the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

Dang, it's so pretty! Mine is very utilitarian. I'm working on adding more flowers and other pretties though

we used to have a lot more flowers than we do now. i like to leave at least one perennial garden here or there to keep the beneficial bug populations and bees happy. i also much prefer bigger gardens to take care of they are a lot easier when they have fewer edges and for sure i hate wasting space on pathways. much rather have plants/green things growing. a lot of the limestone mulch i would like to take out and turn that into gardens. if i have to weed it i would like it to be growing flowers or veggies. so a pathway i have to weed is just waste. that is how i think of it. of course Mom just likes to mow a lot more now than garden. it's not as easy for her. another good reason to make things easier to take care of if i can.

work continues!

 

[flowerbug]

a few pics of progress:


the 2nd drain tube relocated and a bunch of pea gravel moved. the part at the top where the house drain comes in and the garden drain comes in from the side i won't be able to finish until dunno when, that is why the pile of pea gravel is there, just in case we decide to use it up there too. i also don't know when i'll get back to putting the rocks and limestone gravel back in place. sometime... you can also see that i haven't made much progress on the neighboring garden i was trying to get cleaned up so it would be ready to be planted. that will be last. whatever i can get in there and get done, but it will probably be a few weeks before i get back to that.

i have to get this done soon so i can get it planted! inside the fence always has the highest priority. only beans left to plant. one small piece of tube to cut out and some pea gravel to move and i can get this garden leveled and ready to go. 1 day if i'm lucky. weather has been more rain and heat. one more round of rain coming for the next hour or two and then i hope things will cool off and let me get out there tomorrow and the next few days.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Looking good!

 

[flowerbug]

Looking good!

thanks! it is coming along, will be nice to have it more done so the pathways are back to being more easily used. some day i should get at least one side done, but i really need to get the gardens planted before i worry about cosmetic things like that. 2-4wks is probably being optimistic with all the weeding i'll need to do too.

 

[flowerbug]

The NE Corner of the SE Garden (also commonly called the fenced garden) which is somewhat redone. Removing several pathways and consolidating parts of four smaller gardens to make a larger area. This is already much easier to care for since I will no longer have to weed those pathways and along those edges. It is not completely done yet, but it will have to do for this year because I really need to get to the garden in the background to the left to finish that up and get it planted in the next few days. The very corner garden (about 20 feet x 20 feet) of the SE garden is the original garden that Mom first started with way back in '97 or '98.

As a comparison you can see the differences that have been happening over several years since this picture was taken (in the spring of 2013):

 

[frustratedearthmother]

WoW!

 

[flowerbug]

WoW!

haha! yeah! keeps us busy and i'd rather be doing something useful than not.

we have the last garden leveled somewhat so today i can get some planting done in there. i'm a bit tired though...

 

[flowerbug]

the view from last fall.

the view from this morning (leveled and planted yesterday). as done as it will get for now i need to get back to other gardens that have been ignored lately while i've been trying to get this done.

rock! we like rocks...

 

[frustratedearthmother]

You've made really great progress! We don't have rocks here...

 

[flowerbug]

You've made really great progress! We don't have rocks here...

these were all brought in a car trunk load at a time or one time we had someone drop a full dump truck load out front in the ditch and we moved them all in. pretty much how we had to bring in all the crushed limestone mulch too. one wheelbarrow at a time from the end of the driveway.

oh, and a few rocks have been brought in from various parts of the country as they'd come across them - a future geologist would be very confused!