than desirable??

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