Yard Frustrations

This is a blog to vent.  Every spring/summer since buying this house I think, what in God's name was the person who lived here before us thinking?!  This year I decided to wander around both the backyard and front to photo document some of the biggest offenses in the yard.  

Don't know what this is called.  It's a succulent that spreads like wildfire.  This used to be roughly a 3 foot in diameter spread of this plant.  Once we cut down the pine tree (more to come on that later) that provided shade, it took over.  Now I find it sprouting up everywhere, including the backyard behind a privacy fence!

Another spreader.  This vine, while pretty when blooming, is popping up everywhere!  It's even coming up in the grass and every year I spend hours pulling out dead and dying shoots that are suffocating everything in their path.

Also in this pic, this damn wine barrel.  What you can't see is that there is a tree stump in it.  Yes, that's right, there used to be a Russian Olive tree growing out of this barrel.  If you are familiar with Russian Olives you'd know they are basically a weed.  So basically nothing will grow in this barrel because of the stump in it and the fact that soil seeps out the side since the metal parts are shot, I am constantly cutting down shoots of the olive that pop up next to it, and it's basically just one big ant hill.

Mint, the classic cannot be contained, herb.  Everything I've ever read about mint says to only plant it in a container because once you've got it, it's everywhere.  That's very true.

Lemon Balm-another cannot be contained herb.  At least it's purported to keep away mosquitoes since the oil is one of the main ingredients in citronella.  It also makes an okay tea and I'll sometimes use it in summery recipes to add a lemony flavor.

 Ah, such beautiful spruce trees.  Did they not realize they are a cone shaped tree and thus would be squashed against the house and blocking the gate to the backyard once they grew?  I guess not.  And even better, when we cut the bottom branches several years ago to be able to get to the gate we found out that when they painted the house, they painted around them!

 Juniper...need I say more.  It's everywhere.  We've taken out a ton and there's still a ton more.  Every time I work in the yard I end up with a rash because of this wonderful plant.  And we can't even make gin.

So this is the stump of an Austrian pine that used to stand just feet from the side of the house and had grown to about 30 feet tall.  It had a twin on the other side of the front of our house and another that provided shade to that wonderful succulent we have previously discussed.  The moral of this story, do not dump your pine needles constantly in our gutters (yes, we now need new gutters) and DO NOT provide easy access to our roof so that two families of squirrels can move in.  You will become mulch.

 The lone Austrian pine that remains in our back yard.  I hate it with a passion.  Pine needles suck when you like to work in the yard or are raking fall leaves.  No matter what gloves you wear they will find a way to puncture you.  On the bright side it does provide the only year round privacy from our backyard neighbors.

And here we have the honey locust tree.  We've got 4 of these beauties in our backyard.  They all seem to be diseased and are apparently a member of the pea family and produce pods every year and drop a zillion leaves in the fall.   Their root system is shallow and spreading and shoots up new trees out of them.  Fabulous!
 

No this isn't a pic of the dreaded dandelions that spring up everywhere in our backyard.  We don't use fertilizer in our yard so sometimes I'll even harvest the greens.  No, it's the stupidity of the placement of the rose bushes that I was photographing.  We had about 10 varieties of roses in our backyard when we moved in, all planted in the shade, none ever bloomed more than one or two flowers a year.  Now they are all on their last legs.

And don't even get me started on the lava rock we cleared out 6 years ago, the weeds that constantly pop up in the xeroscaping, the stinging nettles almost as tall as me, and the railroad tie stairs on the side of the house that are rotten and uneven and an accident waiting to happen!  Why exactly was the outside space one of the things that sold me on the house?  Um, probably because I was as green as the person that chose the landscaping about what works and what doesn't.  All I want is a space for a good vegetable garden and a chicken coup.  I'm getting pretty good at gardening in planters on the deck since it's the only sunny spot (even if we cut down all the honey locusts in our yard our next door neighbors have a 50+ foot cottonwood that shades most of the backyard most of the day).  What have I learned?  Outdoor space is more important to me than indoor space.  Next time around I'll be more discriminating.