Well, I don't prefer the winter and my personal bone structure is becoming more and more difficult to feel . . . But, the backyard is showing where I'm beating it down to bones. Along in the spring, the grass will fill in these depressions where I'm treading here and there.

I hate to put in too much . . . what do we call it, hardscape? The soggy, soggy ground over the frost needs more stability but, really, these paths have been here for a decade. Grass, papering over the bones, doesn't do more than hide things for awhile. Is there a better way of "fashioning" a landscape?

Steve

My personal bone structure must be considerably different from yours, because mine isn’t at all difficult to feel! Oh, how I wish I didn’t have to feel it! ;-)

And I definitely DON’T "prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape!" Since fall and winter are realities out here, I deal with them—but definitely don’t PREFER them! But I WOULD miss the four seasons if I lived somewhere without them! So I sit and "enjoy" looking at my dried Acanthus—the only "winter interest" I have this year! Even my blue fescue got smashed down by the snow! And I’d prefer to NOT have the two upright juniper "bones" in my back yard—never will like junipers, but they DO provide a modicum of privacy from the neighbors behind me, so they’re here to stay! That’s about all the bones I have! Well, there’s the 2-high railroad ties that border the perennial garden across the back of the yard—but—they’re rotting out and need to be replaced, so I prefer not to look at them! Bones ignored!

Hey! I do have some bones I like! I definitely enjoy walking around and looking at all the rocks I’ve collected from different "places" (all legal of course!) on my vacations! Most of them are very good memories—and then there’s a few from "that certain lions and tigers and bears place" in Capitol Reef National Park! But I’m glad I have them all!

So my bones are kind of minimal—at least the outdoor ones are! I do wish the rest of the snow would melt off of my back yard—which is on the north side of the house and gets VERY little sun at this time of the year. That would make it more enjoyable to go out and look at my few bones!

Skybird

You can hardscape with gaps between, like pavers or sandstone to step on. You can do a DG path or a gravel path for semi-pervious. Grass block. Go all the way and do a nice paved path that matches house or landscape: brick in a herringbone, concrete, etc.

No need to dislike them. Use them wisely and use them to your advantage.

Dan

Maybe I should move the pavers from one side of the house (where no one ever walks and they are now covered with wood chips) to the side where there is a "depressed" path. I thought that I would encourage people to walk on the pavers by putting them in about 15 years ago - no such luck.

This must be the reason why landscape architects don't put sidewalks around a new building on campus until the students beat a path across the terrain.

A Bobcat tractor was in the backyard about 18 months ago, moving woodchips. I filled some tracks that it left with old potting soil - so, mostly peat moss & perlite. The grass pretty much hid the tracks last summer but they are easy to see right now.

I'm afraid to fill an area and kill the grass. Do those rollers weigh enough to level ground already in sod?

About the only thing short of pouring concrete that seems like it would work would be to remove the sod, level the ground and replace the sod. Would that make any sense? I could stay off the ground for several months - beating a path somewhere else . . .

You know how these paths work -- they begin and end at the foot of the steps, the door to the garage, and the gate. The farther one gets from those places of entrance/exit the less obvious the bone structure of the yard is.

Steve

Yes.

Old landscaper's trick: if you do pavers, remove a fist-size hole of dirt in the middle of were the paver will sit, the last thing you do before setting. Water. Place paver. Stomp in middle. Enjoy. The capillary action of the soil will create suction and help hold the pavers.

Dan

Its a slow day, here at the '52ers......

Might run it across some of these bricks I've already got on the ground, too.

So, might I assume that Snow White was rolled on and fired in place?!?

Steve

Dan

Anyway, it occurs to me that the roofer will bring in a truck and fill it with the old roofing. I'd better wait until that truck pulls out of the yard to try to level the ground a little better than it is.

Here's a little discussion on the "advantage of pavers vs concrete" that makes sense to me. I have resisted putting more down but pavers do make my backyard space more usable.

One thought is to use concrete pavers this time . . .

Steve

Dan

A concrete batch plant south of town were selling 2' x 2' pavers with a 1/4 inch sunburst pattern. So I ordered enough of them to fill the space, and they finally were ready.

Eh-boy. There weren't two the same thickness, so each one had to be hand leveled to the surrounding ones. It took days to lay what should have been 2 hours tops. But still, it was beautiful with big 4' squares of sunburst.

Then, the a couple of years later, the water main under all this developed a split, and started washing away a big hole about 4 foot down, but we didn't know it until i got the water bill which was $200 more than the usual $25.

So got all that fixed, and as you can imagine, the thing was never level again.

And then, it turns out that if you add red dye to batch concrete, it won't hold up to freeze thaw cycles, and they started to turn to sand and gravel. The batch plant gave me half a dozen for free. I've finished those now, and I'm really not looking forward to seeing whats under all that snow....

Some day, I'll replace all that with those hook together things made out of recycled tires. In the mean time, we stuck some cattle panels over the top of the vegas and grow grape vines up there, planted climbing roses at all the posts, and the shade knocks 10º off the inside house temperature in the middle of the summer. I take naps survey the garden and make long term plans in a chair there too.