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Both R and I fell in love with Texas Townhome mostly because of the yard. It’s perfect. The fences are just high enough to ensure a little bit of privacy (so that the neighbours wouldn’t, theoretically, judge you for being in your early thirties and hosting parties featuring trays full of jello shooters, if you did that sort of thing …) but not so high that you can’t make chit chat with said neighbours about their perfectly coiffed giant poodle or your whippet puppy (because this is Leslieville). It’s south facing, so we get lots of light, but a giant, beautiful tree ensures lots of shade. The half nearest the house is paved with big, gorgeous, flagstones, and the half out by he lane with lush, green, perfectly push-mower sized lawn. Our most wonderful baby, the dog, would love it, and we would be dog parent heroes.


a mud pit full of dead sod and worms
While we weren’t exactly wrong, by the time we took possession it was clear that half the yard was actually paved with big, gorgeous, flagstones while the other half was … a mud pit full of dead sod and worms. Clearly, the sellers had plopped down new sod for the showings and it hadn’t taken. (We’re not mad. The house itself is in great shape, and dead sod isn’t the worst thing I’ve encountered moving into a new place. At least there was nothing in a fish tank -NOT A FISH!- in the living room. True story).


mmmmmm...delicious


The dog did love it … because she loves to roll in mud and eat worms. The neighborhood raccoons (all eight hundred, approximately) seemed to agree. Every morning R and I, committed to learning this new skill called gardening, tried to re-attach the sod to the mud in the hopes that it would cease to be dead, and every evening the raccoons turned the squares of sod upside down again looking for worms. 








worm barfer

R and I considered pulling up the sod and putting down more flagstones, or raised bed planters, or river rock.  We might well return to those ideas (but not to R’s ideas of an apiary or chicken coop. Jello shots you can hide from the neighbours. Noisy fowl and hordes of bees, not so much). So soon after closing costs and the like, though, they weren’t realistic solutions right away, and, while we tarried, the dog continued to track mud in the house and throw up worms. 






wood chip wonderful



So what was the short term solution? Wood chips! We live super close to the neighborhood Home Depot and R bought a few affordable bags of wood chips there, shoveled the dead sod into yard waste bags, and covered over the mud and worms with the wood chips. It’s functional for now, and surprisingly aesthetically pleasing. And the whippet loves to role in them but doesn’t track them in the house and doesn’t eat them. Happy yard ending! Hooray!