the Backyard B'zmany hands make light work!

It was with great anticipation that I looked forward to the monthly meeting of the B’z. It was my turn to benefit from the group effort and boy did I need it! I have a 3/4 acre lot, which didn’t sound like much when I moved here from my 2.25 acre lot, but is a lot to take care of alone all the same. My brush pile is at the far back right hand corner of the lot, and the front of my little plot of ground slopes up from the street quite a bit. So it’s a hike from the street to the brush pile, and I soon get worn out from the trips.

Also, I prefer working in the back of the house where I am out of sight and not under scrutiny by the constant parade of cars and neighbors. So needless to say the whole front area has been sadly neglected since my one big effort in spring when I discovered that my neighbors had been allowing their dogs to use my juniper bank as a restroom all winter. After collecting a good sized grocery bag of dog poo on just the left size, I walked away in disgust and abandoned all effort.

My trees belch sticks and branches every time a puff of wind stirs, and the ivy on either side was conspiring to cross over, join hands and eliminate the driveway altogether. The juniper was advancing over the orderly row of stones toward the street, and everything had generally run riot and misbehaved. It was, in a word, a mess.

Street view. Depressing!

As I got ready for the day, Stealth Cat (Stealthius incognicatus) watched me with a jaundiced eye. When I took his picture he accused me of trying to steal his soul and stalked off indignantly.

Whose idea was it to plant ivy? I can’t believe they still sell this stuff in garden centers and people continue to fall for it under the mistaken idea that they can control it. Ha!

The ivy plague advances.

I’m a person who likes things neat and tidy, I love a clean edge. But you sure wouldn’t be able to tell from my front yard. My neighbors have no idea that the back yard is a paradise. All they see is this weed pile disguised as a mailbox bed. I’m so sorry!

My untidy mailbox bed. Oh my.

So these were the challenges that stood before us. We gathered at around 10-ish in the morning to enjoy some coffee and freshly baked blueberry scones on the screened porch, then hitched up our sox and went to work. Jane loves to cut down trees, so I asked her to take out any of the small trees in the front that she thought she could handle. I have too many trees as it is, and don’t want to encourage anymore oaks or tulip poplars. The dogwoods and Japanese maples can stay because they grow slowly and stay small. I also had an abundance of drooping and dead branches hanging around. We dubbed her “Lumber Jane” as she labored all day to clear the view and turn my front into a deer park.

Suzi, Sharon and I spread out to attack the edges and clear all the fallen branches and sticks. We must have hauled six tarps or more of debris to the back! Suzi observed that even if you don’t have time to weed a whole bed, if you get the big obvious weeds and the edges done, it improves things by 100%. Very true. Sometimes we get overwhelmed by the big picture and give up before we start, but even a little effort can be rewarding.

But believe me, this was no small effort! We reclaimed the edges of the driveway, the edges of the mailbox bed and the edges of the juniper bed.

Wow! What an amazing difference! Just look at those edges!

Now my house doesn’t look like a neglected mess from the street. Hm, someone might actually believe a gardener lives here. Curb appeal plus! I’m shocked at how bad I had allowed it to get.  It slowly spun out of control, but with the help of my wonderful comrades-in-arms it’s restored to its former glory, and even better than before. Now if I could only get the trees to drop their sticks into a bag I’d be all set. Soon the leaves will start falling again, and I’ll be mulching night and day to try to keep up. That’s why I love my Worx leaf mulcher! It spins leaves into garden gold! Finally I can use them for something instead of just creating a mountain in my back yard.

Oh look! There IS a mailbox there and not just a weed pile!

I’ll use those leaf shreds to mulch this mailbox bed, and all the other beds, for the winter. The leaves will break down and enrich the soil, then I’ll cover them with pine bark mulch or mulch from my mulch mountain donated by a local tree service.

I still don’t like working in my front yard, but maybe now I’ll be able to at least keep up with tending the edges and pulling the big weeds that stick up. If not, there’s always my next turn with the Backyard B’z!!!

This month’s meeting was moved to accommodate Father’s Day next weekend, so we’re meeting a little early. Bowing to outside pressure, the name of our group has changed to the Backyard Beez, or BYBz. We feel this makes us more fit for public consumption. Some have been reluctant to share our garden adventures for fear of offending with our name, so now we are cleaned up and ready for our close up.

June’s meeting took place at Jane’s and we forgot a camera, so you’ll just have to imagine how bad the befores and how good the afters look!

Our task was backyard clean up. The yard has gone a little bit wild, so we have to tame it down again. This included bagging piles of limbs, cuttings and vines that she had in the back yard. Not exciting, but one of those tasks that is brutal and punishing if you have to do it all by yourself. We hauled about 15 bags to the street at the end of the day! We also cleaned up a little area she can see from her martini corner (am I allowed to say that?) or, if you like, her breakfast deck. This area will be made into a butterfly/hummingbird garden so she can enjoy their activities and antics while sipping an adult beverage in the evening.

