Post what you are thinking at this very moment

[Goofy]

Tough day yesterday, it was my dad's birthday. The first one to come up since he passed last year. Didn't think it would hit me as hard as it did. And of course next week on Tuesday it will be one year since he passed, thinking that day might be a bit worse. So, if I'm not myself between now and then, that's why. Apologies in advance.

Time is a great healer as they say....... dont think losing a parent is something anyone really gets over though

[RBP]

So I was watching Chaturbate, and as the skank was getting a huge load blown on her face it occurred to me she was 5 on 911.

[Noilly Pratt]

Time is a great healer as they say....... dont think losing a parent is something anyone really gets over though

Having lost both of mine, I can tell you that's true. And there's nothing to get over. You just work through it.

I try to do nice, pleasant things on my dad's birthday and make it a positive day. I bought a guitar on May 13th this year. He bought me my first one -- so it's kind-of-sort-of a tribute.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Worked out in the back yard a good portion of the weekend. Nearly 5 years after buying the house we're STILL fighting with the disaster that is the back yard. Quick recap, the house was a foreclosure that was flipped by some 'foundation' that uses federal money to fix and flip properties. Best guess is the house was empty for about 12 to 18 months and it's fairly obvious that the previous owners let the yard go to hell. And the place that bought it to flip did absolutely nothing to the yard and/or landscaping. The back yard was a mess, barely any living grass, more weeds that you can even imagine. And every year we seem to end up with a different dominant weed. It's fighting a losing battle. We finally decided to just kill the back yard and start over. We had previously started doing little things before we went all apocalypse on the yard (planting trees and bushes/shrubs, mostly around the borders of the yard). We now have 4 new trees in the back plus 6 evergreens that we planted not too long after moving in to make a natural fence. But, the weeds keep doing their best to keep coming back. Even weed barrier wasn't working. So, we went a step up to thick plastic to use as weed barrier, even though you aren't supposed to because no water flow, retains too much heat, blah blah blah....we have no other real choice. So we worked on the back corner this past weekend.

Cut the weeds back as far as we could, laid out all the plastic barrier and dumped a metric shit ton of mulch. We really should have gotten a before picture because it is really night and day. But, slowly we are moving things along. I wish we had the kind of money that we needed to do it all at once, but that would probably be somewhere in the $20K to $30K range to get everything done, so we're doing what we can ourselves before we get the professionals to finish it off. Or who knows, we might just end up doing the whole thing ourselves.

[Muddy]

Looks good.. Are those edibles in the straw area? Too late but did you consider landscape fabric?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Tried regular landscape (weed barrier) fabric as I mentioned above ( ) to no avail. The weeds that were running rampant came right thru it and spread. And in the straw area is our 70 square foot grass test area. We're trying this new Dog Tuff grass that is becoming more and more popular

http://plantselect.org/learn/dog-tuf...-need-to-know/

Hopefully it will cure what ails the back yard. But we are trying to get all the landscaping parts done before we go with more grass, the more area we can fill with landscaping, the less grass we need to buy.

[Muddy]

Thats cool... The fabric we used worked meaning no grass grew through it, but it did grow on top of it as the older mulch broke down and made a type of soil on top of the fabric..

[Teh One Who Knocks]

We're hoping that Dog Tuff grass is the answer for out back yard, both because of the dogs and the distinct lack of rain we get in the summer. It's pricey though, almost $10/square, but if it works, it will be worth it in the long run since it's so low maintenance. Plus, the soil in the back yard is shitty, mostly hard clay, very little top soil. Although on the 70 square foot test area we have fenced off, we added compost and topsoil, dug it all up and turned it all over and worked it in manually. I was a beat puppy after that day.

[Muddy]

It looks good.. For me I wouldn't have enough sun for it...

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Our back yard in the summer gets a solid 12 to 13 hours of intense sun per day, it's brutal. That's why we've planted 4 additional shade type trees in the back yard. Unfortunately it will be awhile since they are big enough to provide adequate shade from the sun.

[Godfather]

Looks good lance hope it works!

I worked landscaping for a few summers. We used this insanely good mushroom fertilizer that smelled like death that we bought from some hippy. Made the grass so healthy it choked out the weeds, especially if you cut it a bit higher and mulched a few times. Downside was that you lawn would grow like hell and you had to mow twice a week

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Looks good lance hope it works!

I worked landscaping for a few summers. We used this insanely good mushroom fertilizer that smelled like death that we bought from some hippy. Made the grass so healthy it choked out the weeds, especially if you cut it a bit higher and mulched a few times. Downside was that you lawn would grow like hell and you had to mow twice a week

The problem is, the soil in the back yard is SO poor, that it would take a lot of good fertilizer and topsoil in to make it work for regular grass. Plus a lot of watering, and we had a sprinkler system quoted for the back yard a few years ago and it was going to be a ridiculous amount (around $6500). So that's why we're hoping this dog tuff stuff works.

[Muddy]

I've heard of mushroom soil.. It's supposed to be very optimal...

[Teh One Who Knocks]

I'd need a couple of metric fucktons of it

[Muddy]

And a clothespin for your nose, it's supposed to smell horrible..