A.K.A. white man asks Mexican for help with his yard.

So Jessie and I are in preliminary discussions of how to fix my shitty yard. I promise I will take before pictures so you all can see, but for now we’re mainly brainstorming.

As the wife and I have made mild improvements to our Baltimore-area home over the last 10 months, we’ve talked casually about what we’d want our yard to look like.

Well, I’ve grown tired of the mosquitoes and over-abundance of dirt and weeds. So when Jessie moved home, I strong-armed her she lovingly volunteered to help me landscape my entire yard.

Issues We Want to Address

1) Too much topsoil. Literally our entire yard is eight inches of topsoil, which means the footing is too soft and the weeds grow too lush. Much of this will either be leveled off or re-purposed.

2) Too much shade. We have six smaller pine trees, one large Japanese maple, and a medium magnolia tree in a very small yard, meaning very little of it gets direct sunlight. The pine trees are also in the way of my fire pit, and my retired firefighter step-dad insists it’s a safety hazard. (He’s definitely right.)

3) Too many weeds. Our yard has virtually no grass, and weed-whacking a small field is no fun. So we’ll take away potential weed space with garden boxes, rock gardens, and a stone patio, and plant real grass instead.

4) We have a weird patch of not-grass in front of our porch that is the perfect size for an extra parking space. We’ll have to level that off (while being wary of a mysterious drainage pipe) and fill it in with gravel.

5) Our front and backyards are currently divided by a zig-zagging privacy fence. We’ll reposition this to make it a straight line and hem in what will be a small rock garden in the front.

6) Distinct designs. We need to settle on both the fire pit area and rock garden before buying any materials or doing any real labor. There are so many options, so we’re already drawing out rough sketches on graph paper of the dimensions and plant types we might use. (a.k.a. Jessie is doodling as I type this because she likes to do drawrings.)

Our summer will be a three-month drudge-fest of digging and hauling, but I’m looking forward to it. It also gives me an excuse not to help paint our nursery, because I despise painting. Pictures incoming as we move along.

Hopefully, by the time I’m a new dad, we’ll have a very nice yard to spend time with our kid in.

With Jessie doing all of the hard work.

P.S. – No actual Mexicans were harmed in the making of this production.

P.P.S. – Jessie is a certified Mexican-American citizen who is being paid a fair wage of delicious food and spending time with her best friend for her services.

Steve D