Xiaoniu 小妞

Finally we finished up the work on the front garden. Tell me, does it looks like there is nearly three yards of mulch in this thing? About 2.5 yards went down in just this garden. The other half yard went to a couple trees and the small flower bed on the side of the garage. I don’t think we’ll need to put down quite so much next year. Maybe one yard to freshen things up.

Sue’s wonderful start to a colorful flower bed.

It’s hard to tell right now, but this whole bed is full of summer blooming bulbs. I can’t wait to see what things look like. The bush is new too. It’s a nice sand cherry that should fit nicely and look great in a few years.

Lastly is the small flower bed we recreated last year. The rose bush was left here by the previous owner. We’ve tried to keep it going, but the aphids go to it last year. The tall green plants in the middle are some kind of flowers that dad found while at work.

Mysterious plants that come out every year. I only wish I knew what these are. They come out quickly and don’t do much. How quick? Last night there was nothing here. Today this is how much they’ve grown. Amazing.

Just because we love work and can’t seem to get enough of working on projects we’ve also been working on the back yard. It’s coming along nicely, but there is still plenty to do.

With the trees gone and my back aching from moving literally multiple truckloads of mulched up stump and dirt it was time to fill in the holes. It took just over 1 yard of topsoil to fill in two of them. Now I just need to start growing some grass.

My other big project of the weekend is setting up a nice spot for a garden. We chose the area in the back yard where we once had lots of bushes and overgrown weeds and vines. We spent plenty of time last year cutting down everything and removing stumps.

Today I spent most of the day finishing the cleanup of the area in preparation for planting. There were miles of roots through out the area. I filled in the stump hole with the dirt in that area and spent a lot of time pulling up roots. Thankfully the dirt in this area is very sandy so it was easy going. There just was a lot to pull out.

To keep things orderly I decided to re-purpose some old blocks from the side of the garage. Better to use them for something useful than to let them go to waste. And without further ado, here it is.

You can’t tell, but there is hours of work in that small area. All those blocks put in by hand. All the roots pulled. Plenty of thick roots (2-3 inches thick) cut. WIth everything leveled out I added some moo doo (manure) and the rest of the topsoil I used to fill stump holes and here you go. A garden in the making.

Next two projects on the list (maybe this year or maybe next) are finishing the cleanup of the side of the garage and whipping up a small area of plants on the west side of the house. It looks so barren.

Ugly and old blocks are here for the taking. I’m hoping to find somebody that needs fill so that I can get rid of them without having to pay to do so. That would be expensive (probably more than the blocks cost new). The footings you see are too big to move. They’ll just get buried where they are. Not a great solution, but not bad (environmentally). The things are about 4 feet long and 10 inches in diameter. Do the math and you’ll see they are extremely heavy.

The barren landscape that is the side of our house. The soil is thin and doesn’t even support grass. Not to mention the color of the foundation. I would have been happier if they were still gray concrete block but alas they were painted a flesh color. Bleh.