A Gardener's Work is Never Done

Last summer was a rough and busy year not only physically and mentally for the people, but the landscape and gardens too.  We didn't have much time or money with all of the running to job interviews, doctor visits, helping MIL, and all of that to keep anything close to what I normally like to so.  You can really tell the toll the relative neglect has played on our landscaping, on our raised vegetable beds especially.

I wasn't around enough to keep them as weed free as I normally do, and now the grasses have claimed my wonderful soil and sent their tendrils to take over entire beds.  I have wished many times that I had gotten all of them mulched that lay dormant last year, but with all of the chaos and confusion I guess I wasn't really thinking of future gardening here.  We got the place ready to sell, convinced that we would never be able to stay in the place we had called home for 8 years at that point.

So now ahead of me lays the task of getting the beds weed free, dividing perennials to fill in gaps in the landscaping (I'm pretty sure the critters dug up and ran off with some of my plants), moving bushes and shrubs (that must have been planted in the wrong places because of labelling issues), and a long list of other maintenance issues.  It's almost like we moved to a new place as long as my list has become once again! I'm sure there are some out there who can relate.

So, in the coming weeks I will be posting some before and after pictures as I work my way around the garden (again).  I love to chronicle my yard with pictures so I can look back at how it has changed over time, don't you?  My memory isn't as great as it used to be.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message. I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

The Garden I Left Behind

I have talked to you often about the garden I left behind as well as babbling on about plants that made the trip with us on our last trip before the fire sale. Well, I finally got access to the old pictures that were on the computer that crashed. Now I can finally share them with you. Unfortunately we had to send the computer to the scrap yard as it was unsalvagable.

We moved into our second home when my youngest child was still a baby, just a three months old. She has no memories of our first home. We decided we needed a bigger yard for our children and a bit more space, so we moved about 5 miles away. It was the 30th of May in 2001 when we moved in.

We had looked at the house in March when the yard was still under snow. I fell in love with the inside, it was perfect for us! We put in an offer right away. It was only on the market a couple of days before came.

Imagine our shock when we saw the grass did not come back. Wasn't that the whole point of not buying new construction? Our first home had been new construction and we looked at established homes so we wouldn't have to do landscaping or finish a basement. The yard and landscaping were supposed to be in already. It looked wonderful in the winter with lots of trees and everything. Did I mention that most of the trees were dead too when spring came?

The back garden area was wonderful looking. I loved the bushes that hid our back yard from the street behind our house. It was a great place on a corner lot and it was close enough to walk to the beach. Inherited shrubs in the back mulch garden included a staghorn sumac in the center of the garden, 2 sensation lilacs, a white lilac, and red weigela, along with a few plants I never did figure out what they were.

The kids had lots of neighbor children to play with too. My son met his best friend when was about to start kindergarten. They seemed to be attached at the hip always either playing at our house or theirs every day after school.

After we lived there for a while and got to know the neighbors, we were told the people that sold it to us had lived there less than a year. The original owners were gardeners and the yard was always the best yard in the neighborhood. (I could tell from all of the earthworms that completely covered our driveway after the rain in spring.) It was just a shame a year of neglect could ruin all of that hard work. We intended to bring it back to it's former glory. After a bunch of hard work I thought it was right back up among the best.

We enjoyed most of the plant choices of the original owners, but the sumac was a total thug. It kept trying to take over the entire yard, sprouts shot up everywhere. I managed to talk Cheesehead into helping me rip it out even though it had beautiful form. To fill in the gap, we added some arborvitae that were passed along from some of Cheesehead's friends at work.

We added a couple of new garden areas including my prized rose garden. I had 3 climbing roses and 2 bush roses as well as creeping phlox at the entry path. The roses managed to thrive all summer and looked gorgeous each and every year. Somehow I was never able to keep them alive through the winter though. They got replaced each year. It sure was hard pulling out those rose bushes! But my was it lovely smelling to sit on that little bench under the arbor. When we were getting ready to move we planted 3 clematis to climb the arbor and two knock out roses to fill in the space.

