Gardening in reverse

After we bought our home in 2000 I became much more interested in gardening. Accommodating my increasing need for more places to plant has usually meant one thing: ripping out grass.

The first portent of this habit happened quite early on. The first week we moved into our house I flooded (just a little bit) one of the basement rooms because I left the sprinkler running on the side of the house too long. It was just a narrow strip of turf on the west side and it was doomed. I ripped it out so we wouldn't have to water as much, and it since then our grassy areas have been systematically shrinking.

So the irony is not lost on me that my latest project involved laying sod. After pulling out so much grass, I was today buying grass and increasing the footprint of our lawn. Shocking!

The grass by our back patio was really patchy and weedy. I also wanted to decrease the dirt that washes down on the cement. The rounded part on the left side of the picture used to be garden space.

Thanks to Arden we now have a truck to borrow!

Ian grabbed the camera to document this very rare event in case it never happens again.

Miles and Saffron pitched in. We all knew exactly what to do because we watched videos of it on YouTube last night.


Miles unrolled the sod with precision.


Here we are, almost done! We just have to remember to water it twice a day for a couple of weeks, and hopefully by fall it will look like it was always there.