It sounds like what you want is some invasive parasite that will be very difficult to get rid of once it's introduced.
Plant weeds, they'll cover the ground.
Actually I spent Friday and saturday cutting all our weeds back, then pitchforking the ground so as to break up the roots, then laying down landscaping cloth. Once the roofers are done throwing old shingles down on the ground, I'll be putting down a bunch of new topsoil and some ground cover. Or maybe just grass seed. I haven't decided yet.
Pachysandra plants are well-suited for ground cover, and they don't need much light. (They'll pretty much eat everything in their way within a few years.)
Allow me to inveigh against grass, one of the stupidest of American obsessions. In most of North America, it's wildly unsuited to the treatment that the culture demands. Cut short, it requires constant attention, but allowed to grow, it's unseemly. Plus, it acts more like paving than it does like practically any other plant, heating, rather than cooling, its surroundings, and shedding water like a parking lot instead of allowing it to gently percolate into the soil. Also, it provides nothing for wildlife.
On a separate note, I find pachysandra a bit hackneyed. Your local ag extension can point you to some hardy native groundcovers suitable for whatever sun and soil you have, and they'll be lovely and persistent and virtually maintenance-free.
5: Whatever. I need something that'll grow fast enough to sell the house.
I spent yesterday doing a very similar total clearing and uprooting, fortunately not for selling. Having done so, I've attracted an enormous amount of free advice already.
The woman in the article was teaching writing and didn't know how to use a semi-colon? For shame.
Labs, of course, knows from real, gripping stories of student-teacher romance.
If they'll use a story the best headline for which is "The Semicolon Was Our Blinking Caution Light" I don't see how they can refuse "The Boswell To My Johnson".
The Ellipsis Was Our Badge of Shame
The Interpunct Who Would Be King
Umlauts of Doom
Ampersands Ate My Baby
Apostrophe Now: I love the smell of diacritical marks in the morning.
How much space, Labs? I find clumps of artemesia attractive, but that's not the answer if you have a huge front lawn to deal with. They spread within a single growing season, and even more so over time.
The article commits numerous minor sins through the early paragraphs, but it loses me irrevocably with this:
He looked as if he’d walked out of the 1940’s — there was something about his face, haircut and lack of fashion that bespoke an earlier era.
First, "lack of fashion" is a solecism. Does she mean a lack of fashion sense? Further, what does she know about the 1940s? She's my age, born c. 1965. The only way she can plausibly know the '40s is through the media, especially movies -- in other words, through fashion. Finally, in the previous paragraph she was telling the students "'Be Specific' and 'Show, Don’t tell,'"* and now the best she can do is "There was something about his face, haircut and lack of fashion????" Christ on a crutch.
* Comma placement in honor of w-lfs-n.
I assume your footnote is intended ironically.
Dr. B, you should consider sodding if you want to plant grass quickly. It's very cheap and extremely easy to lay, depending on the size of your yard. MY and I resodded our backyard at the beginning of the summer, predicting disaster, but probably 90 percent of the grass took. Plus, rolling out long carpets of rolly polly-infused grass is a blast.
Only a first-order irony, Teo. I fear you're playing a subtler game.
I just mean that your comma placement is precisely the type that w-lfs-n abhors, so it could only be in his honor ironically.
22: On the other hand, w-lfs-n delights in abhorring it, so the footnote could indeed be sincere.
Jamie Callan, who lives in Woods Hole, Mass., is the author of “Hooking Up or Holding Out,”scheduled for publication in November by Sourcebooks.
Seems to me this sentence is all you need to know about this woman. If you'd stop being such whores and hold out long enough, he'll marry you!
very cheap and extremely easy to lay
Indeed.
Have you considered simply planting low-hanging fruit?
25: Hey, Labs! You don't know that.
20: Initially I read "sodding" as a curse, which is funny. I am thinking about buying sod, actually. I'll have to check the expense, but it's a definite possibility.
You'll be nine million more times pleased with the results.
I hate grass as much as anyone, but if you want to sell the house, sod has two obvious advantages: it's super quick, and it's universally tolerated. A friend of mine found selling his house a lot easier once he replaced the garden-y stuff with regular grass.
Okay, more advice, then. The backyard is tiny: about 30' x 20', I'd guess. Half of that is bricked patio, quite old, now sloping (and with weeds coming up through the bricks--some a couple of feet tall. I hate yard work). The rest is neglected grass in the middle, and on the sides neglected and very overgrown perennial beds, also weedy.
What do I do? I've considered just digging it all out and laying sod, but that seems like a waste of the perennials. OTOH, weeding those beds, jesus. And I'd have to cut the perennials back, and lay down an assload of mulch (this is Chopper's advice, to be fair).
And then there's the stupid patio. In a perfect world, i.e., if I had ever gotten off my ass while we lived here, I'd have relaid the patio, but I'm not doing that, but if I pull the weeds they'll just come back and if I spray roundup everywhere it'll make the neighborhood cats sick.
You're just fixing it up to sell it, right? I'd recommend sodding and pulling the patio weeds.
My parents never had much luck getting grass seed to take. It usually took a few tries.
Grass is indeed a pain in the ass. Unless you're into toxic chemicals and watering, it's not going to stay lush and green. (We had a yard full of crab grass and clover.)
Dunno where you live, B, but given the heat wave across the continental U.S. I don't think you're going to have any luck seeding. It's too late in the summer for the seed to sprout and not burn out. Sod was much cheaper than I thought it would be; our yard is a little smaller than yours, but a grass area of about 27' by 10' cost us around $45.
Hey, I know where you can get another one, cheap...
"Assload of Mulch" is the decision I made and implemented this afternoon. It looks bare but neat, compared with what was there before. Perennials may be added when and as they become available. In the meantime, presentability is much improved.
I think my university used to rent sod. They would always put it down during peak campus visit times so the quad would be all nice and pretty and green when the prospective students would come to tour and then roll it back up and take it away once they were gone.
It's the steak & shrimp football weekend dining hall policy (Mom: do you always eat this well?) writ in sod & florals (which also sprouted miraculously on football weekends.)
1. Assloads of mulch.
2. Assloads of organic matter under the mulch (weeds don't like this, despite what Hamlet says)
2. If you have 1 or 2 growing seasons and can wait, these take off, look nice, are sturdy but non-invasive: creeping thyme, creeping phlox for sun, sweet woodruff for shade.
Scrape away some of the mulch and plant little clumps of these. They will spread.
Good luck!
Penny, zone 4, 5, Canada