A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 bought a house (w/pics)

I don't know which place would've been best to post this, but I figured I'd post here since most of my questions will be here now.
Weez, you can put this wherever you feel is appropriate.

Ok, now that's taken care of. Yes, I bought a house. No, not the one I was trying to buy before. I didn't post anything about this one because I wanted to wait until I actually had it, lest anything went wrong. This house was actually my third attempt at buying a house, the other two offers went through. This one was a dream, though. It's on a decent sized piece of property, has a privacy fence in the back yard aaaaaannnnnd....18 oak trees! yes, 18. 10 in the front yard, 8 in the back.

The biggest challenge with this place is going to be that the soil is extremely sandy. There are large patches where grass won't even grow (which I don't mind in and of itself, because I don't care for grass). This complicates my original plans for having huge flower/butterfly gardens in the front yard. bah.

See my next post for details on my first project.

You can find pictures of the house (inside and out) and the yard at:

http://vengefulstapler.com/jay/temp/house/

I haven't had time to name them or make thumbnails for them yet...sorry! I'm still busy moving in and cleaning. :p

Congratulations

Hi Boxmonkey!!
CONGRATULATIONS ON THE NEW HOMESTEAD!
Great house!
Betchya if feels nice to be there!
I love the yard.
(I like the fence too, gives you your own area.)
Have you checked out where the sun is and is not yet?
And just remember, oaks hang on to their leaves for like ever!!!
Using up all the nutrients in them before discarding them....

And the closets!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I'll say congrat's again.
And leave your post here for awhile..
And see how the traffic is thru..

Keep us posted on what you do,
especially that backyard!

Weezie

Great place. Looks like a lot of shade in the yard. Hello hosta. Interesting stencil in the bathroom. Lots of recepticles in that one corner. I like that. I live in an old house where evidentially no one plugged anything in. We've put in about 20 recepticles and still haven't gotten to one of the bedrooms. Keep us posted with the progress.

hey boxmonkey, congrats!! i like it!

about your sand and oak trees... good thing you don't like grass. i htink, your best best, would be to go with some "native" type plants. lots of what i have here will grow there, including st. johns wort, carolina jessamine, wisteria, and others. don't give up on the butterfly garden just yet... you can pull it off!

Hosta gorw in shade....and bleeding hearts (there are two sizes of those), and ferns....if the soil will hold some water...umm...lily of the valley...they spread really nicely...I'll look around our house in the shadey spots and see what all we have.

We have cone flowers on the shadey side of the house..hens and chicks...can't remember anything else.

Congrats on the house. I like it!

Don't know where you live, looks like Florida to me. If you have so much sand, you might want to consider raised flower beds. If you protect the Oak trees by making beds that do not impede the trunks, you can grow anything you want. Just get some good topsoil with manure and compost and the world is your Oasis! This is something we have had to do with a high clay content in our soil. Thank God for raised beds!! We used limestone to get a very country garden atmosphere. We have a herb garden, rose garden and a wonderful perinial garden as well.

Best of Luck to you!

Kind Regards,
Karen

Hey Boxmonkey,
How's your new house coming along/?
Just wondering!!
Any new pictures yet??
What did you ever do with the "Moldy Satalite Dish?" anything???
Very curious on that one!!!

Weezie

Boxmonkey,
How's the house and the backyard doing??????
Haven't heard from you in a bit!!!!

Weezie

Hehe, sorry for not being around much. I sorta went "dormant" with my gardening for a while. I couldn't afford to do anything so I didn't even want to talk about it! I'm still poor, but I HAVE done something with the satellite dish. I followed your advice and lined it with landscaping fabric, then I got some topsoil and put that up there with some peat moss, and I transplanted some of my plants up there: english ivy, passion vine, spider plant. The satellite dish is still at a bit of an angle, so I'm hoping that they'll put new roots down and help hold the soil in place. It's been ok so far! I put landscape edging around the whole thing, so I guess that's helping to keep it in place.

Then I tied a whole bunch of twine onto the satellite dish to act as a trellis for the Jasmine I've planted all around the dish. Mind you I only did this a couple of weeks ago, so it's ugly as all get out, it looks like some giant spider attacked my satellite dish, but I'm hoping it'll take off quickly.

I will try to get pictures, though it's still a bit embarassing at the moment.

One problem I can already see: I've already got weeds sprouting in the top part of the dish. Well, if nothing else they'll help hold everything in place, I can't be weeding that thing all the time!
The other problem is keeping the dish watered. The landscaping fabric lets all excess water drain right through, so it needs to be watered quite regularly. I've bought a soaker hose and a hose repair kit, I'm thinking of cutting a piece big enough to sit inside the satellite dish and using that to water it instead of having to drag the entire hose reel over there.

That happens to me too! That's when I start moving dirt and rocks around the yard Without killing myself! I would love to see your pics.

Hey Boxmonkey,
How have you been????? I had wondered about you, and pulled this post up a couple of times trying to catch you....

First off, we love pictures, even if it's just from the start, alot of people looking for ideas like to see what it looked like in the begining and as it's taking off...

And I also wanted to say, that dish of flowers I saw was HEAVILY PACKED with annuals, OVER PACKED actaully, so, any open area, plant a plant, especially to keep the weeds down....

What's the angle of being able to see the plants??? From your house driveway, and the street?

The soaker hose sounds like a good idea!! And use some peat moss, that'll hold the water, ONCE IT's WET, it's hard to get it wet, but once it's wet, it's pretty good.

Weezie

Mel,
Go look at the very top of this post,
it'll show you all the pictures...
Click on house5.jpg, that'll be the satalite.

Weezie

Thank you so much, Weezie! I had started looking at the pics but...............didn't know which one !

Mel,
What does your satalite look like??

Weezie

Exactly like that one, except it's on top of my garage, I'll get a pic for you tomorrow.

I can't imagine having a giant satellite dish like that on top of my house...no wonder you want to get rid of it! That would've been fun in the hurricanes, I could just see something like that flying off and taking half of my roof with it.

Ok, I'll get pictures up soon, I promise!
Unfortunately, you really can't see the plants in the satellite dish at all without a ladder. but that's ok because the main point is to get vines all over the thing until it doesn't look like a dish anymore. I think I'm going to plant some of these up there too, because it'd be pretty cool if the dish became this giant tangle of vines AND a butterfly magnet.