Fire Marshall - Part 1

So, I've blogged about this before. Our yard is a complete disaster. Here is a little back story on our entire history with our neighbors and yard. Please hang in there. This was written on a message board over a lengthy period of time, so you'll need to actually ignore some of the questions in there. LOL

We recently bought a house. During the winter. As first time home-buyers, we bought our house with our VA loan. No downpayment and we were really excited to get settled down for once. Our house was high in demand and in the midst of a bidding war. We won by paying exactly what the sellers wanted. Everytime I think about when we bought our house, I always think back to the fateful day when all the snow melted. We were severely duped.

We expected a few issues, but ever since we moved in it has been nothing short of hell. It turns out that the previous owners started a lot of projects but never finished them (inside and out). We've handled most of the inside problems. However, they let their yard go into disrepair for over a year before they even put it on the market. We bought the house approximately 2 years after they stopped caring.

When we first moved in, it was the middle of winter, but after the snow melted...we realized just what we had gotten ourselves into. We live on a decent sized lot. 3/4 of an acre or so we were told. What we weren't told was that there is a massive ditch on the left side of our property that is covered in rocks. Apparently, it was supposed to be a make-shift river. While we thought that we were getting grass, we were really getting molded mulch, gravel, hay for grass, rats, moles, overgrown poison ivy, , overgrown blackberries, weeds taller then me (they grew REALLY fast), and a lot of bee infestations.

Our first month after moving into the house, we attacked the rocks and the bees (buggers keep coming back!). They are all about the size of my fist or bigger. There are a few we cannot even move. We have given plenty away. We started to stake out home depot and offer free rocks to anyone that would come and take them. Pathetic, I know. I still have over 6 huge piles left over. I still haven't cleared out the ditch and I'm not sure if I have the strength left in me to do that.

After the rocks, we started attacking the monstrous weeds. We tried everything. First we tried 4 different kinds of weed killers/vegetation killers. That killed some of them, but mostly just the top. So then we broke out the lawn mower and the weed eater. That seemed to contain them for about a week before they grew back. We have now resorted to pulling them, cutting what we cannot pull, spraying with weed killer. It helps but the process is slow. It has become such an issue that our neighbor (the only one that LIKES us) has been trying to keep them from coming into his yard too. He's starting to get angry about the situation but understands how much we are working.

I haven't even attempted the mulch, overgrown trees/ivy, rats, or gravel yet. We have only managed to clear a small spot for a huge playset we built, but in the process pretty much killed any grass we had left. This is after over 4 months of working outside in 100 degree weather for at least 4 hours a day (naptime). I'm at a loss of what to do. Even the local landscapers won't help us out. According to them it's too big of a job (they want to charge $30,000), or they refuse to even help.

Today, I found out just how much the other people in the neighborhood hate us. They were standing on my sidewalk while I was attempting to pull out weeds. This is not the first time they have gossiped right in front of my house. Apparently, I'm evil for driving down their property values and anything that goes wrong in the neighborhood is because of the "rednecks" living in our house.

We're not rednecks. We want a nice yard. One that our kids can play in without stepping on the pointy weeds. We've been working nonstop on it. So now, after months of hardwork, we're at a loss of what to do. Yesterday we did the same process we've been doing, and noticed that the weeds we had done the week before....yup, you guessed it! They grew back to be about half my size!

I should also add that we have had professionals come out to spray. We also tried every known killer available to us at the local stores. There IS a layer of "weed blocker"...that black tarp-like fabric. But it literally does nothing and when you pull the weeds, the fabric rips out with them. Also, we aren't even at the stage of removing the gravel/mulch yet. We can't even see the ground through the weeds, so our goal was to remove the weeds first, THEN plant grass.

ANY suggestions would be helpful at this point.

We live in Utah. I haven't pinpointed the exact TYPE of weed, but I know that we DO have medusahead weeds, musk thistle, scotch thistle...and many more...

Our closest guess was Canadian Thistle. It grows as tall, and has the same look. Ours is very pointy, and when it breaks it has a milky substance. I think canadian thistle only has prickly tops...but ours is entirely covered with prickles.

PS. When you buy a house, "landscaping" comments don't necessarily mean it's GOOD landscaping.