Tag Archives: new beds

Growth Update

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It is the last day of my May vacation and wanted to do a quick update on everything I got done: Ceiling fan, moved 6 yards of dirt, planted the garden and behind the retaining wall (wildflower seeds, asters and morning glory on my garden gate), rototilled herb garden bed and set a few stepping-stones. Not too shabby for 10 days off. And then nature has been doing her work too. Things in the front yard are coming in nicely:

spring front bed

Iris, snapdragon, geranium, etc. all looking great.

under window bed

All kinds of fun happening here, including lupine, iris, brunerra, columbine, yarrow, corral bells, hydrangea, hostas, etc.

beech in leaf

The beech tree took forever to leaf out compared to some other trees but totally worth it. So handsome!

A Dirty, Dirty Job

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I have already proven that math confounds me (see my retaining wall post). And measurements are just as bad. As a page designer for the last 17 years, I have picas and points, even on a scalable screen, mastered. Inches can be iffy but in print I am close. In the real world it gets ugly. Anything bigger than an inch — feet, yards, meters, miles, kilometers — I am useless. That said, I NEED dirt. And a lot of it. After attempting to top off behind the retaining wall with a few bags of soil from the hardware store proved I have no idea what a yard looks like, I knew that it was more than I wanted to buy in individual plastic bags. So to the Internet I went. First to a yard calculator and then to a dirt company who would deliver. They came Friday morning.

Pile of dirt

6 yards! The picture does not do it justice — it was literally above my waist and took up most of the driveway. Holy hell, that is A LOT of dirt.

So out came the wheel barrow and for the next 3 days nothing but sholving and dumping — first into the garden boxes and then behind the retaining wall. Because this was happening on a lovely Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I got to meet a lot of my new neighbors out for a walk and enjoying the beautiful day. Lily made a ton of new friends and got a lot of exercise following me back and forth from the front yard to the back and out again. Neighbor Charles (who I really like and who Lily LOVES to bark at) made it a point of coming out and making sassy comments ever few hours — Thanks for that Charles!

But I triumphed!

Dirt gone

3 days later. And some seriously sore muscles, I had moved it all.

And now ready for the fun part … planting.

garden boxes

Full and ready for planting

retaining wall

Another blank canvass ready for some fun!

Black Death

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I really prefer English cottage style gardens with tons of flowers and tangles of color vs. structure and boring. And I love regency novels where proper ladies spend their mornings cutting flowers and arranging them (or having a maid or house keeper, etc. take care of that part). I also like to cook, so having a fully stocked herb garden close by sounded like a good plan. So I envisioned a lush little area with stone paths lining a mix of herbs and edible flowers, throw in some strawberry and blueberries to stop and nibble on framing my little back patio. I’d spend summer evenings surrounded by the smell of sun-warmed herbs and flowers, bees buzzing, while I grilled or relaxed with a beverage after a long day of work. Heavenly!

What I don’t love is mowing the lawn. And my new lawn is HUGE! So kill two birds with one stone by making a new bed around the back patio that will be primarily for herbs and maybe some cutting flowers — but I want everything to be edible.

But First I have to get rid of the grass. After digging out the new beds in the front yard, I knew that trying to remove that quantity of sod by hand would officially kill me. So I welcomed the Black Death.

Black plastic

I laid black plastic to kill the grass and put all of my pots I moved from the other house and random bricks for the crumbled retaining wall to keep it in place.

Now hurry up and wait — which is challenging since some of the plants in the pots are going to want permeant homes soon.

Planning the Foundations

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The major consequence of February’s tree planting adventure was that it gave me a serious hankering to get back into the yard and start planning this year’s projects. So I mopped up my major work undertaking of restructuring the Copy Desk and officially shelved my ambition of teaching myself Java Script and pulled out the graph paper. Out came the gardening books and I started making lists of plants I had brought with me and what I knew I wanted to buy for this yard. Having a fresh canvas was exciting but I knew that could get in over my head in a hurry. So I limited this year’s project to just a few beds, the garden and few foundational plantings (aka more trees). I had a week off in the middle of March and started digging.

First chore: remove mulch and pave front patio so I could have somewhere to sit when it rains:

front porch

Mulch has to go. And repot tropical lily thing.

front porch

Replaced mulch with pavers. Added desk and chair. Potted up lily and added some primroses and snapdragons. Cute, cute, cute. And dry.

Next project was expanding and creating new beds in the front yard.

new front bed

New bed between my property and neighbor Charles. Then planted a plum tree and put in stepping stones for the mailman.

front porch bed

Connected new side bed with the front porch bed, which I expanded out another 2 feet.

And since I was in a tree planting mood — I planted 2 fig trees and a cherry tree along the north edge of the back yard. Going to be so delicious!

Frui trees

Closest to house is a Desert King Fig, Cherry tree (5-kind hybird), and Brown Turkey Fig.

I moved the sod from the front bed around back, for the beginnings of the next project — the retaining wall.

sod pile

By the time I was done with front beds, I had a pretty big pile of sod.