Poor, neglected blog

Fall ended up being crazy for both of us. Work sucked up what free time we had.

Also, we ended up with a new addition to the family:



That's Indy. She's an outsized miniature poodle with a lot of spunk. She's a rescue from a local organization, so she's needed to learn some basic commands and we've had to build up her confidence (she was very shy and jumpy at first). She is also a serious bird/game dog - she flushes birds and games better than my ILs two goldens. She is also a digger, so we'll have to do a lot of re-direct training this spring. But she's sweet and playful and we're looking forward to springtime with her.



To round out the year, we ended up overseeding about 2/3 of the back lawn. I could see the new grass coming up before the first freeze, so I think that's a success. We'll see how it looks in a few months.

The final 2009 To-Do List doesn't look too done though. Kind of disappointing, but that's life.

• Finish master plan of the yard
• Re-landscape west wall bed (aka fireplace bed)
• Get rid of barberry bush in back
• Place stepping stones from garage to back yard
  
• Clear out back woods
  
• Re-landscape garage bed
• Re-level brick patio
• Power-wash trellis and mailbox post
• Fill in holes in front bed (dead junipers and rose bushes)
• Plan out vegetable garden
• Re-mulch front yard beds
• Look at and either remove or repair yard sink
• Trim large bush trio in back
• Prune Mugo out front after killing the evil sawflies

A commenter in the last post had asked about the barberry bush that we plan to rip out and how we're planning to do that. Well, simply, we're digging it out. It's a fairly small bush, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Having dug up two very large junipers and two 12'+ apple trees, this little guy should be easy. If the bush were larger, I would probably cut it back severely and then dig the root system out as best I could, using a nice sharp spade to cut thru the roots where possible. I wouldn't recommend using a truck or the like to rip out any large, well-rooted bush, though. Odds are you'd rip the bumper off before taking the bush out.

Predictions for 2010:

We'll be trying to grow vegetables from SEED this year. I'm only using ones we can directly sow in the ground, as I have no patience for everything involved with sowing in flats indoors. I'm currently thinking we'll use this to experiment with a few different varieties and get the majority of our "must haves" from the nursery still.

As I said, we'll be working with Indy on not digging her way to China. Lucky was taught (by my sister's standard poodle, ironically) to dig in the sandbox, so we'll work on training her that way.