A Long Discussion About The Yard

It was darker outside when I took these four photos. It is the first trip outside for the hounds after they woke up. Walter always stays inside until after he eats. You will notice though, the standing water was already gone at 6:30am, soaked into the ground after all the rain we had up to midnight light night. It was good to see, with sunshine and mid 50's today, at least for part of the day.

The standing water, the loss of grass all led to a discussion with a friend this morning. Combine that with the website I found last night when I did a search for "zoysia pods" after Flowergirl made a comment on yesterday's post when I mentioned I wanted to plant zoysia next spring. Not only did this website talk about the pros and cons of zoysia grass and pods, it also had articles about dog urine killing grass and what could be done about it. That website link is the home page. You can search on his site for both zoysia and dog urine to see what I found.

About the easiest solution for the dog urine killing my grass ... add water to their kibble, which I started this morning. Water their pee spots with the hose within 8 hours. I will be taking a few more trips outside than I want but if it can keep my grass from dying, then I will try it. I was doing that some last summer but not all the time. Basically the hounds, the dog and the yard all have to stay hydrated to prevent those ugly yellow spots.

Yes, I could retrain all three to pee in that area with stones between my great room and old brick part of the house. But that is time consuming and still might not work after a month of training. So, the dog urine problem and how to plant zoysia pods were basically answered on that website last night.

As we were texting and then later talking on the phone about the flooded areas and my grass dying, I kept sending her photos from this year and last year. One thing I saw, all that topsoil and grass seed I added last May did work in decreasing the area of floods and the amount of water in those same areas. Those were pictured here yesterday.

We discussed the French drain that is around the house and how that works with my septic field. Something I had forgot all about, the septic field. I am not going to go into detail and post old photos from last fall and last April but picture an area that goes out from the septic lid in a pie shape toward the back of the yard. 

All that grass was dead last October when the yard was dry and after I cut the grass mowing leaves. Grass around it was thick green but in that area, that is where I have lost my grass for the second year in a row. After trading a lot of ideas and opinions on what we thought was going on, we came to the conclusion on a few things. Oh, I don't use chemicals to clean and then dump them into my septic system, so it is not chemicals killing the grass from that. Could it be the Scotts's Fertilizer I put on last summer and the fall?

As weird as it may sound, those floods on the left side of the patio, in front of the septic tank lid are actually good because the excess water is flushing out the septic field, thus keep that mud type sewage that I have seen on other peoples yards from their septic, from happening here. All I was told when I bought the house was the direction of that field but not how deep it was underground.

The French drain is working great and that might be why the water from yesterday drained so fast this year and has the 18 months I have lived her. Yet, I don't want standing water that is "drowning" what grass is there. Combined with dogs walking on it and me walking on it, the wear and tear is enough to kill the grass right before winter.

I still think I made the same mistake this year as last year, cutting the grass too short when I was mowing leaves last fall. I should have left the grass tall (3") and raked the leaves instead of mowing the leaves. I will definitely do that next fall. 

My old friend up the street told me last night after seeing the photos I put on the blog yesterday, that his son had the same problem in his yard, large area and more water but away from the house. Every spring he would fill that area with topsoil and new grass seed. 4-5 years later he no longer has standing water anywhere in his yard. That is also what the landscaping guy told me to do last August. Since I see some improvement from last year in those same flooded areas I will be adding more topsoil next spring.

I cannot remember the reason but when I asked last August about having a load of topsoil delivered to the house so I could wheel barrow it back to the yard, they said they can't find it. Many companies didn't have topsoil to give them. So I will continue to buy the bags at Lowe's for around $2.15 per bag. I started with 60 bags two springs ago when I covered the gravel area in front of the yard out to the street.

It was a pretty productive morning after that discussion and I feel pretty good about the plan going forward. 

Just like yesterday, when I hosed off the pooper scooper, leaned it up against the house close to the hose, and headed for the patio door Henry and Watson were jumping on each other fighting to get inside the house first and to the mudroom door first because they were going for a walk. Both of them have figured out that routine and they do like their walks. Henry always wins that race so he walks first while I hear Watson baying from the living room windows as we are well down the street.