The corner must have gotten too much salt spray from winter plowing, we never could get grass to grow in there so we expanded it into a large rock garden. We added a raised perrieneal garden as well as a wide variety of flowering shrubs.

There was a wonderful ornamental crabapple tree. The fragrance by our front door was always so sweet in the spring time. It was like heaven on earth between the flowering crab apple and the carol mackie daphne that grew next to the door. I put a bench there too. We also added plants that lined both sides of the driveway. Why in the world would you have all that rock but no plants anyway?

Near the door all plants the original owners had put in had vanished but the tulips they had planted. I filled it with color and various textures. Anything that survived our long absence before the fire sale came with me from this area. So far the monkshood is the only plant that died from the transplant process.

I added a pink weigela in an open space in the front garden, but the rest of the plantings were put in by the original owners. I think the green we chose looked better with the vinyl siding than the original color. I matched the new exterior lighting to the trim too. Looking back, I think we overspent on the improvements we made.

The back yard was spacious and we enjoyed outdoor entertaining here. It tended to get very hot in the afternoons in summer. We had plans of adding some sort of shade structure but never got around to putting one in.

This was the second garden shed we built. Somehow I never managed to get a picture of the whole shed. I am not sure what I was thinking when I planted these things in there, it was such a small space. They got very overgrown after we moved out. We like to landscape around all of our outdoor structures to add more enjoyment to our time spent outside.

Can you tell Cheesehead likes using landscaping blocks?

It was heart wrenching to have to move from our dream home just over three years ago. We had put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and money into that place to make it perfect for us.

We moved into our "new" home three years ago this July. I guess I still call it new because we never really got the closure of selling our old home, signing papers, and the whole 9 yards. It was finally foreclosed on after being on the market for more than two years. Technically we've only really been rid of the burden of that house for 7 months. I'm sure glad that never ending saga is over!

Right now I wouldn't change our house for the world, it's really starting to feel like home.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Is This a Crazy Idea?

SOS!!! Fast responses desperately sought after! Where's a crazy garden lady supposed to get enough inexpensive good dirt to fill a 4x12 raised bed? Let me tell you how it "grew" into a bigger project than it started out to be....

Saturday was a beautiful day. It was bright, sunny, and clear with temps in the low 70's. We had lots of plans for the weekend, although Cheesehead's plans were different from mine. He wanted a deck and kept interrupting my work to help him with his plan. It was evident from the start he wanted to derail my healthy eating plans for the family.

Somehow I just don't think a vegetable garden is high on his priority list. That could have something to do with the fact that there are only two vegetables he'll willingly eat (but only prepared certain ways). The kids aren't QUITE as picky eating about 5 willingly without complaint. Not a large variety, but I'm hoping to turn their opinions of vegetables around after they sample vegetables fresh from our garden.


Thankfully he invited his brother and mom over or I wouldn't have gotten anything on my list done. He wanted to install a deck behind the house. Our yard is completely slanted so there really is nowhere to put our patio table set. I think a deck would be nice, but I wanted to get my veggie garden put in.

The kids were put in charge of moving the rocks that we had made into a rock garden for Cheesehead last year. Apparently he didn't like it so much. It did get a bit overgrow. I'll use the rocks else where. We had already transplanted the flowers last fall, so all that's really left to move are the rocks, logs from the trees we cut down on Wednesday, and the birdbath.

After a few minutes of picking up rocks, they got bored and wanted to take over my job. They thought it looked more fun to level a portion of the yard, remove perennial weeds, and clear out the brush. Whatever. At least they weren't holed up inside stuck to the video games all day.

Somehow I don't think they did the best job of removing all of the brush.

Friday the kids and I had moved the smaller logs into a pile. Now we just have the large ones to move. I'm thinking about making some of these into some stepping stones for our back yard landscaping project. I thought we could dig a hole in the dirt so the surface of a thinly sliced log is flush with the dirt. Does that sound like a crazy idea? When I mentioned this idea to Cheesehead, he just rolled his eyes at me. He dutifully asked BIL to bring his chainsaw with him anyway though.

After a morning of hard work, the guys were ready to take a break. I figured it wouldn't take much to finish my small raised bed so I agreed we needed a break. My plot was all cleared, leveled, and ready for the lumber! It's desperately in need of some good dirt too. Doesn't that look like fine beach sand over there?

We went for a ride up to the cemetery. (Only a "short" hour and a half from home.) We didn't get home until dark. Plans for finishing our work on Sunday were put on hold for an all day long dousing drizzle. Hooray! We really need the precip. I suppose we all need to take a day off once in a while anyway. I decided I'd finish my garden on Monday.

Look what I woke up to this morning. It's been snowing all day too. No matter, I was determined to finish my project though. Luckily I'm working in the back yard so I wasn't seen by many passers by. They'd probably think I was crazy out there working in the snow to build a raised garden bed. As I worked, I got a brilliant flash of idea. Cheesehead decided that he wasn't going to make his deck as big as he had planned on making it, so I grabbed his two extra 12 foot boards so my garden will be 4x12 instead of 4x8. That'll show him not to help me with my projects. Mwuahhahah!

I came inside to warm up for a while and chat my crazy head off before going out to finish my project. Also to get some MUCH needed advise before I continue my endeavor.

I can't afford enough dirt to fill my new garden and I don't have any finished compost from the relatively new mismanaged compost pile. Here's my "brilliant" idea: Would it be stupid to fill the bottom 2 inches with leaves and pinestraw from my "compost" pile and fill is as much of the top with dirt from last years planters and left over spagnum and shredded leaves?

I need dirt fast before Cheesehead derails my evil healthy eating plans. HELP!!!!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Shh! It's A Surprise for Cheesehead

I told you all that we were working on a landscaping project yesterday. I thought I'd share what we did together and what I will surprise him with. This was once the area where the poor deer eaten arborvitae used to live. I'll do a before and after post when I can find the before pictures. I guess I should have done a better job of managing my pictures....

Cheeshead trimmed back all of the tall weeds with the weed trimmer, I pulled them out by hand for placement in the compost pile. If there were some weed roots I couldn't get out, I hoed the ground until I could get the roots as well as the plant. It took a lot of time, but the results will be well worth the effort.

To frame out the shape of our garden, we laid a hose out in the shape we wanted it in. It took a few tries to find one that we liked, but we finally found a shape that we both liked.



Once we did that, we just had to dig the trenches and install the edging. We dug our trenches almost as deep as the edging is tall. We left a coupe of inches clearance between the edging and the dirt so we would have room for mulch. Edging is much easier to work with when you flatten the curves out prior to your project. I laid it out flat and weighed it down with rocks. We only got the edging in and then it started to rain. Grr. At least we got it all installed before the rain started.



We had to call it quits for the day since after it rained the ground was wet and we didn't want to play in the mud.

We weren't going to plant any extra plants in the garden this year since we have no money to buy more, but Cheesehead mentioned that he didn't care for the rock garden in the back yard. The rock garden was really overgrown, there were so many weeds in there you could hardly tell the plants from the weeds. I guess weed control got pushed down the priority list this summer. OOPS!

Happily that gave us a some plants to move to the new garden areas, so it wasn't a complete loss. I placed the three big peonies, lavendar, sage, hygrangea, yarrow, and creeping phlox by the shed. The day lilies, starfighter lily, 2 small peonies, and sedum were placed up front. There was still more room after those plants were transplanted, I divided the ones that I knew wouldn't suffer from the divisions and spread them all out. With no money in my landscaping budget I decided to get a bit creative.



The containers are looking a bit leggy and Cheesehead was ready to get rid of all of them yesterday. Luckily it rained so he had to wait to throw them in the compost pile. I took all of our containers that weren't doing very well and carefully dug the root balls out of them and placed them into holes I dug in the ground. There, the garden is full. I'll have to replace the annuals in the spring but I hope to have a bit of money by then.

Cheesehead wanted to use our landscaping fabric, but I hate that stuff. He tried to insist that we should use it to prevent too many weeds from growing even though I told him the reasons we should skip using it. Gee, too bad he wasn't here to do the work today. I hope he isn't too annoyed that I skipped the fabric and just went straight for the mulch. Hey, at least it's work that he didn't have to do!



Apparently the mouse that had made it's home in the grill cover this spring has migrated to the pile of extra mulch we've got sitting outside. I found it today when I took 5 bags of mulch to cover the newly planted and edged area by the driveway. Who knew such a small creature could startle a person quite so much?



To finish off along the driveway I recycled some of the rocks from the back garden to help keep the mulch in place. What do you think?

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

I Fought the Lawn and the Lawn Won

What an ordeal! I thought I had picked up enough rocks and sticks that I could venture to the back yard to mow it. Boy, was I wrong!!!

Luckily I was wearing capris (which on me are almost regular length jeans!) instead of the usual shorts, so my legs didn't get scratched up like they could have. I know I will end up with bruises though. Ouch! I didn't even see that much stuff laying on the ground!



From a distance the yard looked fairly decent before it was even mowed. It sure looked a lot more green.



But this is what it looked like after I mowed it. I know, now you can really tell that our back yard has no grass!



I had to mow though. Look at how crowded my poor peony I bought and planted last year was getting. I couldn't let all of those bushes/trees over take the poor thing! Cheesehead had written this plant off last year already. I sure am glad I was stubborn and wouldn't let him dig it up. Sometimes it pays to be hard headed I guess!

I had to take care of the endless amounts of shrubs and trees all over the yard area before they got so big that they weren't managable. The kids need a nice open area to play in, I can't let all of our 2+ acres be covered in trees.

Besides getting pelted by endless amounts of unseen debris, there were several pit falls I was aware of prior to the lawn mowing ordeal began. After all, I created them!



I can't even count how many places these rock holes were hiding.



There were also several places where we removed huge sticks as well.

I couldn't have very well left the sticks and stones there. I mowed my yard once last summer and all of these obstacles caught the blade and killed the lawn mower several times. It sputtered a few times this year, but at least there wasn't anything so big left in the yard to cause harm to the lawn mower. Just my poor unsuspecting legs. I guess I'll have to get out the rake and see if I can uncover more of the buried treasures that lurk in the grass. Next time I mow the grass I hope I am not left hobbling around on battered legs.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Got Rocks?

I think this area has come a very long way. Do you remember what it looked like just over a month ago? I was telling everyone about these lovely sunny parts of the yard that melted it's snow before the rest of the yard did.



I am still working on it, of course but I am proud of all of our hard work. It has come a very long way. Since we had so little money the kids and I decided to make Cheesehead a memorial garden in honor of his dad for a birthday present. It was finished a day late, but we really needed to distract him yesterday. Boy, I think I'm going to sleep like a log again tonight.



I told you about some of the plants we brought back from our other house. I showed you the lovely pansies that the deer devoured which had been transported in shoe boxes. What do you think of this container for transport? Yes, you guessed correctly, it's a fire pit! Even better I had bought this firepit for $1 at a garage sale a couple of years ago. The other two peonies were transported in my concrete basket. I can't wait for them to bloom!



Here are the three freshly planted peonies as well as the snow in summer and the charming purple phlox, all settled in to their new home. They were planted quite some time ago if you notice the date. I also planted some practically free after mail in rebate bare root roses. Maybe not the best choice for me to spend my scant amount of money on, but roses are so pretty I just couldn't help it.

I can't believe how much the peonies have grown. The phlox has since come into full bloom too. I'm finding that I have to baby snow in summer a lot yet, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to rescue it from it's distress.



It took us what seemed like forever to get enough rocks from our yard to fill in the garden. This is almost finished, but still lacks about 1/2 the rocks it needed. If you look closely, you can see the dirt in the picture still. I didn't like having all of that exposed dirt. The rain splashed it all over the bird bath and statues. Now I just have a little bit of work to do and a name rock to add. I think I can handle that.



WHEW! After a week of rock picking from the yard, I have finally finished the new memorial garden. You would now believe all of the rocks we had in our yard! I filled four window wells, filled in part of a retaining wall, piled some rocks in the new shade garden, and put the rest of them in this garden.

The plants aren't very big yet, so it's hard to see them from this angle. Maybe in a month or so it will be easier to see them from this distance.

I planted hummingbird vines, violets, pansies, peonies, roses, phlox, snow in summer, stella d'oro daylilies, sedum, lavendar, salvia, and a few miscellaneous wild flowers that are still unidentified.

There is still not enough grass in the back yard, but I hope to remedy that situation soon. After we finish picking up the sticks I will be mowing the lawn, that will be our first step towards finishing the back yard. I am hoping to get the sticks picked up in the next day or two. When we get our tiller back from Cheesehead's friend who borrowed it, we will till the side yard again and then plant some grass seed over there.

Now, it's time to collapse into a qyuivering pile of jelly on the couch and veg out on the couch for a day or two....

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Happy Birthday, Cheesehead!

Today is Cheesehead's birthday. He was going to do some work in the yard today, but we decided to save the work for tomorrow.

MIL and BIL came over today bearing cake. It was a sad day, Cheesehead's first birthday without FIL. We tried to keep him as distracted and busy as possible. I think we completely wore him out. We managed to pack an awful lot of action into one day! Too bad we forgot about his friend from work's cookout tonight. Ooops. Sorry guys, maybe next time???

There was a few chores that needed to be done when BIL was here since Cheesehead still hasn't learned how to change the oil in our lawn equipment. After that was done, BIL took us out for lunch in Tomahawk. It was really good. Thanks, BIL.



We also took a quick run through the car wash while we were in town. We used to spend lots of time washing cars at home, but now that we have a gravel driveway it's hard to get it nice and clean. He did manage to wax it at home though. Doesn't he look cheerful? Okay, maybe not....




After lunch, we dug into some cake and ice cream. I felt bad not making him a cake, but since MIL brought this one and a lady from work made him one I gave him a raincheck on a cake from me.



Once MIL and BIL headed back home, it was off for the family fun day we didn't get to do yesterday. First up, a rollicking game of mini golf. It sure was a close scoring game! One point away from being a 3 way tie. Peanut needs a little bit more practice though I suppose.



I got tired of being the score keeper, so I appointed a new one! Doesn't he look like he's doing a great job?



Peanut wanted a pony ride when we were done. She rode a pony named Ray. He sure was hungry, he stopped for several snacks during the ride. He sure enjoyed the grass and dandelions which were abundant along the trail.



During one of our several stops along the trail, this cute little chipmunk posed for a picture for us. Wasn't that sweet?



TBO loves to drive the go carts. He likes to pretend he's a race car driver. If he doesn't end up playing professional football or baseball, then he wants to be a nascar driver. Cheesehead had a headache and wanted to sit this round out, so he was kind enough to take some pictures. It was so much fun.



We went for a drive by Culver's to see what the flavor of the day was. When the kids saw it was M & M Swirl, they asked if we could stop. It wasn't hard to persuade Cheesehead into a rich, sweet custard treat.



Our fun day just happened to be in the town that boasts to be home of the world's largest penny. Even though we've seen it before, they wanted to see it. I suppose they thought the penny was real or something.



Lastly, we thought we would plant some annuals that would help us to discourage some deer grazing in our yard. We bought these last night when we weren't able to do these plans. We did some plant shopping instead. We didn't know that mini golf was only open on Friday nights.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy.

Take a walk with me

Melanie from Old Country Gardens asked us to take a long view of our yard and garden. Won't you take a walk with me as we view our yard? Sorry zoom lens, no use for you today!



This is a picture of our yard as you're walking down the road toward our house. It gets to be pretty well screened from the road as the season progresses with all of the brush and ferns that fill in the lower area of the woods. There are many lovely wildflowers growing along the tree line, although being wildflowers they are hidden from view since they are so small.

Looking up our driveway, the lawn looks beautiful. At least from a distance. I wasn't able to get a good shot without including some detail I didn't want to share. You may be able to catch a glipse of it between the branches.



This is a picture of our turn around area of our driveway. Also future location of a shed we'd like to build. We are in the process of planting the side yard as you can see from the freshly tilled soil. We have many plans for this weekend. I'm not sure it will all happen, but we'll be a little closer to the finish line anyway. We also want to finish putting up wood trim and roof on our kids' swing set.

The swing set rennovation has been a long drawn out process, we're going on year 3 now. Had I not had so many other things to deal with I may not have procrastinated for so long. I'll have to finish staining it this fall after the wood has been weathered. It will be finished though, I guarantee it!



We don't have an upstairs, so this is about the best view available of our front yard. I took this picture from our front steps. If you look across the yard you can see my newly planted shade garden by my green wishing well, just on the other side of my drain field. I had to buy small, young plants for affordability purposes, so it may be a while before my perrineals really start to shine. I've learned to be quite patient though lately so a little delayed gratification will have to suit me!

Most of our flowers stay hidden from view. They are shy and don't show up in the long view. That's okay though since if they were easy to see the critters would invite themselves for much more munching.



This is the untamed wilderness of the back yard. I have been busily transplanting native wildflowers from the yard to the new memorial garden included in this picture. I am still not finished with that job yet either. I don't want the poor things to get mowed over this weekend by Cheesehead, so transplanting shifted my focus away from the task of rock collecting. Hopefully I can get the kids to help me collect more rocks this weekend so I can free myself up to do other jobs instead.

Our poor grills and patio table set are anxiously awaiting a nice home to nestle into. Currently they are situated in positions that leave them least likely to tip over when put into use. It works for now, but boy do I wish I had some money to build a patio or deck! We need a shed first though I suppose....



I also took a new picture of our future garden location. I want to plant some blueberry bushes along the tree line too. Possibly raspberry and blackberry too. I am going to clear out the center area and start preparing this area for a vegetable garden next year. If I wanted to do a vegetable garden this year, I could probably use our side yard. The soil looks really nice and rich there, unfortunately I think it is way to shady there to have a successful garden.

So much work, so little time (and money!)

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Change of plans!

Well, I had planned on doing some cleanup with the kids, but I got a bit distracted from the plan.

My husband works at a big box type store and he had to work today. What a big surprise....

We wanted to have Mother's Day lunch with him, so we stopped by the grocery store after church and picked up a bucket of chicken meal. We ate together and he mentioned that their plants went on sale for Mother's Day. When we were finished eating I just had to go see what they were selling. As usual, I found some plants I wanted. I filled up the van with flowers and there was no room for any garbage we needed to haul off. I guess it will have to be done another day.



Isn't this a wonderful container. It was clearanced out and I was really looking at them on our plant excursion the other day. Cheesehead insisted we buy it, so of course I had to buy some plants to put in there.



Here is my planter that Anna told us how to make. I probably put the wrong kinds of plants in it, but I wanted to get it filled with flowers. I was too anxious to wait to figure out the right plants to put in there. The kids helped me choose the plants to buy. They were so excited, you should have heard them.



The 6 packs were $1.48 each, so I really stocked up. I put 3 different varieties in these baskets. The left overs were used elsewhere in our yard. I took down our decorative bird houses and replaced them with these newly planted hanging baskets.



I just loved these tulips, aren't they lovely? They were only 75 cents per pot, so I grabbed quite a few. I had some empty space in the garden to fill up until the other plants fill out more, so I figured there was plenty of room for the bulbs.



Peanut and I planted a bunch of seeds in this basket the other day, but I knew Cheesehead would be impatient to fill it up. I bought the same variety in a 6 pack and put four of them into the basket to appease his anxious nature. When I mentioned it to him before all he could say was that I should have started them in January inside. I guess he doesn't seem to remember that we just brought my greenhouse back last weekend.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy