and Friday's work

So, unless I decide I HAVE to mow again, I'm done with necessary yard work for a while.

Friday afternoon I cut all the crud (including sucker sprouts) that were growing around the base of the yaupon hollies in my front yard:



No, that was not commented upon, but it looks a lot tidier and was something I kept meaning to get to. I also trimmed back some of the front hedgy things.

After that I took a break and drove my 10 bags of cut brush and weeds to the dump. The Solid Waste guys are all very nice (and I've worked with some of them, back when I was doing the trash-offs). They were amused that my load was "eight cents" over the bare minimum cost. (it cost me $14.58 to drop it off). The receipt they gave me said the load weight was "0.06" which I am presuming is "of a ton," so that would make it 120 pounds, which seems about right.

I took all those stuffed in my car. Four bags in the way-back, three in the backseat, three stuffed in the front seat. (I need to acquire myself an easily accessible friend with a pickup truck. The people I know who might have been willing to drive the stuff with me were busy)

And this is no longer an "area of concern":


Contrast that with last week:



I have four more bags of leaves and junk now but that's going to wait for Bulky Waste the first week of the month. I have the bags stowed in an unobtrusive place.

What I really need to do is get a bunch of soil to add in there, and some kind of spreading and strongly competitive shade-tolerant perennial to put in there. I'm thinking my Labor Day efforts may be aimed in that direction. And maybe in seeing if I can find some lilyturf locally for back by the elm tree.

ETA: For future reference for myself: a few shade-tolerant species for Oklahoma. Oooh. I like partridgeberry; that would be nice. I had some inland sea-oats, I think they are still where I planted them, maybe could get more. And fogfruit is nice; I see the native species out in the wild a lot.And more: another list. I particularly like natives (so double yes to partridgeberry and inland sea oats) because my experience with non natives is that some of them become surprisingly pesky and invasive. (Well, natives can do that too: see red cedar, see Virginia creeper, which is actually one of my "hate" plants. But natives are less likely to become invasive). Oooh, coralberry is on the list too. I like coralberry.

Now, just to find a good source for Liriope muscaria and the partridgeberry and some other things. I may wind up having to mail order but that would be okay.

Yeah, I'm kind of sore now, and I didn't get any school-work done yesterday, so I'm going to have to go in today.

And yes. Fourteen lawn and leaf bags, including for some areas that had been cleared out a month ago. That's why I would caution anyone thinking of moving here "for the gardening" to decide if they want that as a full-time job (or to hire a guy, and pay him accordingly.)