Native Garden

So I have decided to replace my dead never to be green again grass with a California Native Garden. Lots of people in my neighborhood already have them and I think they are just beautiful. So last weekend I planned to remove all the dead sod and weeds. I paid someone to lay this sod about 9 years ago and last year something happened to it and it got infected and died. I actually have a somewhat Native Garden on the other side of my Yard which I paid the same person to put in. This time I'm doing it myself because some of his plant choices have just gotten too big and call for too much maintenance. I just paid him and let him do all of the plant planning and so it's not quite as maintenance free as I had hoped.
I used to be really obsessed with my grass. Before Lidya came home, I spent a lot of time making it look perfect. Once she was home it got totally neglected and so only looked nice half of the year and not perfect like in the past. Well somethings gotta give....time with my girl or grass? So I started removing the sod and these really stubborn weeds and discovered, hey this is really hard work. I got a lot done on Saturday and only a little more done on Sunday, mostly because I ran out of steam and space to dump the old sod. So here are a few pictures of Lidya helping with the sod removal. Actually she told me she was making me another Birthday Cake.





I'm hoping to remove the rest of the sod this week, condition the soil and then my mother and I are going on a Native Gardens tour the week after Easter so I can start planning my garden and buying plants. Hopefully by Summer I'll have a beautiful Native Garden with lots of butterflies