Strawberry Patch Makeover - July 13 - August 27th

One of the problems for me with having a baby in March was that by the time spring and summer rolled around, I was itching to get out of the house and do yard work and gardening. But summer heat and sun aren't exactly amenable to new babies. That is why I was hoping for a fall baby - to get pregnant in the beginning of 2012 and have a baby around September, October, or November (like around the time my sister's had babies) so that whole newborn stage could be indoors when we had crappy weather anyway (although I guess we might be dealing with a whole different set of issues like RSV and such). But alas, we can't always control these things so we do the best with what we've got.

I have had a plethora of projects to do around the house and yard but there is so little time with a new baby. By July, I figured that despite the ridiculous heat, I would just do the best I could with what little time I had. So this little project took over a month and a half. I had been dying to turn this plot of grass into a strawberry patch for a while. I impulsively bought some strawberry plants from Lowe's earlier in the season and they were dying because it took my so long to get them in the ground. Before I planted them, I wanted to get rid of all the grass and prepare the whole bed. We had cut down the ugly bushes in April of 2012 for the previous year's neighborhood clean-up but we were left with ugly stumps which I wanted to dig up. Brandon kept bothering me about getting them planted but me with my OCD wanted the front bed perfect for them.

This is the best "before" picture I have. I really, really wanted to dig that stump up so that we could borrow our neighbor's rototiller without damaging it on the roots. So I spent a long time digging. I think I put a Grey in his rocker chair in the shade with an umbrella over him too, then Brandon would put him down for naps and I would either nurse him all sweaty or maybe Brandon just gave him a bottle. I can't remember exactly but I think that this little project took a long time. I had to dig a pretty big hole.

Fortunately, we were able to get the giant rock removed by the city when they happened to be doing some repair on our water line under the sidewalk. Brandon asked them if they could pull up and haul our two ugly rocks away with all the broken concrete and they did it in two seconds. That is why there is a smaller hole in the foreground of this next picture.

And here is that giant stump. It doesn't look nearly as big as it really was in this picture. I think I literally roared as I was tearing it from the earth. I insisted that Brandon take a picture of it.

Over the course of many more weekends, Brandon rototilled the front bed and I pulled out weeds and grass and raked it all down to try to even out the soil (it was not graded properly because the dirt sloped down toward the house). I even put some large stones down (from a different planter that I plan to eventually tear out) to kinda widen our driveway so we wouldn't be stepping on mud/plants when we got out of our car. Then Brandon finally planted those strawberry plants (I think we lost one or two to the heat/lack of water) and mulched it.

We obviously need just a few more strawberry plants to make it a proper strawberry patch. I really wanted to make the strawberry patch in this area because I heard that strawberries can spread like crazy and I wanted them to be in a confined space surrounded by concrete. And I actually think that strawberry plants make really pretty ground cover. Brandon did some research about other beneficial plants that you can inter-plant with strawberries to help them grown better and reduce pests so hopefully, we can do that all in 2014!

Unfortunately, within days, a very invasive wild morning glory weed (bindweed or convulvulous?) started popping up and spreading quickly despite my meticulous prior weeding (apparently, pulling up the weed is not enough because of the crazy root system). So my lovely front bed pretty much turned into a weed patch. We have it all over our yard and it keeps spreading. But at least the strawberries are doing well. Hopefully, the strawberries will win the battle next year.