GROUND FORCE

There's this wonderful show on the BBC called Ground Force, where a team of people come in and redo someone's yard or garden in 48 hours as a surprise. The relatives or friends all conspire to get the person out of the way for two days and then the team comes in and does a total makeover, with the big payoff being the look of surprise and tears of joy on the face of the recipient. I love this show!

But they never showed up at my house...

remember this from pic from earlier this year?


It was a disaster! There was soooo much crap all over the place, I thought I would never get it cleaned up! But I started doing a little every couple of days, chopping up the dead banana trees and trimming the dead wood and making piles of it all. I kept pushing the piles into the corners, (there's no way that the city trash pickup would take that much stuff) and fortunately stuff rots here pretty fast, so the piles kept getting smaller as the days wore on. Each week, I reclaimed a little more of the yard while trimming back some of the overgrown stuff. Things started to grow back in, (most of the banana trees that I cut down are 10 to 15 feet high again) and the extremely dry spring has actually helped a few things that I like to get a chance to grow, (there's this very strangely shaped avocado tree; the bananas kept shading it out and twisting it so it was more like a vine than a tree, but this year it's thriving and even more strangely shaped). I reseeded the grass area and had to water it every day; this is very strange for New Orleans, there's usually enough rain and humidity to keep everything green. I really started to get into it all and...

...it's starting to shape up.


There's still bits of debris in the corners and edges, but I now have two areas of the yard almost totally cleaned up. Right outside the back door, which you can often see from the "other cam" is a little area with some chairs that is shaded by an overhang and a lattice work arbor that I built a couple of years ago. It is now densly covered with Confederate Jasmine that has grown over from Robert's side, so it's very pleasant in the daytime, (and I have it artistically lit at night). Next to that and under the messy Japanese Plum tree is the larger pond.

The larger pond


Oh, the water lillies are plastic! hehe. The pond gets too much shade now to grow water lillies, but Karen and Chris found these floating plastic ones at the water garden place around the corner when they were visiting and plopped them into the pond to surprise me. They are remarkably realistic and so easy to care for!

The smaller pond (they call it a "water feature" on Ground Force) and the brick patio in the back of the yard were totally buried in silt and crap and took a lot of work, (and me occasionally screaming like a girl when I uncovered some slimy wiggly thing). I've got most of the brick cleaned up and the area around the umbrella covered table is pleasant enough for now, although there is still a lot more to do. This next week, I'll get the rest of the debris out of this area.

The small pond


Two of the neighborhood cats like to hang out in the back part of the yard and one of them uses the statue as a spring board to get over the fence; the last two mornings I've found the lil dolphin boy knocked over.

I pleased with my progress, it's been very gratifying, sweating like a navy, digging and trimming in my lil yard and then watching it grow and change. It's very satisfying. I have lots of ideas about what I want to do next.

Now, if only someone would come and sit with me in my yard...sigh...

Short bits.
Thanks again Robert for all your help this week!
Congratulations, Dr. Justin!
Congrats to Tejaz, Fordian of the Month!
And a special Hi to MaryAnn, (my cousin) and Marianne, (a long time friend)!

This may not have been the most exciting journal entry I've ever done... but we have a saying in my native village; "some days you party hard, some days you hang out in the yard!" durlx