I am painfully aware of most (though of course not all) of my short comings. Gardening is high on the list. Each year I start out all gung ho and then by month two at the latest I’ve gotten bored and tired of the whole bit. It’s frustrating, not to mention a waste of time and money.
And no, I’m not going to stand here and say “This is year the year I change!” Alright, fine: I’m sitting. Whatever…
The point is, I’m not psychic; I could easily wind up entering the month of May with a yard just as foul as it is now and no garden to speak of. It’s probable, in fact. But I’m a prideful wench, you see, so I’m hoping a public declaration of my intentions will help keep me on task.
So, just so we’re clear: my job is twofold. One: clean up the mess that is my plot of land. Two: grow some vegetables. Your job however is beyond simple: when I throw my hands up and say I’m going to give up, you come here and make fun of me. Think you can handle that?
Now, to give you an idea of what I mean when I say “mess”. First up is that oak tree. A big, beautiful oak tree, about 80 feet tall. Easily older than every house in the neighborhood. Sadly, it was struck by lightening… After it dropped a 15 ft limb onto my car, we bit the bullet and had it removed.
That tree removal did a couple of things. First of all, it pretty much blew our landscaping budget for a couple of years. I mean, we got a great deal on the removal and all, but three days with a six man crew doesn’t come cheap. As a result I now rely on slave labor (my own) and clearance aisle plants to spruce the rest of the yard up. Secondly, once the tree was gone there was a gigantic pile of wood chips left in my front yard. Two and half years later and it’s still mostly there. I have no idea what’s buried under that pile. Well, not exactly… I know there are daffodils because some of them fight their way to the top every spring. Other than that, I’m clueless and providing a litter box for all the neighborhood cats
The third thing removing that tree did? Completely change the climate of my southern exposed front yard. The good news is that the rose started getting enough sun and quadrupled in size within two years. The bad news is that, without shade, my tiny square of a front yard is absolutely parched every summer. The walkway to my front door is a patch of sand. I’ve thought about putting in pavers, but I’d have to fashion the bricks by hand using clay from my own yard (see point number 1 about the landscaping budget).
Alright, now that I’ve established that my front yard looks like a barren desert wasteland, let’s move on to the back of the house. Otherwise known as… Well, whatever is the exact opposite of a barren wasteland.
This is what the back yard looked like our first autumn in this house. I know it’s hard to tell, but there’s actually a patio under there. You heard me: all that stuff growing in the foreground of this first picture was growing on top of my patio. Technically it was growing on top of a 3 inch layer of rotting oak lives that was on top of the patio, but that’s just semantics.
Getting that patio into good working order was job number one in the back yard, and I’m proud to say it’s done. Now that it’s cleaned up all it requires is a bit of leaf removal throughout the fall and winter. By a bit I mean several cubic feet of mulched leaves, because of course the patio is underneath several full grown trees. How’d you think it got 3 inches of leaves on top of it in the first place?
At any rate, now that I’ve marked that off my list I have an even bigger hurdle in front of me. The Great Plant Removal of 2009. My back yard is chock full of plants, more than I have room for. Many were planted and have propagated on their own. Others were seedy windblown presents from neighbors’ yards. And still others were gifts from above. I’m being literal here: birds have crapped blackberry, raspberry, and mulberry seeds into random and inconvenient places in my yard.
This bed from our first autumn here is just an example of what I’m talking about. There are two stone walls in that picture: one along the property line and one three feet in front of it. With all the English ivy and periwinkle, you couldn’t even see the walls when we moved in. In the 10 ft of bed in the picture above, there’s rose of sharons, lilies, daffodils, snowflakes, nandinas, azaleas, porcelain berry, and a dogwood. All grown over and matted down by the periwinkle and ivy. In other words, an absolute mess.
So, with all this in front of me, what’s the plan of attack? Um…. Yeah, that’s kind of where I get bogged down. There’s so much that needs to be done that it’s way too easy to get overwhelmed.
I’ve taken some steps, though.
I’ve started marking plants in the back yard that have to be moved out. I’m up to 73 so far… Some of them will be moved to the front, some will be given away. Others won’t be so lucky, and will make their way to the compost heap. In fact, two of them got uprooted today, a winter honeysuckle and a black raspberry. They’re chilling out in a dirt pile for the time being. While marking those plants I got an up close and personal look at just how much wood there is back there, too. Four oak trees shed a lot of twigs as part of their normal life cycle, and boy does it show. I’ve taken a look at the weather, though, and this weekend is looking to be about 50 and drizzly. The perfect kind of weather to have an all day fire in the fire pit, fed by yard debris.
Also, I started playing with a new service called GrowVeg.com. It let’s you lay out a space (such as my much idealized front yard here) and then add plants to it. For things like fruits and vegetables it’ll let you know what shouldn’t be planted together, and will even keep track of when to plant them and when you’ll get your harvests. Just enough to feed my inner geek.
And last but not least: I started some seeds today. While it’s warm this week, we’re still not safe from frost so I can’t sow them outside just yet. Our first contenders relaxing in their peat pots are tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, cosmos, and coreopsis. When things warm up I’ll sow sunflowers, two kinds of daisies, echinacea, marigolds, and hollyhocks. I’m trying my hand at some flowers from seed this year because I need to get something attractive in the front yard. Call it vanity if you want, but we’re slotted for a refinance this spring and having an attractive yard will do nothing but help us.
So, there you have it. My not-quite-a-plan of attack for my yard and garden. Hopefully I’ll keep making updates about my progress. I’m counting on you to step up to the plate and taunt me if I don’t.