okay do you um have a garden
um i have several outside shrubs that i maintain take care of
um-hum do you enjoy working out in the yard
yeah i certainly do uh i planted uh a rosebed last year
um-hum
and uh they came out looking really nice lot of red and white ones pink
uh-huh i've had some roses out in my backyard too and they've done real well i was surprised
i we had some in Virginia and they were real hard to keep up with but seems like they like the Texas climate better
uh
yeah yeah as as long as you give it uh good drainage and uh lot of uh oh some some plant food once a month
right yeah we built up our we built up boxes and put them in that so that they would drain because our soil is so bad
where i live do you live in Texas or
yeah i'm in uh Plano
Plano oh yeah i'm out in Rowlett and we have that brown clay soil and it's real hard to grow
anything here
yeah i've got a well my roses are on the west side of the house i asked my neighbors what they wanted to see outside their uh front door
uh-huh
because it's right by their entryway and they they wanted roses so that's what i planted
oh that's accommodating
um-hum
yeah and i still need to assess the damage outside from the the freeze this winter
yeah
i've got quite a few dead shrubs some and oleander
right we've got a few things too it's hard to tell if they'll come back or not
yeah the trees are all doing really well i've got a nice Japanese maple out front that uh
looking really nice right now
well that's good we
we planted three pecan trees out front and every one of them died i told my husband this is the last one if it dies we're going to something else
uh-huh
but we dug a hole about six times as big as it needs to be and filled it with all kinds of compost and
pine needles and everything else we could think of hopefully it'll drain this year
yeah
yeah every year uh there's some freeze damage and i lose different uh variety of shrubs
yeah
have to go replace them with uh something a little hardier
yeah it's hard to find something that'll take the heat as well as the freezing
um-hum
that we get down here i have a few little flowers i plant around the trees out front i've enjoyed
doing those i put uh pansies out in the winter and
they pretty much last all winter and then i put uh moss rose out in the summer and it just goes crazy you don't really have to do anything to it
uh-huh
puts a lot of color out there
yeah i don't do much with flowers myself i just get a lot of evergreen evergreen type shrubs some uh
all year
right
some uh dwarf Burford hollies and Yaupon hollies
oh yeah
those do pretty well here don't they
they do very well um-hum
we've got my husband put a little row of those out in the backyard to kind of
make a little cut so that the kids wouldn't come marching through the yard and everything
yeah they make a nice hedge uh
yeah
and the nice thing about those types of hollies is you don't have to trim them uh into a boxy type hedge
you can just let them uh grow their natural uh shape
right yeah the only thing i don't like about them is weeding around them because they get so sharp
pricky things get in your hands
oh yeah oh i've got some Chinese Hollies that are just outrageous
they they are very sharp
oh really
do you do your own uh lawn maintenance or do you hire somebody to uh to do that
yeah we do it my husband does most of the mowing and edging and all that stuff
yeah i do that myself too i i really don't appreciate them calling me up all the time to try to push their services on me
yeah we get something on the door about every week
because i've got a very small yard the entire size of the lot is only forty five by ninety feet
uh-huh
it's what they call low maintenance yard and these uh uh maintenance uh companies call up wanting to uh
uh put put the uh weed killer and the fertilizer down and they want they want to charge forty or forty five dollars per application for my size yard i i don't spend that much in a year
yeah really
oh our neighbor has a lawn service come and do his and i don't think it looks any better than what my husband does so
uh-huh
i'm not really tempted to do that either
if
it doesn't take much work
yeah i can mow the backyard but there's something about the grass in our front yard is so dense
huh
uh-huh
that the mower wheels just kind of bog down in there and i can not push it
yeah i've got a little electric mower and i i will never buy another one of those again
oh
really
it's fine for my size yard but uh it really doesn't have the power of a gas motor
huh
i would like a self-propelled one i think
um-hum
that might make it easier
it's better for for a large yard
yeah ours is not that big but like i said if i had to mow the front i'd be stuck because i can't get it to move
yeah
before i moved down here when i was up uh north in Wisconsin living with my folks they lived on uh three and a half acres of land and uh we started mowing that with a push mower
oh
uh they finally got smart and got a riding lawn mower which was a big improvement for for us us kids who had to go out there and uh mow the the grass every every week
oh i'm sure
yeah that's a pretty large area
it it still took a few hours even with the riding mower
really
did people up there edge as pri as strictly and stuff as they do down here
um not nearly as much as here
uh i think it's probably because we lived out in the country somewhat and uh there just wasn't the emphasis on keeping the yards looking real nice
yeah
yeah i lived in a town it was a college town in Virginia and i mean people kept their lawns mowed but they sure didn't get into like they do here in Texas
wasn't a source of pride or something like it is down here
yeah a lot of people do but then again there are a lot who do nothing
yeah