Another garden pest was taking over the entire area – honeysuckle. We pulled up reams of it, and Sharon creatively fashioned some of it into a wreath as she pulled it up! We fought yellow jackets, poison ivy, and billions and billions of tree seedlings, but at the end of the day we prevailed! The area was nice and clean, ready for butterfly bushes and all manner of attractive new plants. We placed a bench against the fence and decorated it with a birdhouse and some found pots. A pleasing view and a good day’s work. I only wish we had pictures to show. Sigh.

This month it was Suzi’s turn to harness the power of the Beez at work. We had an honorary Bee in attendance: Dana!

Dana provided all the lovely photography for this entry. She also brought some terrific food to share with us! We want Dana to come back again and again!

Our project this month was to provide some clarity for Suzi. Path-wise, that is. Sometimes we allow everyday obstacles to slow us down. We recognize them as irritants, yet somehow continue to live with them. Gardening is a lot like life.

Suzi had an area in front of her house where she frequently walked, yet she was always getting smacked around by an out-of-control weeping cherry tree and tripped up by some gardenias who were muscling their way in front of her. There was no clear path to the hose either; she had to step around various plants to get to the spigot. Adding to the general chaos, her tree-form lorapetalums were seriously out of round.

Enter the BYBz to fix things up! But first, a photo-op.

Photo op for Beez

So, here is what we started with:

Something must be done. First: Out with those gardenias. There are four in this spot. We think we’ll leave one.

The cool thing about the way we BYBz work together is that we each find our own job once the plan is laid out for us. We all seem to gravitate toward different things, so there’s never any bickering over who gets to dig out the gardenias and who gets to prune the lotapetalums. We pick a job and do it without a whole lot of discussion. Just one of the very many reasons we rock!

We get right to work, and we frequently have to be coerced into stopping to eat lunch. One of the rules we made when our group was first formed was that the only thing the hostess had to provide was water. We were to bring our own lunch and so not burden the hostess with feeding us. However, that’s one rule we all seem to love to break, as feeding each other is lots of fun, too! This time lunch was especially yummy, as Dana contributed a wonderful bruschetta-like treat, and Suzi contributed greens for a salad from her garden. Fresh peaches from South Georgia made their way to the table, too. Yum!

After our lunch break, it was back to work. We had cleared out the gardenias and settled them in their new homes, along with some hellebores (common name Lenten Rose) and iris, pruned the cherry tree back, and now it was time to create a pathway.

Then we re-purposed some stepping stones from another part of the yard.

The stones are set, and ground cover will be grown around them. Doesn’t this look better? It feels like a real path now, and the flower garden seems like more of a garden somehow.

It was a productive and fun time, as usual, and we never cease to be amazed at what only four women can accomplish in one day. It certainly never seems like work! Don’t you wish YOU could be an honorary Bee for a day? Well, maybe you can. Just ask!

At this month’s meeting we were reminded of why we formed this group in the first place – because gardening alone can sometimes be overwhelming! All of us have rather sizeable properties at 3/4 to 1 acre, and some tasks loom large, intimidating and discouraging us. At Sharon’s this month, we tackled a corner that had been overrun with ivy. It was in desperate need of an Ivy Intervention.

Let me just say as an aside that there are some pesty plants we can’t believe that people actually pay for, because they should have warning labels attached: “This plant will take over your yard!” They start out as a friend doing a job, but quickly become a pest plant running rampant across everything, and require a lot of time to keep within bounds. Ivy is one, mondo grass, another. I’m sure if you’re a gardener you can think of others that wooed you at the garden center with their winning looks and promise to solve a problem for you, but then tried to take over your yard, smothering and crowding out  other defenseless plants, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

Back to Sharon’s Ivy Gone Wild project… What started out as erosion control and a little ground cover became an infestation. It ran rough shod over hostas and lilies, and climbed into shrubs and trees, trying to strangle them.

The area before

Ivy can collect leaves and look untidy.

But it was no match for four women with energy and determination! We raked and hacked and pulled and soon had it under control.

In the process we found some steps that Sharon forgot she’d installed, and a neat little grotto area where she can put a focal point of some kind. We enjoyed the fellowship and camaraderie that has become the hallmark of our times together, and accomplished together what would take one person much longer to do, if she could even get up the enthusiasm to begin it at all.

The big reveal - where did those steps come from???

Leaf clean up leads to tidier appearance.

Our first-ever project was similar – weeding Nancy’s front yard by the street. So you see, it’s not always about the flash and splash of making a huge difference that day, sometimes it’s just lending a helping hand to a fellow gardener, and doing what needs to be done. We rake and haul and slash and burn to prepare a place for something wonderful!

Good work, Bitchezz!

Next month: The Bitchezz Build a Pond!