All of my standard 6' leashes are old and still usable but I need something just a little longer for Watson. He is so big that when his nose is to the ground walking at a fast pace it is hard to have enough leash going from the ground up over his back to my hand. The 25' retractable leash that I use to use for Sadie and later Stella, would give him too much leeway putting him further in people's front yard than I want him to have. I prefer he does his tracking within a foot into their yard. I will pick up a longer leash tomorrow sometime.

The photos after the first four listed were taken just past 2pm. Those nice 55° temps the hounds and I walked in this morning were gone and it was getting colder fast, 10° colder in fact. 

Another thing about adding water to the kibble. My friend in Phoenix has a Mastiff that was having the same issues as Watson had ... firm stools in the morning and almost diarrhea tools after his afternoon meal. Somewhere he read to add water to the kibble and that solved the problem for his Mastiff. I will see if that improves for Watson.

I have had Apple computers since 2010. I like their quality, they don't break for many years and they seem pretty secure. I have never used anti-virus protection on any of my iMacs or the MacBook Air I bought in 2015. But one thing I do not like is their Photos program, which is just a library of all the photos I download into the computer. (over 88,000 and counting) In my case my photo library is kept on an external file due to the large size of my photos file. 

The problem is in recent years I go to edit or send/share an older photo that I know worked correctly before and then get a message like "the original file is missing or disconnected .. blah blah blah" and gives me a choice of canceling the request or find the original file. That opens up to their Finder which is a list of all the files on the computer and for me to highlight the folder that I want to use to find the original file.

Well if I knew that, I wouldn't be trying to find the original would I? I would already know where that original file is. In the past I have been able to do a search of all computer files and find the original and replace that in the folder I have for each dog, past and present.

I tried that the other day and today, it didn't work and told me the file was missing. I went to Apple Support and of course many have the same issues. Of course the recommended things to fix it from Apple Support do not work. I noticed that this same problem was an issue back in 2015 ... 8 years ago !!!! Still not fixed.

At least I have a copy of those photos, 1,000's of them just like that, it's just that I can see it and that is all. I cannot share it, cannot upload to the blog or anywhere else. So that is something to work on now and soak up some time inside since colder weather is on its way. Luckily I am far enough south I will miss those snow storms in the forecast for this weekend in the midwest. 

I also looked along the back fence this afternoon to see if there were any signs of the dirt filling in below the fence. All of those vertical rods have an inch or two of space below them. If they were filling in the back fence then I would know that ground from that berm is sliding towards my yard. That is one problem I definitely don't want to see show up.

Walter was ready to go in when I was since it was too cold without a jacket.

The hounds stood and waited to see if I was going to bribe them with the word "milk bone" to get them to come to the house. I didn't say a word because I know that Henry has about a built-in 30 second delay before he does anything. If Watson thought Water was getting any kind of treat he would come running on his own ... which he did.

So all of that grass pictured there could be dead from it being part of the septic field in addition to being drowned by flooding rain water. What is that paver out in the middle of nowhere doing???? Last year when it was wet like this, Watson dug a hole deep enough for a drain. When it filled up with water I knew my guess of underground water flow was correct. When I saw birds later using it as a bird bath I knew I needed to fill the hole back up. I put the paver over it because Watson would chase the birds and last summer I did not fill the hole so the paver is still there.

Another thing my friend and I said today, you cannot own a house without having something every year that you have to do. Either maintenance, repairs, lawn/flowerbed work. There is always something if you own a house. I would rather face that "to do" list instead of having a landlord raising my rent too much because he or she can get away with it. 

I know next spring putting down new topsoil and planting new seed will not take as long as it did last spring in 2022. Plus there are only few "to do" things right now on my 2023 list ... so far.

The biggest question of 2023 will be ... just how big is Watson going to be when he is full grown. :)

Another good day here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.