Life, food, events, and community in Albuquerque, NM

Two a Day

I am inspired by Summer of Like, a weekly post by a DCFer calling herself, well, Summer of Like. Tired of having only a few close friends in Albuquerque and relationships that last under two months, she has decided to ask out one person everywhere she goes for ten weeks. I like that idea; doing something outside of your norm to change something that you're not happy with. For me, my unhappy thing is my backyard.

My yard freaks me out. It's big and the things that survive back there do so in stubborn spite of my neglect. I have a tenacious pomegranate that fruits almost every year, and a lilac that produces flowers for about a week every spring, and an enormous prickly pear. I butchered some hedges when I first moved in with the optimistic plan to replace them with something less divisive and more drought tolerant. They are now the zombie-undead of hedges; not dead but not really alive either. Then there's the weeds, neither I nor the weeds have won, we're at a standoff. When I go back there I give them the stink eye and they give me the stink eye right back. That's it, that's all there has been for the five years that I've lived in this house.

When we first saw the yard, my husband and I talked about how much potential it had. Now we understand that potential can go either way, good or evil. I've been paralyzed all this time by the thought of planting, moving, building, or setting anything up back there and now I've had it, I must do something with my yard. My biggest motivator is the dog that we got a few months ago, I figure it's just a matter of time before she sticks her nose into the prickly pear and I'm hoping I can take care of it before she does.

I've always thought of the yard as an all or nothing proposition, that once I started in earnest I would have to realize all of the yard's potential at once. To quote The Dude, 'my thinking about the case, man, it had become uptight.' I don't have to work for eight to ten hours a day to get these things done, in fact that burns me out on the yard. I've always put in a crazy amount of back-breaking work for a day or two then limped away from the yard for another year. It obviously wasn't reasonable for me but what is? I've decided that two hours is a good amount of time to work on the yard. Two hours in the morning before the heat hits, Monday through Friday and I'll see how far I get.

I started this week on Wednesday morning and I got a lot more done than I expected; I trimmed the lilac, weeded my section of alley, removed several established volunteer Chinese Elm, transplanted some volunteer Globemallow into pots, and dug a trench around a baby pomegranate that sprung from the momma tree so that my friend can take it to her father-in-law. I'm amazed at how much I got done in those six spread out hours. Next week I'll blog a recap of the week and put up some photos of what I've done.

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Comment by Sarahjmd on June 5, 2009 at 5:19pm: Wow. You GO girl. I am also awestruck when I look at my yard. Oh... we got it neat enough this year - we have to, we're a B&B. But there is so much potential out there and just looking at the task before me make me turn around and go back in the house.

Comment by cathyray on June 5, 2009 at 5:27pm: yeah, I always do the "gotta-do-it-all-right-now" thing & it gets overwhelming. I guess we're all Tina Turners - we never do nothin nice & easy. I'd like to try it sometime, tho. It is a good idea & I will look forward to your posts on your progress.

Comment by Spring Griffin on June 5, 2009 at 7:34pm: Thanks for the words of encouragement! It's nice to know that I'm not alone in feeling this way about my yard!

Comment by Anna Murphy on June 5, 2009 at 9:10pm: Wow, I like your plan. Sorta divvy up your yard into zones and work one zone at a time. Here's a hex for those weeds +

Comment by summer of like on June 5, 2009 at 9:31pm: I'm so envious!! I have a green heart, but a black thumb. Maybe when my ten weeks are up, I can try rehabilitating my yard - it's pretty awful, and also has a lot of potential. Luckily, I have a mojito mint patch going strong in my front yard that makes me happy. :) (Glad to have inspired you, too!)

Comment by Ray Maseman on June 6, 2009 at 7:59am: Hey, it took those plants millions of years to evolve gradually into what they are now. It's definitely OK for you to relax and let your yard evolve gradually, too

Also, do not use the word volunteer in association with Chinese Elm. Volunteers are a good thing. e like them. The make the world a better place. The term you're looking for is more like invader, interloper, or perhaps extremely unwanted.

Finally, my son would be more than happy to help you harvest those prickly pears and show you how to prepare and eat them!

Comment by Spring Griffin on June 6, 2009 at 8:40am: Hey Ray! Thanks for the mellow take on evolution of all kinds!

I should have stuck my tongue a little more firmly in my check about the elm so that it came through in the post. I hate those things, the ones that I dug up this time are from root runners that I couldn't get out three years ago when I dug up the crazy mama plant that was twenty feet away.

Sadly the prickly pears are just blooming now and not fruiting and I'm taking them out while my motivation lasts. I have made some yummy jellies from them in past harvest years but always wondered how people ate them.

Comment by cc on June 6, 2009 at 9:10am: Spring Griffin -
thanks for this neat sharing. You got a good approach. Sounds like you have some 'choice' flowering plants!

When our daughter was really little and 'the mess' felt too much to tackle, kinda like the enormity of what you wanna do in your backyard, we used to tell ourselves, "Pick up 20 things." It wasn't taking care of it all, yet it really helped to feel a change in the setting. I do that today with dishes, "Do 10," I tell our teen and myself. I am sharing this in hopes of encouraging you to do little bits as you ARE!

And another idea - my hubby built benches outta old wood & placed them strategically to be able to sit and water certain areas and just gaze.

Comment by Uncle Jess on June 6, 2009 at 4:34pm: Great post! Hope you don't mind that I'm about to offer two pieces of contradictory advice (kind of a zen thing, huh, what's wrong with a little contradiction....).
First, your approach of breaking it down to two hour chunks is great. Make a list of the stuff you want to do and prioritize it, be sure to work on something that contributes to a priority one item every day. Make your items small and doable. Not 'plant back yard', but 'Decide what to plant', 'plant bulbs', plant seeds, etc.
Second, forget what I just said and get someone to do the heavy lifting for you. Get a drip system installed and your yard tilled, leveled or whatever. Then the rest of it can be broken into small fun things.