It's not easy being green!

Here is the back story:

We bought our house in March of 2004, it had beautiful landscaping, over 20 rose bushes, a beautiful Bougainvillea and other plants. We don't even know how to purchase a green thumb so it didn't take long to realize we needed to rip it all out and put in simple grass. So in May of 2005, we got a friend to do our landscaping for the price of the materials. He said it would take two weeks to rip everything out, pour concrete, plant a new tree and lay the sod. We had this very nice tree but the roots were so shallow that it was impossible to have a beautiful lawn and the kids could trip over the roots. So the tree went too. The tree ended up taking about a week to rip out. So the job was stretched out to a month. At the end of the month we threw a surprise party for Jer's Mom this is what our yard looked like:

Well mostly, he did clean up the sidewalk and flatten out the dirt as much as possible.


I think it was August or September that he actually laid the sod in the front yard. Then December of 2005 He laid the sod in the backyard with an unattached sprinkler system. I wreaked havoc on that grass. It grew, and grew and grew. I think it was April or later I decided to give it it's first mow. I did learn alot, like you are only supposed to cut 1/3 of the length. I think I cut at least 1.5 feet. Sure enough within a month the grass was pretty pathetic and the next month it was DEAD! So last summer we had dead grass. After lots of calls and trying to get our landscaper over here, doing small things here and there Jeremy called him the week before Easter (yes 2007) and said get over here and finish this or I am going to pay someone else to do it. He took Jer seriously and worked pretty hard. So Saturday he said he would finish the sprinkler system and lay the sod, that was delivered that day, on Sunday morning. As usual it was more than he thought so it took a whole day and he still needed stuff to finish the system. So he said he would lay the sod on Monday. Surprisingly he showed up for 10 minutes and then headed to Disneyland for 3 days. So now it is Thursday before he shows back up. He gets into the groove and realizes he needs more pipe for the system. He shows back up Monday to finish the system, WA-HOO it is done, and the ground is all ready for sod. Remember the sod is still out front pleading for earth again. So yesterday Tuesday, 10 days after the sod was delivered, he starts to roll it out. Sure enough it is in terrible shape. He said it may take but I am not going through this again so he rolled it back up and headed out to order some new sod. This will be the third time. It should be delivered on Friday and completed. I am sure he can't wait to be done with our yard, but to tell you the truth it will be nice to have a beautiful backyard.

The sad thing was he did give us a deal and it has cost him so much money. But for our back yard it isn't easy being green. When it is all done I will proudly post pictures of the completed project and four happy children playing in the grass!