Putting Tippi in the Ground

Liz and I had plans for working in the backyard today. The grass needed to be cut, and we were looking to get a few plants in the ground (that were still lingering around, in pots).

On finishing mowing, I looked back and really loved seeing this wide expanse of green. We still have several dry/brown patches, but it just feels nice to see such a wide field of green. Particularly when I think back to what it used to look like, back here.

Liz, cleaning up the garden boxes.

Another house guest.

This tree we’ve nicknamed “Tippy,” for how often we’ve found it tipped over on its side due to a strong wind. I guess the spelling on that should be Tippi, since I associate the name with Tippi Hedren (though I’ve never actually watched ‘The Birds‘).

Tippi has been kind of clinging on, half browned and half green. We’ve tried to water her when we can, but she’s suffered a lot these past few months in her little pot. We decided that today would be the day we put her in the ground.

Setting up with a bin an a shovel. This reminded me a lot of when we were doing all our fence prep, before we actually got our new fence installed.

After some digging, we ran into a big root. Too big to cut through, I widened the hole a little only to run into… another big root that was too big to cut through.

If at first you don’t succeed…

Tippi’s in the ground!

Planted, and officially out of her pot. Here’s hoping that the shock of the transplant isn’t too much, and that she recovers. Poor girl.

She’s been in that pot for so long now, I’m hoping that relocating her is more revitalizing than traumatizing. I guess we’ll find out over the next week or so.

We also spent time this afternoon, clearing out a ton of weeds. We removed the sunflowers (sadly I don’t think I have a good photo of them in their glory days), and covered the area with some mulch.

We ended up calling it quits around 4:30 PM, after starting around 11AM. We worked longer than we wanted (and I think Liz pushed herself longer than she should have), but we have a cleaner looking yard again.

In addition to Tippi, we also put several other plants in the ground. There’s still about 3/4 of the fence row that needs some weeding, but hopefully we can knock that out incrementally after work, in the evenings.

It was a gorgeous day outside today. For as much as I wanted to be inside pecking away on a keyboard, it felt nice to be out and working in the sun again.

Related:
Beautifying the Backyard
Beautifying the Backyard, Continued