We are really making progress on our yard. I'm exited. When we are all done with it, there will be a lot less weeding and maintenance to do. It will look beautiful and we won't have to slave in the yard. Oh! It's going to be sooooo nice!
The former owners of my parent's new house really loved to garden. A little bit too much, as it happens. Whenever they planted something, they seemed to have decided that more is better, and they planted 10 of them. This is true of plants and bushes and trees. It's a good thing my mom is retired because she spends hours every week just trying to trim and maintain the yard.
The benefit to us has been some new gardening supplies and plants, especially a pair of beautiful maple trees! One of them has green and yellow leaves with gorgeous, coral-colored bark. The other has rich, green bark and bright red leaves. We drove up to see my parents on Saturday (3/2) and dug up the two trees. By we I unfortunately mean Nate, who did all of the laborious digging. I helped him bag the roots and we threw the trees in the truck. We went home, where Nate promptly tilled up a long swath of weeds and we put our new beauties in the ground. The area is now covered in a thick layer of hazelnut shells to keep down the weeds.
Earlier in the week I set up and filled some planter's boxes by the location for the new trees. The boxes will hold "salad fixings" like lettuce, spinach, kale, and carrots. There's a big box for onions farther back on the lawn. (The main garden area will have everything else, like squash and pumpkins and tomatoes and corn and beans and... you get the idea.)
The one disappointment this weekend? I drove all the way out (30 minutes) to the place where we get our bags of hazelnut shells, picked up 15 bags, only to discover when I got home that we were about 5 bags short of covering the whole weeded/prepared area. So next weekend or at least some time this month, I again have to make that hour-long trek to buy more shells. Or else I have to look at the incomplete dirt and fight back the weeds -- that's not appealing! Hopefully Nate's parents will be available to watch my daughter for a little while so I can make a trip. They live about halfway between our house and the hazelnut place, which is convenient.
Here'a a picture (I wish I had a good "before" picture of the yard but I don't, sorry!):
This shows our lovely new trees and the hard work we accomplished. You can see on the right side of the picture where the shells stop and we need to add a few more bags. We also want to add more shells in the back of the yard, over on the right by the water barrel. On the left, behind the greenhouse, is the main garden area. We have to till up that section of grass this year -- that will not be fun -- so we can expand the garden. And we need to add grass seed in the main yard to fill in a few places. But it's really coming along!!!
This shows our lovely new trees and the hard work we accomplished. You can see on the right side of the picture where the shells stop and we need to add a few more bags. We also want to add more shells in the back of the yard, over on the right by the water barrel. On the left, behind the greenhouse, is the main garden area. We have to till up that section of grass this year -- that will not be fun -- so we can expand the garden. And we need to add grass seed in the main yard to fill in a few places. But it's really coming along!!!
1 comment:
I wish you had a before picture cause I can't really remember what it looked like BEFORE! I do remember the back area by the fence being more busy- it seems alot more cleaned up. But I can't remember what was there before? the big tree? anyway- it looks gorgeous, clean and tidy, GREAT JOB. How rewarding, and it must be so wonderful to look out the window and see all that beauty and know it was done by you! and the garden! how exciting! can't wait till we get to that point but we just aren't prepared yet, we need to take care of the gophers first. And that's great that you get to move back to your old boss and work with people you like.
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