Yard Party turns into Hurricane Party

I'll first explain the hurricane - Hurricane Dolly recently passed through the Gulf of Mexico and headed inland towards New Mexico.

So today we had a party planned to celebrate that our back yard was finally done and to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. Needless to say, it has been raining almost every day here in Santa Fe, but the rain always ends up downtown and NEVER comes to our side of town by the airport, but today, it was completely cloudy all day, drizzling on and off and even pouring out at one point with crazy wind, all because miss Dolly decided to show herself over New Mexico today and deposit very much water. It didn't ruin or cancel our party, but no one got to sit and have a picnic on the grass. People did start out eating inside and socializing with each other, but eventually there was a small break in the sky so everyone went out to admire the back yard and told us how great it looks. I'll attach pictures tomorrow once the sun is up!

Our back yard has been a work in progress for the past 8 weeks or so. First we had to come up with a plan for what we wanted and we wanted 4 zones for a sprinkler system so that we could water the front & back yard separately and have different areas as well. We decided we wanted grass since the water restrictions of two years ago were lifted. We decided to put it down the middle of the yard with a garden on the left and flowers & trees on the right. Our first big project was to dig the trenches for the water system. At first we thought we were going to use the flexible tubing, so we had crazy trenches in the yard, but none were very straight. Then we realized it would be best to put in PVC pipe, so all the trenches had to be straightened out. In this digging process, we uncovered tons of rocks, many Yucca roots, construction debris and tons of dirt. Ian then laid out the PVC, hooking it up, getting frustrated in the process, but eventually getting it done. Then we had to cover up all the trenches, so we sifted through all the piles of dirt we had in the yard so that we weren't putting rocks back in the trenches to ruin the pipes. In doing this sifting, we ended up with more rocks. Then we brought in sod and had two 18 year old boys pick it up and lay it out (inside of Ian's outlined area). Before the sod was laid, I had planted a vegetable garden with an herb garden just next to it. In the herb garden is Sunflowers, alyssum, thyme, tarragon, sage, basil, parsley, dill, mint, rosemary. In the veggie garden is corn, sweet peas, green beens, tomatoes, onion, red peppers, orange peppers (both the sweet bell variety), carrots, beets, spinach, pumpkin, cucumber, cantaloup, zucchini, watermelon and eggplant. We have 3 mounds in the yard with lots of perrenials (the kind that come back year after year) and some annuals (for color, but you have to buy new ones each year). There are some trees, some decorative grasses, many ever greens and some flowering bushes too. We tried to make sure that they were cold tollerant for minus 20-30 below zero to make sure they will survive the winters here and come back next year. We have 2 kinds of bark mulch, some red and some plain old tan. There is a french drain made from the many, many rocks in our yard. We made some river beds from river rock we purchased and we put down some red rock (gravel) as well. It came out very beautiful and inviting. It was quite labor intensive and not always easy with a 21 month old around, but it's finally finished and we're hoping to enjoy it for a while.

So anyway, as people were arriving for our party, we greeted them by saying, "welcome to our hurricane party." Of course they all laughed!

Thanks for reading our blog and have a great weekend.