Well, the bids are in, and decisions have been made. The original patio has a skip trowel finish next to the sidewalk with it's brushed finish, and we decided not to go with stamped concrete over the dirt strip because it would look chopped up. Too many concrete styles next to each other. We chose one cohesive look which will make for a huge patio area. We had so many ideas presented to us, it was pretty confusing, but we settled on a landscape company that also does concrete. He will do all the drains and drip systems for the planting area prior to pouring new concrete. The new concrete won't match the old concrete, so it will all be refinished with an acid wash and power wash, all cracks repaired, all painted a uniform light gray, then taped into random stone shapes. It will be sprayed with a beige color top coat with a skip trowel textured look. It will be then stained randomly (with different size spray nozzles) in 3 tones (gray, rust, and black) to simulate the rocks that exist here in this area. The tape will be pulled, revealing the gray concrete undercoat so it looks like concrete between flagstone. It will then be sealed, and if I get my way it will have sparkles (glitter like stuff) tossed in, like the granite boulders on our property display in the sun. I mislead you when I used the word, "broken concrete." It has two cracks in the sidewalk and one on the step to the house. The cracks are smaller than the width of a dime, and easily fixed (per all the contractors). This is California. With our earthquakes, nobody escapes cracks in their concrete.... I'll post photos of the final in a month or so. The price for the new concrete and overlay process is between $6,500 and $7,500 dollars. We are fine with that range. Thanks for all the input! Suzi This post was edited by desertdance on Wed, Feb 26, 14 at 13:20

Slimy_0kra, you have another unusual vegetable on the way. Two unusual veggies volunteer in my garden every year; Martynia and Litchi tomato. Both are rather anti-social plants (Martynia for its smell, Litchi tomato for its thorns) but I always let a few grow if they come up in an out-of-the-way location... and that is all that is necessary for me to keep a supply of fresh seed. I love unusual greens. Swiss chard is my main green for freezing, but my #2 green is kang kong (a.k.a. water spinach), which is a morning glory relative grown for its edible leaves & shoots. The first planting is from seed, but after the first harvest, I root & plant the stems. After two such plantings, the final harvest of the summer is large - that one gets frozen for the winter. This is a great hot-weather substitute for spinach; as long as it is kept watered, it thrives on hot weather. If you are unable to find water spinach, sweet potato leaves are similar... not surprising, since they are both in the morning glory family. Not all varieties are good for leaves, though; the best ones for that purpose can be found in Asian markets, where you might also find water spinach. Both can be easily rooted from stem cuttings. Egyptian spinach (a.k.a. Saluyot, Molokhia, Jew's Mallow) is another reliable hot-weather green. The leaves are mint-like in appearance, and very mild in flavor. When cooked, the leaves are mucilaginous much like okra, so they are good for thickening soups. They also go great with fish. All of the greens above have something in common - the more you cut them, the stronger they get. Moringa is a fast-growing tropical tree grown for its edible leaves. They are very high in protein, and also have anti-biotic properties. This is probably not a good crop for those with limited space, since the yield is fairly low... but DW makes a soup from the leaves which is to die for, so I grow some every year. Many years ago, I grew some in pots to over-winter; but it was a pain to move those large pots in & out, so now I just grow a lot of plants in the garden, grown as annuals. They will reach 4-5 feet in height by the end of the summer, and yield 3-4 pickings. This year, I will be trying Caihua, a tropical climbing gourd that is edible immature. I have also grown Achocha (which is closely related) and found it to be rather tasteless, so I am hoping Caihua will be an improvement. Bitter melon is a vegetable I grow every year; while we eat a little, we give most of it away to some Filipino friends. It serves other important purposes in the garden: as a wind break (the vines densely cover the trellis); to both attract & isolate pollinators (it blooms continuously all summer); and for the scent of the blossoms, which is very fragrant. Some years I grow Mexican Sour Gherkin and West Indian Gherkin, but not this year. Anyone who has visited the Bean Forum knows I am a bean fanatic, so if a bean relative can be grown to seed in my climate, I will grow it. I am particularly fond of yardlong beans, and grow several varieties each year. Someone on another forum sent me a hyacinth bean which, if accounts are true, could be highly unusual. Most hyacinth beans are climbers, and because they only flower in short days (in or near September) they will not produce seed in Northern latitudes. This one, though, is supposed to be a bush variety which will bear seed in Wisconsin... so I am really looking forward to this trial. This year I will also be growing a yellow mung bean from the Philippines, and a large-seeded reddish-brown garbanzo. And "Madras", an edible-podded radish. Probably a few more oddities, but I've been growing some of them so long I no longer think of them as unusual. Here's a good group photo from one year: I started a similar "unusual vegetable" thread many years ago, but it seems to have fallen off the cliff. Edit: Found it, link below Here is a link that might be useful: Unusual vegetables This post was edited by zeedman on Sun, Mar 16, 14 at 23:56

