Projects

Ok, so this was one of my latest projects. I always wanted to "dress up" the side yard of the house. This is not the ultimate end of what I want, but it is a start. I just used my tiller to loosen the sod and moved it to my compost pile then dug way down to get the soil lighter and more ready for things to be planted. I had purchased red azaleas and some kind of low growing shrub evergreen thing that blooms white. They were on clearance at Lowes so I bought them - Ha!! I am sure I still have the tags somewhere so I can give the actual name sometime soon. I also planted four o'clocks to the left of the dogwood there. I have heard that flower gets the Japanese bettles that are on your good stuff to come to them, eat them, and then die. That is what I have heard.
Wednesday I went to the horse park and got a load of compost to put around all the stuff out front. It has been awhile and was due. It makes things look a bit neater and feeds the flowers too. Next step is to get me a bag of horse manure and make manure tea to fertilize things. I will do that a little later in the summer though, that way I kill two birds with one stone, watering and fertilizing at the same time. I still need one more load of compost this year to get everything done I want done. That is what I say now, but once I get it I am sure I will find a reason to "need" more - HA!!

I also added more planting area in the back. We are going to build a deck and this should butt right up against it so you can just look down
into the flowers.

I think growing flowers is easy, maybe it is just my attitude toward it. I like growing a vegetable garden, it is a bit more rewarding than flowers seeing as you get to EAT what you grow. You can eat some flowers but veggies are usually better. In this bed I put orange cosmos, orange marigolds, pink petunias, multi colored dahlias, red impatients, and blue lobelia. I love the mix of colors. As it grows and fills in I will take and post more pictues. It should be beautiful here soon.

Wow, I didn't know they were that big!!

Okay, so there has been a mole in my yard for a couple of days, it just appeared, well the tunnels and mole hills showed up. I wasn't sure what it was so I looked it up on line and decided that it was a mole. Then, although I really don't mind them, I found out how to get rid of it. They actually aeriate the soil and they eat grubs that can actually kill your plants. The bad things about them is that you have raised areas and mole hills in your yard, and they can uproot plants and damage their root systems. So, since the garden is new I didn't want to take the chance he would get in there and tear it up looking for his invertebrates to eat.

We took pictures but they won't load so I will put it up later. What amazed me is how DAMN BIG that sucker was. I put a hose in the tunnel and watched for where it would come up at. McKenzie was prepared with gloves on and a cooler to put it in so we could take it away with out harming it. If it comes back then I will take it farther next time. I think it showed up because I don't poison my yard with pesticides so the eating is good there. I got the hose going and we just waited until he started to surface. I saw the earth moving in one area and then redirected the hose and he went a little further then decided to come up there so he wouldn't drown. He decided to come out right at the edge of the garden and once he cleared the dirt Kenzie grabbed him and put him in the cooler. I was shocked at how big it was, I had seen small, the size of mice, moles before but this bad boy was 6 inches long and about 5-6 inches in diameter. Lordy!!

We carried him down to the end of the street to the edge of "the woods" and let him go. McKenzie wanted to watch him dig away and it was pretty interesting. She named him Roger - Ha!! I hope to get a picture up as soon as I can because it is pretty cool!!

So I just had a birthday

I just had a birthday and this was one of the best presents ever. That there is St. Francis. I have been wanting a St. Francis bird feeder for quite some time. Until just recently I hadn't seen one I liked. When I came upon this one in a Plow and Hearth catalog some months ago, I knew this was the one for me. I promptly planted the catalog, open to the page it was on, exactly where I knew Alan would see it. He got the hint too!! I am very pleased - it is 32 inches tall and really just makes the garden area. It will look even better when the coriopsis fills in more around him. And I want to find a red dogwood to use where I moved a rose from - it will be wonderful when it is done!!

I did a little rearranging of the garden areas. There was getting to be too much stuff in the area where Francis now resides. I moved most of the star gazer lilies, a yellow colored euonymus, and a rose that wasn't doing so hot. I had an idea for this area and it was getting too far away from that original idea. It looks much neater and simpler now.

I moved most of what I dug up to the area between the sidewalk and the road. I think it will all look pretty good once it grows in. Now my next project is on the side of the house where I planted a white dogwood 2 years ago, I think. I want to put some red azaleas and another low growing evergreen over there to spruce it up some. I think it will look great once it gets all in.