My Garden

To start off, I've discovered and very therapeutic activity for myself...gardening. I've also discovered that gardening is a work in progress. You invision a dream, but that won't really happen for years to come since plants have to grow into their mature bodies too! Here is my work in progress. I started my flower beds last spring in 2009. First, we bought all kinds of soil and ripped off lots of sod and it all ended up piling onto our porch. Most of my neighbors have lovely clean porches with patio chairs to sit and relax in while dusk approaches. Not us. Our is covered in dirt, worms, plants, sod, garden utensils, etc. It's even worse this year. I have a wheelbarrow, a peach tree, and more on my porch right now as we speak. Oh well. The trash bags in the picture below are full of sod.

Now, I don't want you to just see this pile of sod and think, "oh, that's not too bad!" No let me tell you folks! When you are pulling sod off by hand from a heavy clay soil, it is VERY bad! Craig and I were so soo soos ooooo sore. It was worth it, but so hard. We outlined with a shovel and ripped away, killing grubs, digging out rocks, finding all kinds of trash left behind by the construction crew, lots of gravel that they decided to put all over the front yard and then cover with sod, boards, PCP pipes, etc. I think I even found a marajuana pipe. I think. I'm not quite sure since I've never seen one, but I think my neighbor said that's what it was. Once you take off the sod, you have to turn the soil by shovel or tiller and mix in some store bought compost or garden soil because the clay stuff just doesn't cut it alone. We didn't have a tiller, so we had to do more manual labor!

I have a picture at the bottom with a moving truck to show you what the front yard looked like at first. we decided to take 2 of the burning bush trees out and plant them in the back, leaving the other two up front.

I bought some annuals and put them throughout the garden and then joined a perrenial exchange with some of my friends for the other plants. Can I just say.... I love my perrenial exchange and all my friends I have there!

I got some shasta daisies put in the back. Aren't they just pretty?! I loved picking them along with my sunflowers and putting them in a vase inside the house.

I also started a plant box on my back patio to put tomatoes in. Just roma---good for canning.

I gathered some friends to walk around the new construction sites where they are leveling land. The neighborhood is built over an old limestone quarry so you find lots of limestone in the ground as well. The construction crews find HUGE rocks and just pile them up. Everyone in the neighborhood gathers all different shapes and sizes or pays the landscaping crews to haul the big ones where they want to put in their gardens or to border their gardens. Anyway, my friends and I went looking for some flat ones for stepping stones in our gardens. I LOVED doing my garden and it's so young. A lot of the flowers won't come up for a year or two until they are really established in the ground.

I'll have to update with current pictures throughout the year because my garden looks different already. I've had to move a few things and plant different things in. Isn't gardening great!

You can see that there were only the four bushes in the front. This year we have dug up about a 6 ft. by 8 ft. plot for a small vegetable garden. I enjoyed it so much that I'm moving on to the other kind of gardening as well! More sod, more tilling, more mixing of soils, etc. As I said...a work in progress.