We will soon have a yard. Not the 3ft measurement, but the kind of yard that's lying on the ground around the house. What we had was dirt and builder rubble dotted by weeds. I really didn't mind it all that much, but there are maintenance and erosion issues and it really wasn't all that nice to look at. We have no use for a barefoot lawn and absolutely no interest in maintaining one. I guess what we're getting qualifies as landscaping but it involves very little of the traditional elements.

Now in the past, at other places we've lived, there have been agitated discussions concerning the yard. This would be me nagging the spouse about maintenance. I don't DO lawnmowing. My responsibilities are all IN the house. Period. But, spouse works six days a week and so I didn't nag about the mowing too much. Besides the neighbors were often anxious to do that. They didn't seem to share our appreciation for letting nature take its course. In fact, the only reason I nagged was knowing the neighbors were gonna.

What we usually ended up doing was hiring a lawn service when we could afford it, or simply waiting til the neighbors bitched and got someone with a bush hog to come out and cut it all down to the dirt. Oh, we've tried killing it all too. That only sorta works and only til the next growing season because grass and weeds are persistent.

I have actually threatened to concrete a yard and paint it green, but I know that isn't nice to Mother Nature.

However, in this development we're in now, there's a really rather convenient sort of yard option. This whole village was intended to be a retirement resort with heavy emphasis on golfing. Now that means there's a lot of maintenance of golf courses (of which there are seven), but the old fart golfers don't want to waste any time in their golden years mowing. Neither do we!

Their solution was to rock it. Yeah, there are whole yards here, lots of them, which are pebbled over. There's lots of natural woodsy green space in the common areas behind all the houses, as well as in the undeveloped lots between houses. Then, unless a homeowner is really fond of the vibration of a mower handle gripped in their hands, or addicted to the buzz of a weedeater, the other yards look more like uniform creek beds.

SO, that's what we're having done. I've had four young handsome mexican fellows and a couple of average white guys milling around the outside of my house for a few days. We opted to leave the back of our lot all natural and the rest has been covered with a black mesh fabric to let water go through but prevent weeds from sprouting up. On top of the mesh, they've dumped and raked a layer of small neutral colored stone. They call it 'river rock' and it looks like that, small stones with the rough edges knocked off by flowing water. I'm sure it's broken, tumbled, and graded in a plant around here somewhere, but it's real rock and not bad to look at.

Thus, our yard is pebbled over too now. The landscape is developing as they put in some borders along the sidewalk, the driveway, and around a couple of trees in the front yard. These areas are filled with high grade top soil, then layered in the mesh, then layered in 'chocolate rock' which is the same as the river rock only darker brown, to mimic mulch, I guess.

Then, when all that's done, they'll be adding some huge decorative boulders here and there in these darker "islands" of chocolate rock. After that, a few selected low-maintainance evergreen plantings will liven it up.

It's kind of an expensive investment up front, but not over the long haul when you count the maintenance issues of a real yard.

Besides, while these fellows have been around, I've been able to practice my Spanish a little and I do so love to watch men work.