Getting yard in shape

[wrancher]

So I am still working at getting a yard established.  I am gonna have to start watering as it is so dry here.  I need more hours in day to accomplish all I need to do.  What do you all have in your yards that comes back every year so you don't have to keep buying everything.  I have some rhubarb, strawberries, for flowers I have flax, um I can't remember names of some.  I have an herb area where I have chives, spearmint, peppermint, rosemary, I have to wait till some more comes up I cant remember that either. Ugh. I tried grapes but I ddidnt water enough to far from house.  We have trees that go around most of the house but quite a ways out.  I want to get some apple trees, etc. 

Janice

[Alice]

I have already raked the film off the grass of my entire lawn. I purchased the fertilizer but it's too cold to put on yet so I'll be watching the weather for a good time to put that down in April.

We want to do a little backyard project. The former owners had a large area in the back of the house that was filled in with red lava rock and then some ornamental shrubs and plants. It's way to large for what we want and some of the shrubs were dying anyway. We're going to shorten it and then put in grass. Is there a better filler to use than lava rock? I don't love it but I don't know what to replace it with. We really don't want to spend a lot of money either. Our initial thoughts were to just keep it and surround what we don't replace with grass but it will be a bit thicker. The original amount they had was barely one layer thick and we could see the weed barrier underneath. We thought to put it under the drip line of the roof (we don't have rain gutters) so that it wouldn't have this drip line on the ground but rather it would drip onto the lava rock. Money is tight so spending only very little would be good. The former owners had rectangle step stones throughout the area and I kind of like that so maybe we will sink those into the grass so we can mow over them. We'll keep the ornamental shrubs and plants right where they are at (inside the area where we won't touch the lava rock). Kind of hard to explain.

Alice