While Adam was gone to India for two weeks I pretty much spent every moment I could out in my yard. The weather was absolutely beautiful and the perfect temperature (not too cold not too hot) and lets face it…there is just something so wonderful about being outdoors on a beautiful day. It just fills me! I love working outside and being in the sun. I also had about a bazillion projects I wanted to work on as well so the mix of beautiful weather and no husband for two weeks and kids who loved being outside was the perfect combination to light my yard working fire!
One of the first projects I did was to plant about 72 Strawberry plants! The weekend before Adam left we decided to utilize more of our garden space and so we moved our raised garden boxes from the right corner on the top tier to our bottom tier (mid picture). This gave us about 3x more room to grow stuff AND helped us fill in those tiers with something other than weeds! Adam was kind enough to bring in a truck load of dirt to fill up my garden boxes before he left so they were all ready for planting while he was gone. I just couldn’t help myself.
Another project I did another day (which is hard to see in this picture) is that I planted a big long row of raspberry plants. I bought about 8 different plants in two different varieties and then also had my neighbor Brian Walker give me a bunch from his yard as well. I ended up planting them in between the two garden boxes on the bottom tier next to the rocks and then put black paper down to keep the weeds down on the rest of the tier. You can kind of see the raspberry starts below.
Another one of my projects was to buy and plant more little ground covers all over my rock tiers. I ended up planting probably about 30 new plants both on the top tier and in between rocks on the 2nd and 3rd tiers. I’m hoping that someday these rock walls will just be full of color and beauty!
Another project I had was to move some of my Iris bulbs to different areas in my yard. See the Iris plant to the right of Daws? It was HUGE originally and so I divided it up into thirds (and yes its STILL that big and healthy) and then put the other 2 bunches of Iris’s on that same tier down further so it was more symmetrical. These Iris’s are special too because they are different from all the other Iris’s in my yard and the most dark deep purple you’ve ever seen. I’m totally in love with them. I’ve got a thing for Iris’s if you can’t tell.
Another day Mumsie (my wonderful mother in law) told me she had a bunch of Raspberry starts in her garden I could have so the kids and I went up to her house to dig them up. We decided to plant them on the far right side of our bottom tiers and have two different patches of raspberries. Plus Mumsies raspberries are THORNLESS so we wanted them apart from the others. We hope someday to just have bucket fulls of berries to pick! Yum!
Another project I had on my list of to do items was to weed the bottom tier (seen to the left) for my neighbor Virginia. She’s a sweet older lady whose husband had a stroke several years ago and bless her heart this tier has been neglected and full of weeds since we moved in. So one day I set out to conquer that mess of weeds and then in their place I planted a bunch of Lily’s another neighbor had given me that were going crazy. I hope someday these will fill in and make a beautiful backdrop to both our yards.
Also seen in this picture are some small little flowering ground covers (phlox and abrietta) that I planted along the rocks and to the left of the black paper. I’m hoping these will eventually drape over my rocks and make a beautiful display of color in the spring and summer.
Here is a shot of our rock walls from the bottom tier. We own all the rocks down to where the grass is in our neighbors yard (aka all the rocks are ours!) You can see a few of the fun flowers and plants I have planted in years past that are now in bloom.
And a picture of my beautiful Iris’s! Oh they make me happy!
Another day I also weeded all three tiers or rocks. I thought I’d take a picture of the back our our house to show you what a project like that might entail. Just imagine 120 feet of rocks times THREE (for our three tiers) and you’ll get a better understanding of the undertaking of that. I LOVE to weed though so it was rather fun. What I didn’t like though was getting the worst sunburn of my life (even after putting sunblock on TWICE) and spending the next week doing my yard work in long sleeved shirts and hats.
Oops. I guess thats what I get for spending 10 hours in the yard that day. 🙂
Another view of our looooong rock wall and the bottom tier of rocks I weeded for my neighbor.
The little rock tier next to the grass on the right is hers.
I also decided to fill in some of the places along the property line between us and our neighbors the Wilkeys with some flowers (instead of the weeds that have been there the past forever). So using a pick axe, I dug up all the weeds there and then planted some more Lilly’s my neighbor gave me in their place. You can see them in the bottom left hand side of this picture next to our fire pit patio.
We had two burning bushes die this spring that we planted last fall so I dug those up and replaced them with Golden privets. While doing so though I discovered the reason the two bushes had died…ANTS. A whole colony of them. So one day was spent just trying to get rid of them. I tried everything from Vinegar, to drowning them out, to baking soda. In the end I think it was the repeated drownings that finally got rid of them. The new bushes appear to be doing fine! I also moved a rose bush I had planted last year over a foot as It didn’t look centered.
One of the projects Adam wanted me to do while he was gone was getting the garden planted. The only problem with that was that we had just moved the garden boxes down to the bottom tiers and the ground was not FIT for a garden. As in the dirt between the garden boxes was as hard as rocks from us making pathways between the garden boxes, and it was all completely filled with weeds! So out of all the projects this one was the HARDEST! I ended up having to pick axe through all the dirt just to break it up enough to plant in, and then had to mix the good dirt and compost with the hard dirt and pull about a bazillion weeds out of it all too. Man alive was it hard work! I could only pick axe for like 5 minutes at a time before having to go and collapse on the grass for a breather. It didn’t help that I was digging up rocks the sizes of large watermelons either. Holy Moly were some of those rocks huge! One of them I couldn’t even carry so I had to roll it out of the way.
In the end though it all worked out and I was able to finally get our potatoes, squash, peas, and beans planted. Yay!
My favorite projects though are always the ones involving flowers. I have designated the little flower bed next to my walkway as my “annuals bed” so I had fun planting petunias, pansies, and snap dragons in my summer colors of red, purple, and yellow. The flowers are all wee itty bitty now but I’m hoping that by summer they will fill in this area with bright beautiful colors! I also planted a few new flowers in the corner flower beds as well. Flowers just make me so happy!
I also got my two planter boxes finally all prepped and ready to go by putting rocks in the bottom, filling them up with dirt and then picking out an arrangement of beautiful flowers to put in them. I love the way they turned out and all the fun colors in them.
Also not seen in these pictures was a project where I planted about 10 different Hosta plants and some Cala-Lilly’s and a bleeding heart bush and hydranga bush on the shady side of my house. I also spent a day cutting back all 600 of my tulip stems and all 300 hundred of my daffodil stems as they were all done blooming. Little by little our yard is coming along and we are feeling like we are almost to the point when we say its “done.” Thats a good feeling and its been awesome to see how we have made our yard our own.
We are also super excited because for the first time in YEARS we will actually get a really good crop of fruit from our trees. Although our poor little apricots froze AGAIN (we’ve yet to get more than a few per year) our 2 peach trees are bursting with tiny little peaches as well as our Nectarine tree, plum tree, and apple tree. So that makes us happy, happy, happy! (Last year we didn’t get A SINGLE piece of edible fruit off of ANY tree) so this is really great news for us. Unfortunately our pear and cherry tree don’t have a lot of fruit but they do have a little and we are still excited to at least be getting SOME. We can’t wait for harvest time!
So anyway, it was fun to get so many fun yard projects completed. I sure do love being outside and working in the yard. Its so awesome to be able to create and make my yard into something beautiful. Its one of my very favorite new hobbies!
