Sod Tales

Topping the list of changes we wanted to make outside was reworking the giant bed running along the back of the yard.  It's hard to tell unless you're actually standing within it, but it's absolutely huge.  Unnecessarily huge.

At it's narrowest point, it's probably 16 feet deep. That's a lot of clearing, weeding, and mulching for no good reason. Plus, it's not really attractive with those shrubs semi-evenly spaced with several feet of empty dirt between them. So, our plan was to move or remove (since 2 are dying anyway) some of the shrubs from the center, and then extend the grass back toward the fence - basically creating a bed in each corner rather than the whole way along the back.  Obviously, we can't do anything about the placement of the trees, so the portion of bed on the left side will be bigger than the one on the right.

After talking and talking and talking about all this, we chose the weekend of record-high temps in mid-May to take action (ha! we're WISHING for those temps these days!). Husband dug up the 3 bushes from the front row (Xs below), and replanted them in some open space on the left side (Os below). Deciding that it was impractical to move the four plants in the back, we figured we'd just leave a strip as-is along the fence. The white line is my feeble attempt at showing the new layout. We Husband also dug up and got rid of the two dying evergreens.

Two weeks later, on a much more temperate afternoon, we filled the back of the car with sod. And dirt - lots of dirt. I will not be surprised if weeds start growing between the seats.

The first load of sod took care of some other areas we needed to patch, 

and about half of the back bed.

We watered the heck out of it that evening, and the next morning went back to the store and filled the car up again with another load.

It turned out to be exactly the right amount to finish the other side of the bed, and a little strip around the trees to the left.

In total, we used 40 rolls of 2' X 5' sod (without an inch to spare!). We watered daily (sometimes twice daily) until we actually had mushrooms start sprouting in the back area, and had to cut back. The big area in the back survived really well because it is in the shade all day long, but pretty much everything else died.

Cute, right?

It's been almost 100 degrees for weeks on end without any rain, and I just can't justify using that much water everyday to fight a losing battle. The rest of the lawn is dead and yellow too, so it's not even worth stressing about. Luckily the biggest area survived, and the others shouldn't be too terrible to seed (whenever it's appropriate weather to do so - who knows...?).

Oh, the life & death of sod. So thrilling.