Nobody accused me of being a gardener

Brad and I are handy. We refurbish entertainment centers. Build houses (OK, house, but a second on is in the plans). We own at least five different kinds of saws. And I know my way around a cake.

Gardeners on the other hand, we are not.

When we moved into our house just over a year ago, the last thing we did was throw down a bunch of sod and stick a few plants in the ground.

and over here:

See? Pretty right? Sort of? These flower beds still sort of look the same. Sort of. The trees are a bit bigger. The cute little flowers took off [got HUGE] and then died - seasonally died, I might add. They ran their course.

But this one:


This flower bed did not go as planned. I guess, first, in my defense, I should point out that those huge rocks – they were in the yard when we got there. That should serve as some indication as to what is going on under the sod.

Now, it looks like this.



I took it from a different point of view (couldn't remember what photos I had). But, it's still obvious: all that stuff is dead.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
The tufts of grass?
Dead.
Despite every other person's grass like this turning brown and then coming back. Ours did not.
The cute purple grass stuff?
Dead.
OK, not really. But I asked a guy at a local nursery and he said that it was tropical and therefore dead. We should dig it up. So Brad did. And then I noticed that it had teeny tiny buds.
It was not dead. But we had just hacked up the root system. So they have been transplanted into pots on the back porch and are struggling.
And the tree.
Sigh. 
My Japanese Maple. It died. Like really, really died. It gave up so much on living that the trunk split and it started shedding its bark.
I really did not like living (in my yard, anyway).

I'm determined to go out in the woods and dig up a tree more native to our rock-infested yard and hope that it will live. Chances are, it will not. Probably because we are just that bad at gardening.

To be honest, seeing what we are capable of killing, I'm surprised the dogs are still alive.