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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Impromptu garden project - done

With the warm weather last weekend, I really wanted to do something outside. Looking out my office windows on Saturday, I was struck with inspiration.

What I saw was this:


When I set up the beds last fall, I knew it wouldn't be pretty until I covered those paths. Not pretty at all:


I'm sure the neighbors to the west, who can see my entire back yard from the second story windows of their beautiful, worth-twice-as-much-as-mine, house, have been cursing all winter about the trashy person who moved in over here.

I knew I wanted to cover the paths with wood chips, but I haven't found a reliable first-hand source (i.e., tree trimmer) yet, and garden centers don't generally sell such things in the winter. I realized, however, that the big boxes are starting to have only two seasons - Christmas and outdoors - and they've already started to stock mulch around here. A quick online search told me I could get plain cedar chips at the big blue box. Score!

The other thing I hadn't quite figured out, however, was what I was going to do to keep that mulch from simply sliding into the grass. With no edging, I doubt the paths would stay covered, especially when it rains.

I'm not going to lie. I'm pretty proud of what I figured out...

We have this retaining wall, which is going to fail at some point:


Presumably to avoid mowing, the people that built it covered the top portion, from the house on the left past the trash can on the right, with large river rock. So large, it's hard to walk on. One of our spring projects is going to be to get rid of all that rock so we can start figuring out how to fix the wall. Well....if it's large and we want it off the wall, why not use it somewhere else?


Ding ding ding! So, I spent a couple hours Sunday afternoon chucking large rocks off the wall, into the yard. I have to say, there must be something primal about rock throwing. It was so much fun.

I stayed focused, however, and gradually made my way around the entire raised bed area.



Then, with some help from D, I filled in the entire area with beautiful cedar chips.


Now that is a much better view:



Monday, February 22, 2016

Sage and thyme...or thyme and sage

We had a few days in a row over 60 degrees last week and I was afraid my seeds might be cooking in their little greenhouses. On Saturday I peeked inside and saw that they were very dry, so I opened them all up and watered them. I was kind of worried about them all afternoon, even though I know that if none of them grow, I can still go to the garden center and buy seedlings.

Even so, on Sunday, I planted a couple more herbs. The weather was still nice, so after I poked the holes and labeled the bottles, I took them outside for the actual potting.


Two bottles, two types of seed. How hard could that be?


Clearly, too hard for me. No sooner had I put the seeds in and covered them with a little more soil, then I realized that I'd put the sage seeds in the thyme bottle. Easier to re-label than dig the little seeds out.


When I was adding these bottles to the box, I peeked inside one of the others, and look what I saw:


I might be able to make this work after all.

Monday, February 8, 2016

One more bottle

I added a bottle of rosemary to the box outside. Next up are sage and thyme, I think.