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Evergreens stay green all winter, thus their name and appeal. However, last year I discovered that there are no guarantees on that whole green through the winter bit. Evergreens often undergo negative changes during the winter known as winterkill. When winterkill occurs the leaves or needles on certain parts of the plant turn yellow or brown, this is especially common for branches that get the full brunt of the wind.
I’ve never heard of an Everyellow or an Everbrown, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be big sellers, which is why I wasn’t pleased when parts of several of my evergreens turned brown over last winter. The poor things looked pretty pathetic come spring with their dead pieces, like the plant versions of balding men. Hence, I decided that this winter will be different. There will be no winterkill! Extremely spoiled plants, such as mine, should never have to suffer that humiliation and discomfort!

Here I am giving a euonymous some lovely mulch.

However, before I could attempt to halt winterkill I had to figure out exactly what caused it. Here’s what I found out: Although evergreens don’t really enjoy the freezing temperatures of winter, what they really can’t stand is how thirsty they become during that frigid season. Yes, evergreen winterkill is primarily caused by plants drying out, cold dry wind intensifies this problem, and therefore the sides of plants facing the wind typically have more issues. My skin’s so dry it could be mistaken for a snake’s during winter; it makes sense that plants have similar problems.

It was a cold day for mulching. Jason turned on the patio heater to warm me up.

The solution? Mulching and monthly watering through the frosty season. I honestly had no idea what “mulch” was until I bought some for this purpose. Evidentially there are different types of mulch but the kind I bought was basically just little pieces of bark. To “mulch” you place a 2 or 3 inch thick ring of mulching material around your plant. (Don’t put mulch right next to the bark of a plant; they don’t like that.) The mulch helps keep the soil temperature more constant and retains water, kind of like a nice wet blanket. Now doesn’t that sound comfy? As for watering monthly during winter…yeah…that seems like it will be a really fun task but I am going to give it a try. I hope my efforts will make a big difference. I will report on my success this spring. Here’s to some snug, moist, and happy plants! Bring on the green!

Tada! Our yard is finished! At least in the planting, rock rearranging, and trench digging sense. I think it is safe to say that we will never be done weeding or up keeping our fine landscape.

Although our little plot of land is precisely that – little, I love it! It’s hard to explain the serenity I feel while sitting out on our patio surrounded by all the lovely growing things that I planted with my own two hands. Our backyard has become one of my favorite places to read, eat, or chill – if I could live out there I would. Did I mention that I love it? Our tiny plot didn’t become a peaceful spot overnight though. We moved into our house almost exactly two years ago and have been working relentlessly on perfecting our yard ever since.

Every spring, summer, and fall we’ve made noticeable yard enhancements. This summer our outdoor projects have included: installing a garden box and planting veggies in that box, laying down flagstone in the area around our garden, and filling the few remaining barren regions of our yard with an abundance of plants.

Many of you, our friends, have expressed curiosity about the current state of our yard. So, now that our “putting in the yard” work is officially done, here is my show and tell. It’s probably more show than tell but I hope it faithfully illustrates how our yard has progressed over the last couple years.

This is how our backyard looked when we moved in. Sad isn't it? Planting grass may seem logically like what came next but before laying sod we had to: remove wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of rocks, install sprinklers, and amend our soil by tilling in more than a whole dump truck full of compost.

A stamped concrete patio was one of our projects last summer. Jason's cousin, Scott, was the mastermind behind this affair. We tore out the small cement pad that came with our house and turned into a beautiful functioning patio.

This is what our patio looks like now.

This is what one of our back corners looked like a few months ago. We hadn't finished that section of our fence yet.

This is that same corner now. We planted some Ivory Halo Dogwoods and a Purple Fountain Beech tree. They are still adjusting to their new home but by next year I'm sure they will be thriving.

This is how our garden box started earlier this summer.

After our box was installed the next step was filling it with dirt. We chose a special soil blend from a nursery; our plants love it!

After our dirt, veggie plants, and drip lines were all in place we moved on to installing our flagstone. This was a lot like playing a really hard, long, boring game of Tetris. It took what seemed like forever to get all the stones to piece together right.

This is our garden area now. It turned out fabulously! Our plants are extremely happy, especially our tomatoes. We had to cut them back, they were becoming huge! We called them the "tomato jungle". Trying to find the ripe tomatoes was like going on an expedition.

These are my Hybrid Pink Pixie Lilies. Aren't they lovely?

These darling little guys are Violas. They are only supposed to bloom in early spring but mine kept blooming until mid-July.

This is the north back corner of our yard. In the spring this corner is filled with tulips and daffodils. We planted a Flowering Pear tree, Fountain Grass, St. John' Wort, Linaria, Sandwort, Royal Candles, Harebell, Waterperry Blue Veronica, and Gold Tide Forsythia.

This beauty is a Clematis.