my street uh is
kind of in between there are a couple of uh neighbors who are are really good about planting flowers and trees
um-hum
but there the majority really haven't done anything with their yards this neighborhood is is four years old
yeah
and you would think that uh in that time they'd uh get their lawns and and gardens established
yeah it's hard i know we tried to do our landscaping out front my husband
tilled it up in the fall and then we've been waiting on some guy supposed to be getting us some edging for like ten cents a foot instead of a bout a dollar
and uh he has never got it to us so it just sits out there kind of dug up and doesn't look too good so i can't say anything about anybody else's
um-hum
yeah i'd like to see the the neighbors put some trees in the front yards anyway just to get something started
yeah
it'd seem like they'd want to just to uh get some shade and keep their houses a little bit cooler in the summer
right
you'd think that that would be the first thing they would do as far as the yard goes is to plant a tree
yeah yeah
it's nice when the builders plant trees for you when when they build the house
yeah did they not put any in in your neighborhood
no uh my builder was Gemcraft and they didn't put uh trees in at all
we had two trees in the front of our yard and then one of them died and so that's where we keep putting that pecan
keeps dying we have uh i think it's a Silver Leaf Maple or something like that that's hung on out there
yeah
the trouble with with builders planting the trees is they they get the weaker varieties ones that aren't as desirable
right
and uh those include Arizona Ash and in some cases silver maples
yeah
hope ours continues to live it's been there about four i guess almost four years now so maybe it's established established enough that it'll go on and survive
yeah that's probably true i've got a live oak in front uh i i really like the oaks a lot
i like an oak oak trees yeah
they're very hardy for this area
my um husband's father has a place out in East Texas so he's always digging up little
red oaks and things like that and trying to bring them back and start them but
um-hum
so far we haven't had much luck
oh i had a red oak a few years ago that i bought from uh
from a guy who sold trees off the back of a trailer and that was a mistake for uh well two reasons one thing it wasn't insured
uh-huh
oh
and the other reason was that i bought it in spring and it was a balled and bur lapped tree uh right before summer the heat of summer it couldn't uh take the heat and it died
oh
yeah well that's too bad
we've got all of our trees from Calloway's and luckily they'll take them back any time for any reason if they die
yeah i usually go to Callaway's or Wolfe
um-hum
Callaway's tends to have nicer shrubs uh more fully developed
uh-huh
and uh i don't think there's a problem with the warranty on any of those places although they have cut back on their uh warranty for the shrubs the past couple of years
yeah i know the guy at Wolfe told us they cut back on the tree warranty like six months or less
yeah
but Calloway's has kept theirs forever so
really well that's good for trees i don't think they do that for shrubs
yeah
yeah i don't know we haven't bought
i think it's still a year or less for uh for shrubs
uh-huh we haven't bought any shrubs shrubs yet hopefully
i think we've almost waited this too late this year now to start putting in anything of any size
oh it's never too late to plant something unless unless well for trees if they're balled and bur lapped it's recommended to plant them in the fall or winter
yeah
but for uh just shrubs say five gallon or one gallon shrubs any time of the year is fine
oh really it wouldn't matter if we plant them when it was starting to get warmer
right just have to take care of them and water them uh so they get established put some uh uh some uh
uh
root stimulator yeah
right right some uh stimulator down
so uh yeah it's never a problem to plant things in the summer
oh well that's good to know maybe there's still hope for our front yard this summer then
i'm just waiting for a sale
uh-huh
they haven't really had any good sales on plants yet
yeah i've i've noticed that they haven't had anything great
so
but once they uh drop the prices a little bit i'll be out there uh picking up a few more shrubs to fill in where we're where my dead shrubs are right now i haven't even pulled them out of the ground yet
right yeah
yeah last year we thought some were dead and finally they started leafing out again at the bottom so we just cut them way back and and was able to save them but this year they look even worse
you have to watch the like the crepe myrtles
um-hum
because they'll look really bad like they're dead
and all of a sudden they'll bud out
yeah
i've got several crepe myrtles that look just awful
and uh there are buds coming out all over the place now
huh ours haven't done anything yet this year
i have a crepe myrtle tree in the backyard that still hasn't done anything and i'm kind of wondering what kind of shape it's in right now
yeah i like crepe myrtles they really add a lot of color
have to make sure they don't get out of hand
in the summer
oh we haven't had that problem yet they're pretty ours are pretty small
they they can
tight they can get out of control
oh really
but mine keep dying back down to the ground so i haven't had that problem yet
yeah
but i do have some really nice Boston ivy on the west side of the house
oh
does it grow along a fence or something
grows on the on the brick
oh
on the house itself
uh-huh
that you have to really watch uh to uh keep it under control because they will take over a house if you don't uh tend to it
uh-huh
uh those things grow about an inch a day
