Yard work in winter - YUK!

[gja1000]

Well, it's not really THAT bad

I got my hubby a leaf blower for Christmas - yeah, he was reeeaaaalll happy with THAT present (I got him what he wanted for Christmas, but thought the leaf blower would be a funny gift - and we needed it!). He still rolls his eyes at me when I mention the leaf blower Christmas gift! LOL!

Anyway, I used the leaf blower to blow the leaves off my porch. They accumulate behind my metal lawn chairs up against the house, and it is a killer to move all of them and sweep. So, I blew off the leaves, then I mowed them. I have a mulching mower and so it chops up the leaves and blows them into the grass. That is good mulch for the lawn - it's better than raking them up. I only have 3 trees in my back yard, so it's not too many leaves to mow. It was 70 degrees here today, perfect weather for mowing and blowing

[Marilyn]

Hubby wants to work on our front flower beds this month. I have to admit, the plants have overgrown the beds, but he wants to remove them all, put them in pots, till up the dirt and steralize it to kill all the weed and grass remnants and seeds, and separate the plants to make them smaller again and replant. Sounds like a LOT OF WORK to me.

I want to landscape the back yard, since we are on a golf course, lots of folks have their back yards landscaped like their fronts. We don't need something elaborate, but simple would look much better than what we have now which is nothing.

Rather than buy new plants to do the backyard, I want to salvage the overgrowth from the front yard and use it to start the beds. Hubby is a buy it new at the nursery kind of guy, but I think his pocketbook will allow him to consider the option I'm proposing once we get into it.

Just hate the time this is going to take. UHHHHH!!

[Janet]

At 70 degrees I would love to be out working in the yard. I didn't get anything at all done to our yard this past summer. No flowers...nothing. This year I'm hoping to get a little bit done. It's so expensive. I mostly want my flower beds redone, won't take much really, but they need improved upon.

What is this stuff that sterilizes and gets rid of all the weeds..seeds..etc. ? Does it keep weeds from growing back in with the flowers? I would love something like that so I don't have to pull as many weeds...especially when it really gets hot and humid.

[DianaB]

I couldn't imagine doing yard work this time of year! This month is the time that I try to do what "I" want to do. I want to scrapbook but at the moment we're too busy and we're expecting company in the near future.

[gja1000]

I'm not sure what "sterilizing" Marilyn is talking about - but I "sterilized" year before last by taking all my plants out of my front bed in the beginning of the summer. Then I covered the bed with black plastic so when it got really hot, the seeds/stuff "cooked" over the summer. Yes, our front yard looked sorta like the "Clampets" but we don't live in a fussy neighborhood, so it was OK

This method is called solarizing and is a safe way to kill weeds/seeds. If you want to plant again in the same spot, you really can't use any kind of chemicals. Plus, I'm a "green grower" and don't use any kind of chemicals at all in my yard. We put in a rock bed, rather than flowers, so that we don't have to use extra water to keep them alive.

I want to put in a 12X5 garden in my back yard. I don't get tons of sunlight, but I think I could grow a few vegetables. We will have to put in a raised bed - using landscape timbers and then have garden soil hauled in. We only have about 3-4" of soil in our back yard and then it is caliche (sp) rock. I'll probably get the guys that did our yardwork this fall to do it, either in late Jan or early Feb.

[Tiramisu]

It's warm and HUMID here. We pulled all the overgrown shrubs out of our front flowerbeds at the first of August and I planted yellow daffodils that were my Mom's favorite. I have mulch on my shopping list, but haven't borrowed the truck of go get it. So, I was out pulling weeds a couple days ago. We have one more huge Sago Palm to transplant and I'm planting a 12' Northern Pine there in the Spring.