Part One: The Garden BoxOnce upon a time I went to Menards to get supplies to repair a small (3'x3') garden enclosure for youngerboy's butterfly garden. Instead, I bought enough lumber to make a much larger garden box (6'x6') Then I couldn't decide where to put it. The thing didn't really belong where the butterfly garden was... So I decided to ADD a garden. But I couldn't decide WHERE to put the box. So I dug up all of the sod in one part of the boulevard. And then decided to put the box in another part of the boulevard. Keep in mind: this was supposed to be a small repair project. Now I had two GIANT GARDEN SPACES to deal with (which were both just lumps of mud and remnants of sod)... And the butterfly garden was still in need of repair. Part Two: The Front HillWe went out of town for a short time of much rain and plentiful sun and returned to find a notice from the city telling us to mow our grass. My instant assumption was that one of our neighbors reported on my messy, overgrown and unintentional-looking prairie garden. It was pointed out to me that the actual areas where we had lawn desperately needed to be cut. AND that the city had apparently gone around the neighborhood and given notice to plenty of us. It was not a disgruntled neighbor aghast at my untidy garden. STILL I felt terrible about the garden. And worse when several of my gardening friends looked at it in well-disguised horror and admitted they had no idea where to start. The garden was quite deliberately planted nearly 10 years ago (or more?) with native grasses and flowers to create a low-maintenance front hill garden that was a no-mow solution. It did not look like the picture to the above left. It did not spill over on to the pavement with its giant tangled mass of green medusa-like hair. It was not a monoculture of unidentifiable grasses that looked like we just had forgotten to mow the lawn for 10 years. SO I spent a lot of time pulling out weeds and years of dead undergrowth and uncovered several plants that had been completely shaded by the brutish grasses that were growing down the hill instead of standing tall. Then I dug up a bunch of the grasses and shared them with F/friends. And there will be more. Then I found rocks and woodchips and cute little things from Elsewhere In The Yard and arranged them on the hill. And I bought a few plants. And I transplanted a few others. And I will need to put in some shade-loving plants in the spot of the hill that didn't used to be shady but now it is. And I was going to do this over several weeks. But I think I did it over several days. Part Three: The walkway/patio/stepsIntended to have our steps redone this summer, but then half a tree fell in our yard and sucked up some of the funds for a project of that size. So I decided to repair the front steps myself. It took 50 pounds of cement. And I think I'll use a little bit more to fill in the step that was really not even a step anymore. I think 45 pounds of cement went into remaking one step and 5 pounds of cement went into repairing a small crumbling bit of the top stair. I got a cubic yard of woodchips (some of them in the new boulevard garden with the fig tree pictured at top) that we stuck in the back yard because it is mostly mud after taking out the wooden deck over a year ago. Almost 2 years I think. And I spent some time laying out brick to widen the sidewalk, but didn't really have a vision for what I was doing. Now I have a vision so I will un-lay the brick (it wasn't set in sand anyway) and use some concrete molds and fill in most of the back yard with another cubic yard of woodchips. Part Four: Planting (since last week)New Plants
Transplanted
Planning to plant soon
Planning to transplant soon
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |