Birder’s Lounge

About two months ago, I wrote an article about my project to excavate the dirt around my pecan tree, since the root-ball was buried too deep. At the time of the post, I had plastic down around the tree to kill the bermuda grass in a larger area so that the pecan tree would not have to compete for water and nutrients with the grass. I never would have guessed that it would be another two months before I finished that project!

This is about three weeks later when I finally tucked the edges of the plastic down into the dirt.

This is another three weeks later, after the plastic ripped open and grass started growing back!

So  I got rid of the plastic and started to remove the dead grass, as well as the new green grass…

This is two weeks later, where you can see I had made SOME progress, but didn’t finish. The bermuda grass quickly took advantage of my exhaustion with this project (from Hades!), and filled in the half that I did not get to.

Same day - I won! But I wasn’t quite finished, and I HURT, and I was out of free time!

…And this is from this morning, another two weeks later. The grass is encroaching again, no surprise. Mr. Green Thumbs suggested that I quit killing myself over trying to remove all of the grass and just put newspaper and cardboard down and be done with it. Brilliant!

I cannot express how happy I am to be done with this! Was it worth it? Yes. I have now given my pecan tree the proper setting to grow big and healthy, and I look forward to sitting underneath it one day, sharing pecans with the squirrels.