These are my Hostas and Japanese Maple tree. The Hostas my mother-in-law, Sue, kindly gave me as transplants. The Japanese Maple I've lovingly named "The Little Guy". The black border is a new addition this year. We decided to put them around all our flowerbeds. You can see the grass hasn't quite grown back yet where it was ripped out for the trenching.

This is one of my favorite plants in our yard. It's a Sweet Almond bush. It's covered with these gorgeous blooms in the spring.

This elegant tree is a Weeping Mulberry.

I love these cheery flowers! They're called Tickseed. They are extremely hardy; great for our harsh Utah weather.

Our backyard: my haven. We planted Lilacs, Daisies, Corsican Violets, Goldflame Spiraea, Dwarf Columbine, Gold Spot Euonymous, Midnight Wine Weigela, Queen Victoria Lobelia, Gaillardia, and my favorite, a dappled Willow. The dappled Willow looks so graceful when it's wispy branches sway in the wind; it's mesmerizing to watch. Our grass looks a little dry in this picture, due to it being an arid August. But don't let that fool you. It's extremely healthy and in the spring it's a beautiful lush green.

And who said women are hard to please? I’m not picky. Just give me some dirt I can call my own, plenty of flora I can foster, and a sprawling piece of sky over my head; then I will be one extremely content woman. *
*Disclaimer: Happiness based off the specified parameters is not guaranteed.

The arrival of spring meant it was time for me and Jason to dive back into yard work. We worked very hard last fall to get our sprinkler system in and our sod laid down. It was altogether a pretty miserable experience because we were in such a mad rush. We worked what seemed like endless hours but we made it before winter hit. We laid our sod on November 17^th, about a week and half before it started snowing. Quite a few people questioned the intelligence of laying down sod so late in the season. However, we had done our research and found that late fall was supposed to be a great time to lay sod because heat is much more detrimental than the cold to its root system. I am happy to report that our grass is doing wonderfully. Its roots have taken and it looks healthier than most of the more established grass in our neighborhood. This was accomplished without doing some crazy watering schedule to keep it alive. Because it had months of cool wet weather to adjust to its new home it didn’t require any special attention. Jason took out his new John Deere for the first time a couple weeks ago and mowed it. Our first lawn mowing ever! Yeah!

We have been planting trees, bushes, and flowers this spring. This is much more enjoyable work than putting in sprinklers! I really love plants and have quite liked planting things in our yard. Jason laughs a little at me though because I have a tendency to talk to the plants while I am planting them.

The only thing that has made this planting not quite as fun is the weather. The incredibly cold weather has caused havoc with our planting plans. We have planted through snow and freezing temperatures (snow at the end of April-that’s just not right). While these conditions didn’t bother the plants, most of them have taken very well, they did bother the planters. But we have persevered and now have a few trees, over 30 bushes, and a plethora of other plants in our yard. Wow! What a difference they have made. Our yard now has its own personality. We still have a lot more work to do to get the rest of our plants in before it gets too hot, but I am actually looking forward to some more planting!

I know a lot of people complain about having to put a yard in and they just want to buy a house with the yard already finished or hire the work out to some landscaping company. I admit there are times throughout our yard endeavors that I have questioned the sanity of doing everything ourselves, but there is something exhilarating about seeing a project you have put so much time, effort, and thought into finally come together. Jason and I are so excited to see the plants that we picked and planted ourselves grow and flourish. We walk around our yard regularly just to see how much they have grown.

BTW plants are expensive, especially when you are buying them in large quantities. Jason is still in sticker shock from our trips to the nursery. One trip, in which we bought about 20 bushes and a tree, cost us roughly $800. He thought that was outrageous. Apparently he thinks plants should be cheap, but unfortunately they are not.

I came home on Tuesday afternoon for lunch, just like I do every weekday. When I got home on this particular day I washed my hands, just like I always do. While I was in the middle of this washing however I realized there was something odd about the water coming out of the tap-it was brownish orange. At first I thought I was imagining things so I turned on another sink-the same gross looking water came out. After I had tried the kitchen sink as well, with the same result, I called Jason in somewhat of a panic. He called Lehi City and they promised to send someone over shortly. They had received another report of the same thing just a few minutes previously somewhere else in our area and they were unsure whether these two reports were just the beginning of a larger problem.

At this point all the worst case scenarios went through my mind. What if we didn’t have useable running water for days? What would we do? Would we have to go stay at a hotel? What if we couldn’t drink our water, take showers, or wash our hands, clothes, and dishes. How would we get by? I was suddenly hit by the realization of just how much we rely on the conveniences we take for granted. Having running water is absolutely vital-what if all of a sudden we just didn’t have it anymore?

This made me think of the complete necessity of having a 72-hour kit. If there was a major emergency and our water system was compromised, and running to the store to grab some bottled water was out of the question, having a 72-hour kit could mean the deference between surviving and not.

Back to my story- we talked to the city water experts one more time and they said they would be at our house in about 15 minutes and that we should, in the mean time, turn on our water to see if this would flush the contaminants out a bit. We did this while we waited and by the time they arrived our water was looking much better. They examined it, took samples of it, and checked our neighbor’s water. They told us that dirt had probably gotten into our pipes from a contractor messing around with the lines in our area, a contractor that didn’t know what he was doing. They could find no traces of the contamination in our neighbor’s water. So they told us to turn on every sink and shower in our house to try to clean out our pipes and use all of the water in our hot water heater to flush out any sediment that may have settled to the bottom of it. They also said the water was safe to bath in and use-just not to drink.

In order to be sure our water was safe to drink we would have to wait two days for test results to come back. And with that they departed.

We were very grateful we could at least use our water for everything but drinking. It was a tremendous relief! But drinking bottled water did get kind of old over the next couple days. Jason and I always felt thirsty.

Our test results have since come back and our water is fine. Yeah!

Incidentally, we saved a sample of our gross water and although the particulates remained in solution for a whole day by the following day they had settled to the bottom forming a reddish brown sludge. It was not very appetizing.

Drink up!

We moved into our new house in mid-August. Although this move took place late in the summer we planned on putting in our sprinkler system and sod before winter. Jason and I unfortunately didn’t know anything about landscaping, sprinklers, sod, or any of that, since we have never had a yard ourselves. So we decided to brainstorm landscape ideas with a landscape designer. She was very helpful and I would recommend this procedure to anyone in a similar situation.

After we had planned out our wonderful yard we were temporarily delayed from doing the real work for a few weeks by the remainder of the boxes in our front room that still needed unpacking and Halloween party preparation.

As soon as Halloween had passed we immediately started the mad rush to get our yard ready for sod. This rush was mainly due to the fact that we had our sod scheduled for delivery on November 17, giving us only two and half weeks to get ready. With cold weather surely on the way we did not want the sod delivered any later than it had to be. Because we were short-handed we enlisted Jason’s little brother, Matt, to be our slave monkey. We bribed him with an enormous salary of $10/hr. Ah yes, I remember the good ol’ days when that was a lot of money. Fortunately for us, Matt still thinks that is a lot of money so he was happy to do strenuous labor for us.

In addition to Matt- Jason’s parents, my dad, and several of our siblings kindly gave up many hours of their time to help us. (Thanks to all of you! You are awesome!)

Despite our time constraints, we decided to do things right and not skip any steps. As the landscaping specialist had recommended, instead of putting in top soil we spread out a whole dump truck of compost over our yard and tilled it in to amend our soil. This compost contained good old horse manure amongst other things, which led to some poo flinging fights while we were working.

We worked every spare minute of our time and were fortunate enough to enjoy lovely weather for two Saturdays in a row. I was able to wear shorts and a t-shirt- for November that is pretty impressive. (It is unfortunately a far cry from the weather now.)

This good weather did not stay with us however for the duration of our lawn installation experience. A few days before our sod was to arrive it started feeling like one would expect November to- cold and bitterly windy.

But we had no choice but to keep working. So that is exactly what we did. The north side of our house became known as the wind tunnel. For some reason all the wind channels through it and it seems twice as cold as anywhere else in our yard. So we fought over who had to work on that side and drank lots of hot chocolate.

At last the day of sod delivery arrived and we anxiously awaited its arrival, which was supposed to be at 2:00 PM. Although I had gotten off work early to put in as much sod as possible before it got dark, 2:00 came and went and our sod did not appear. Finally at 5:30, after it was already dark, our 10 pallets of sod arrived. By this time it was extremely cold but we were so thrilled to finally have the sod that Jason decided to put in as much as possible in the dark using a flood light. Our friend Rowley volunteered to help and our other friend Cameron volunteered to watch everyone work. This installation continued for an hour or two until snow finally put a stop to it. But the next day, the day before Thanksgiving, we were back at it. We worked through the afternoon and not long after it got dark we were finally done. YEAH! I had to dance around on my new lawn! It was thrilling to have it in after all that hard work.

And for all of you that are thinking, “I hope their sod doesn’t die. Isn’t November pretty late in the year to be putting in sod?” no worries. We asked the sod people lots of questions. November is a great time to put in sod. Your sod will actually fair a lot better than if you put it in in the heat of the summer. It is actually going dormant for the winter by November so it doesn’t require much attention. It is better if you are able to water it a couple times before the cold weather sets in for good and if it is kept free of snow that sticks for at least the first couple of weeks after it is put in. But even if those requirements aren’t met, it’s pretty forgiving because it’s “asleep” for the winter. Luckily, it rained several times in the first couple weeks after we put in our sod and no snow stayed for long, until now. So when spring comes we should have a yard or awesomeness!!!!