No April Showers — Just lots of flowers

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Merridee

This gallery contains 13 photos.

The weather continues to be awesome. Spent a lot of time clearing out dead winter stuff, weeding and enjoying all of the lovely things happening in the yard.

Wall building

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Merridee

There is a slope along the back fence-line that doesn’t really look like that big of a deal — until you have to mow it! And all of the “grass” on it is crabgrass and weeds. My poor little reel mower and my body hate it with a flaming passion. It didn’t take too many times with the mower before I knew it was the future home a flower bed.

Starting point when I was looking at the house back in 2012.

Last spring when the north fence came down, I used the north end of the area to “store” the broken fence panels. Then it became the home of the sod I dug out when creating the new bed and walkway along the back of the house. I have been slowly trying to kill off the grass and stockpile “dirt” to fill it in later. The project has been on the agenda for about 8 months but I was always too busy, or it was too hot, or there were bigger priorities on my gardening calendar. Then this winter, I got serious about it.

There is a slope along my back fence line that is a total pain in the ass to mow, so I decided to put in a retaining wall and level it out. This is mid-February — blocks laid out just to make sure I don’t suck at math again.

Blocks hung out for a few weeks until I had time in the middle of March. Then with my trusty black truck and diligent wheelbarrow, we got to work.

Didn’t take any pictures of actually making the wall but I followed the usual basic steps — Dug out trench for blocks, leveled it, filled with 3 inches of paver base, tamped, and set the block. After the first layer was done, I unloaded the wheelbarrow straight on to the wall. It went pretty fast. Only had to stop a few times to cut end blocks. 130 blocks total.

I leveled it out sod and other random dirt the best I could and then laid newspaper on top of it, then held the paper down with old fence boards. The wood planter box here is built on top of an old satellite dish base that I couldn’t find anyone to rip out for less than $400, so it became a planter. Cucumbers did great there last year.

Lily Dog is an excellent supervisor!

Now I had to wait a few weeks for my April vacation to get some dirt delivered. In the meantime, I was hoping the grass and weeds would die back under the newspaper.

A big-ass pile of dirt — 4 yards of 4-way garden mix.

Took a solid 3 days to move and pretty much broke my body.

Retaining wall bed and new 4×4 planter filled. Also topped off my existing beds. Still had way too much dirt, so there is huge pile of it on the other side of the yard. Figured having too much good dirt is not a bad thing.

Put in irrigation to all of my beds. Filled in with plants. Since I spent almost $800 on the blocks, dirt, irrigation, there was no budget left for plants (expect for garden veggies), so I had to make due with moving and dividing stuff all ready have. Might be kind of thin this year but it is going to look great in the long run. And I don’t have to mow it!

Mom and Dad came down the second week of my vacation and helped me put in some irrigation and then I divided and moved a bunch of plants to start filling it in. It looks great and is kind of in the shade in late afternoon, so I can sit on it and rest.

Stepping it up

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Merridee

When I bought the house there were some issues in the back yard with retaining walls. I patched up the one on the south and handled the southwest corner with the raised retaining wall bed that I built last year. The wildflowers I planted in it last year were a lot of fun, except when they fell over. This years I’m going in a more meditated direction, so it is still a work in progress.

Fixtures are doing fine but I need to move some things around that came up from seed and then fill the holes.

My friend Bob gave me a redwood sapling that he got in California last year. Happy that it is hanging in there!

I told mom I wanted ferns. I do but not really for this bed. May be a temp home or maybe not — I like and they like it there!

But back to my wall woes. North of the retaining wall bed there is a section of old wall that fell down. I decided that it would be fun to build some steps and pillars to the back area along the fence. The first part of the project happened when the old fence fell down. I took some of the old board and cardboard and covered the weeds along the fence.

This has been covered since early March — 2 months isn’t really long enough to kill some things but it was a good start. Black pots hold honeysuckle that have been very patient and getting a real home.

Weeds on their way to dead, I need to deal with the horrible yucca. As a rule, I don’t like plants the hurt me (hence my dislike of roses.) But digging these out proved more of a challenge than expected! Huge roots masses — I guess that is how they live in the desert — store up as much moisture as they can in their big fleshy roots.

The shovel that I inherited from Grandpa Doman (so it is at least 15 years old) met its match against the yucca. One more reason to dislike yucca

Yucca out (or so I thought — I kept running into big chunks that I thought were concrete but were just more roots), time to get building. I knew that I would have some challenges since I was building on a not super level old retaining wall stones. But I figured it would be fine.

Ready to rock and roll. Guy loading the cinderblocks for me was worried that my truck wasn’t up to the task. I laughed!

It was just like my job — just make all of the blocks fit.

Steps and pillars done. Weed clothe and mulch laid. pots planted with honeysuckle, snap dragons and verbena. Green pots to blend in with neighbors weeds.

There are some gaps and both pillar lean toward the front. I may pull some it apart and see if I can fix it but things should settle a little bit. I do want to get some urn-type pots for on top of the pillars but Lowe’s didn’t have any I liked that I was willing to splurge on. All and all I’m pleased and definitely better than it was.

Well, This Blows

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Merridee

So I mentioned I am on vacation and that it has been crazy stormy. Things finally dried out enough today for me to go and assess the damage for real. I know that there was flooding and power outages all of over town at the beginning of the week. And Lily and I had tromped our way through some puddles, leaves and downed tree limbs on her walks. And I knew that some of my flowers had not faired well but today I took a full inventory. The good news is that nothing permeant was damaged, the bad was a lot of floppy flowers. But the really big sad was my very cheerful sunflowers. They were all laying on the ground, sad, broken and soggy. (Too depressing to even take a photo of.) But I salvaged what I could and brought the smaller blooms inside.

A few sunflowers, cosmos, asters and feverfew.

For someone who likes to grow flowers, I know that my next career won’t be florist — I am shit at arranging flowers. Always looks like a hot mess.

Behind the retaining wall and the cosmos was my other big tragedy center. They had basically all flopped.

All the cosmos and some most of the bachelor buttons and asters fell over with no hope of propping them up again. I chopped some of the worse ones but tried to coax most of them back into looking decent. Also the yard waste bin was full.

The asters in the front south side bed and herb bed also fell over. I left the front bed but did a little trim on the herb bed because we couldn’t walk down the path.

I eventually tried to prop these up but didn’t chop. A frost will be here soon enough and then I’ll cut them back for real. Also seriously bummed out that the davidii at the far right of the this bed suddenly up and died on me. Others are doing great.

4th of July Tomato Gauge

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Merridee

When I lived at the Rex Hamilton with brother Derek, we always had a 4th of July party. They were super fun and crazy, hanging out in the yard with friends. An inadvertent consequence was I always managed to snap a photo of how the garden was doing. So it became something of a tradition to see where the tomatoes were on the Fourth.

Things are chugging along but not as great as I hoped, considering new soil and all.

Tomatoes look kind of lame compared to former years — One year they were at the top of a 6-foot fence. The radishes bolted before they were really ready to eat. Same with the arugula. Peppers and squash are doing ok. Beets hardly came up. Peas are basically done. The only thing doing really well is the beans.

Things back here are going gang-busters! Tons of cosmos, callengula, mallow. Plus morning glory on my garden gate. So cute!

New Wall Stacks Up to Hard Work

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Merridee

The guys who work in the garden center at Lowes officially think I’m crazy. Also I don’t do the maths.

The retaining wall in the south west corner of the yard had basically crumbled and while rebuilding it I thought I could make a cool raised bed. I laid it out and did all kinds of crazy math and figured out how many stones I would need. Then I had to take into consideration how many the truck could carry (had a few tense moments buying pavers in the yellow car and didn’t want to bottom out or wreck my shocks). My plan in hand, I head to Lowes to get what I hoped would be enough for half of the project. They were eager to help and got a load of stones into the truck. I get home, bust out the wheel burrow and haul them around back. The stones don’t even cover a single layer and I know now that I will need at least 4 layers. Fail. 3 trips later, the lowes guys automatically pull on their gloves when they see me coming and ask how many this time.

Beginning of day 2 — Still totally underestimated the number I would need.

Completely worth all of the drama and hard work! Looks great. But I’m going to need a lot more dirt.

The Overall[s] Adventure

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