Just to answer a few questions, yes there is a HOA with the original house I posted about, and they have already okay-ed the idea of putting in the gravel - it's not a straight gravel operation by the way, but more along the lines of a Japanese rock garden, with a few plants here and there as highlights. I figured if I lay black plastic underneath, with a bed of gravel above a couple of inches thick, nothing is going to grow through it! A neighbor suggested using Asiatic dwarf jasmine as ground cover instead of the gravel option, while another did suggest perennial peanut. The dwarf Mondo makes me a little leery, as I half imagine the HOA screaming at us that it looks like unkempt grass in need of a mowing! As for the point about using a lawn service and writing it into the lease when we renew it, that is something we've definitely considered for our old home (the one with the pictures above of the rampant lawn) because the problem is that the area is so large that I think it puts the tenants off from keeping it well looked after. As I said, we bought a mower for the property that we wrote into the lease - they just didn't want to use it. The other house that I originally posted about though is a different situation, given that the front yard is relatively small (30' x 35'). The other issue I should have mentioned is that it isn't just case of taking care of the lawn - the present area is really in bad shape, with crab grass, bare patches everywhere, weeds, etc, and really should be replaced. That was our original intention and we had already lined up the replacement sod. But when we realized that the tenants weren't going to look after it, my wife and I looked at each other and wondered what would be the point of throwing all that money down for new sod, only to watch it either go wild through lack of attention, or die because the tenants wouldn't bother giving it the abundant twice-a-day watering needed in the first month - that or we'd have to drive over twice a day to take care of it ourselves. Then I also discovered that the sprinkler system was shot, because what I thought were mere missing sprinkler heads turned out to be crushed pipes from former tenants parking off the concrete constantly and on the lawn (a fact confirmed by neighbors) or what was left of it. So it would all have to be dug up and replaced. Throw all that into the pot, and that's why we started thinking about alternatives that would circumvent these issues, such as a Japanese rock garden with drought resistant plantings and little care required by tenants, or ground cover like dwarf jasmine that needs no watering once established - or so we're told. A last point. Yes, we've had plenty of grounds with both properties to issue evictions, but you know, who wants to do that unless really forced to? Last year the family that rented out our old home went into a divorce, the husband moved out, and the family thus lost their chief source of income because the mother was a stay-at-home parent home schooling her children - AND she had her crippled old mother living with her. Sounds like some kind of cliche, right? They ended up getting three months behind on rent, we even put their security deposit towards the payments (with the tenant's permission) to try and keep them afloat, yet reached a point eventually where we simply couldn't afford to keep making two mortgage payments and were virtually begging this woman to find a job to save us having to evict her. My wife and I just sat there totally stressed and virtually in tears, asking ourselves how we'd ever reached a point where we were going to be forced to toss a financially destitute woman, with her two young children and an elderly grandmother, on the street. To say it was a horrible feeling doesn't even come close, but thankfully her church eventually came to the rescue and she eventually dug her way out of the her precarious financial state. The fact she's letting the house virtually fall apart outside, and all the disingenuous excuses she uses to cover it, have worn down our last reserves of kindness, and we have already told her that three years is more than enough and that she needs to find another place to live in when the current lease runs out. Thanks again for all the response. It's been really enjoyable seeing what everyone has to say on the matter.

I have sunshine mimosa planted in one half of my front flower bed and while it can be a pain when you want to add another plant to the bed it works great for helping to keep the soil in that bed moist. In the other half of the flower bed (it's split by the front sidewalk) I have chenelle plant and while it's pretty it doesn't seem to be nearly as effective. The down side to sunshine mimosa is that it will go dormant in the winter if the temps get low enough. I've been adding all sorts of things to my front lawn in an effort to at least supplement the grass. On one side of the driveway I have some perennial peanut which seems to be struggling somewhat as I do not water the lawn on a regular basis. On the other side is the sunshine mimosa that is spreading out from the flower bed. Scattered throughout are patches of blue-eyed grass (it's really a tiny native iris), and down in the ditch in front of the house I have wild onions, native white rain lilies, pink rain lilies, and a little native false garlic. Also scattered about the lawn are clumps of spiderwort, also known as virginia bluebells, this plant while attractive can become something of a pest as if you brush up against the spent flowers they will dye your skin and clothes blue. They also can be rather rough on a lawn mower. Also in the front lawn is coreopsis grandiflora, although I've been digging it up and potting it. It spread to the lawn by seed from plants in the flowerbed. It really gets bigger then what I want growing in the lawn. I prefer to have things that can handle the occasional mowing when the weeds start getting overly tall! If you didn't mind it's height then I can tell you that it has no problem making itself at home with the grass! Kara