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Using Chipped Ash from Neighbor's Tree

Let me introduce myself before I get downright...inquisitive.  My name is
Lisa, but I usually sign myself as Lisa Lisa... just to be different...  :-)
My honey and I (said honey is Husband, whose name is Nick) bought our home in
Yorba Linda, CA, a couple of years ago.  It was a real-estate owned property,
which means that there's a LOT of work to be done on this house to get it into
good shape.  One of the principal things that stuck out about this property
was that where we looked at many REO properties, this one had the ONLY green
back yard.  Yes, everything was a succulent, just about...  I'm not fond of
succulents, since I'd rather use the space for productive gardening, but
still.  They are what held my mind.  So, major renovations on the house are
mostly complete...there's just a couple of major projects left to do...the
bathroom (which I don't expect you guys to help me with) and the backyard,
which I would APPRECIATE some help with!

I stood in the backyard, looked it over calmly and thought about it
deeply...letting the ideas flow.  This is my nature and how I am wont to do
such things.  I did get some great ideas about what I'd like the backyard to
look like, but it entails ripping out everything but the trees.  The weeds, I
mean, lawn is just that...weeds.  I don't even have good weeds...just awful
things that stick in my kitties' fur and make them miserable.  There's
overgrown jade plants that junior highschoolers could hide in, roses grown
WILD all through ONE of those jade plants, yucca trees galore that have
completely destroyed the fence between my property and the next-door neighbors
(they and the fence must come out...only the fence will be replaced), a
prickly pear TREE almost the size of the oleander (though I've knocked most of
that down) and some sort of creeping ground cover that I have no clue where it
came from!  Seems to be from my neighbor's yard...could be from mine, since I
started watering the yard last year...  ::rolling eyes::

I do have several trees, which is VERY odd here in North Orange County.  All
right, it's pretty much ODD anywhere in California!!!  There are two lemons,
neither of which are doing so very well, an orange tree which is growing
rampantly NOW that I pruned it last year, an apricot tree that fruited
abundantly last year, but doesn't seem so anxious this year (I pruned it), an
avocado (I think), a fig tree (the fruits are really dry) and 8 (count 'em,
eight) Italian Cypress in the backyard (there's another 13 in the front!
There must have been a closeout sale on 'em, since only ONE other property in
our neighborhood has 'em).  Ah, yes, mustn't forget the orange bougainvillea
that's been trained into a ball-shape by some crazy woman who had more time
than GOD (not me).  My backyard was designed to be a productive
backyard...everything in it had a purpose, I'm sure.  Everything flowers or
bears fruit.  However, I can't keep up with the jade plants...they're taking
over.

Well...be that as it may, it's NOT why I decided to jump in with both feet and
all my fingers (::grin::).  This is:

My neighbor recently felled an ash tree in his front yard, and while I didn't
get any firewood, I did help myself to a good deal of the chippings from the
stump removal.  I'm praying that ash chips won't harm my yard, as I'd like to
use them as mulch around my lemon tree (to ward off encroaching weeds, etc)
and as a (VERY tiny) filler in my compost heap...

Said compost heap is lookin mighty pitiful...I've been putting everything I
can into it, but that's just not very much... leftover veggies, grass
clippings, trimmings from yard plants...I didn't really have anything brown to
put in, so I hope this won't cause a problem!

Any advice you can give me, my new friends, would be VERY much appreciated.
I'm looking forward to (eventually) resculpting my backyard into raised bed
garden areas.  Right now, it's a disaster area...

Anybody want some succulents?  They're free!  Just come get 'em!

I also have some gladiolus that is looking rather...crowded!  Do these need
thinning?  Want some?

Lisa Lisa
gardening newbie
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