Another uber-busy weekend came and went at the SLP Cat Ranch. Saturday afternoon, the BF and I hosted my grandfather’s birthday party. There’s something exhilarating about preparing and cooking kabobs for 20 people, lighting candles on your mother’s homemake chocolate cake and singing happy birthday to an 85 year-old man who’s still sharp as a tack.

There’s also something equally exhilarating about helping your last guests to their car, changing out of your best-dressed duds and pulling on your dirty work jeans and garden gloves.

I had no energy left for dirty dishes, but there was plenty for prairie plants. No sod is safe when you have a shovel in one and a microbrew in the other.

Here’s the side yard before I got down to business. I really like our neighbors, but I don’t like the view. There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about chain-link fence or dead grass.

This side of the yard is right next to the driveway and is too narrow for shrubs. It also gets full sun all day long, so I decided to plant the new bed with some tall native grasses and flowering prairie plants. The bed looks rather bare now, but I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Are you nutty for natives? What flowering prairie plants or grasses have you planted? Any surprises?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Flowers + Grasses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.