Make-Do Mondays: Fountain Grass

see below for alternative button

At Make-Do Mondays, we discuss how we’re simplifying, downsizing, repurposing, buying used, and using what we’ve got.

It’s a carnival celebrating creative problem-solving, contentment, patience and ingenuity. To participate, share your own make-do solution in the comments or write up a Make-Do Mondays post at your blog, then return here to link via Mr. Linky. Enjoy others’ ideas by clicking on Mr. Linky and then clicking on people’s names.

Here’s a mini-tutorial on Mr. Linky:

Click on the icon and a separate page will pop up. Type in your blog name and paste in the url of your new Make-Do Mondays post. Click enter and it should be live. If it doesn’t work, just include the link in the comments.

To visit people’s posts or check that yours worked, click on Mr. Linky and when the page comes up, click on a name. You should be taken right to the page provided.

Make-Do Mondays Participants

1. Halala Mama (Make-Do Leftovers)
2. Small Town ~ Simple Home (Makeshift Rain Barrel)
3. Feels Like Home (What to do with Leftover Buns)
4. Trish Southard (Crabby Crafts)
5. My Practically Perfect Life (Pilot’s Make-Do Trailer)
6. Coupons, Deals and More (Deviled Eggs)
7. Sunnydaytodaymama (Car booting)
8. Home Grown Mommy (Waterbed Bookshelf)

Make-Do Mondays with Ann

Many of our neighbors are like artists as they plant flowers, vines and plants around their homes. Their landscaping flows together, one plant’s color, height and texture complementing another. As I jog down the street, I admire the ideas, beauty, and creativity.

Then I jog home and look at our house.

And I sigh.

On my own, I’ve never been able to create a pleasing arrangement for the front yard.

So a year-and-a-half ago, the Belgian Wonder and I paid a little money for a local landscape company to send over a designer. He walked around the house with me, listening to my gardening woes, asking me what I liked and disliked, looking at the plants and flowers I already had in place. He studied the house, measured all the beds, and, well, I don’t know what all he did. Landscape-designer things. Anyway, he eventually gave us a plan for our front yard sketched out and labeled on graph paper.

All we had to do was follow the plan.

I think that the company he worked for hoped we would hire them to put it all in all for us, but we were being cheap. We just wanted the plan and would do the work ourselves, over time.

I no longer had to stand in my front yard and stare at my house, frustrated and hopeless. Instead, clutching a photocopy of the precious plan, I simply drove to Lowes and bought the first set of plants we were ready to “install.” Little by little, we’ve got most of the sections dug up and planted with what he said would work.

We had been following his plan perfectly, buying the exact plants he recommended, hoping to maximize our chances of success.

He recommended a particular day lily, so we bought that and placed it in the exact plot of soil that the graph paper indicated. We bought the precise species of hosta and ground cover and a small tree that he said would work.

For one awkward spot, he recommended a specific fountain grass. I love the loose, casual, beach-y look of fountain grasses.

In fact, we had some grasses already growing in the back yard—three different types.

And Lowes didn’t have the landscape designer’s species. I did find it at a nursery down the road from Lowes, but it was expensive. So I faced a big decision:  Should we compromise? Should we make our own executive decision on the variety of plant that we thought would work in a particular spot?

Should we?

Should we take the risk?

Should we just dig up a portion of the type we already had on hand and use that instead of buying new?

I was nervous.

After all, I paid for his advice. I paid for that graph paper. I paid to overcome my plant insecurities.

But we did it.

We made-do with a variety of grass we already had.

It’s probably all wrong.

Maybe the designer envisioned something taller.

Maybe it should be straighter, or lighter in color.

Or maybe this is just fine.

I always thought I’d replace this with the recommended grass someday, but I haven’t yet.

This keeps growing up healthy and lush, so I leave it, making-do.

It’s probably not perfect, but, as I pointed out last week with my basket, neither am I.

How do you make do?

If the main button is too big, try this one:

Subscribe via email or RSS to receive  regular Ann Kroeker blog updates.