Yesterday I shoveled a yard of topsoil from my pickup into my wheelbarrow, trundled it up a hill, dumped it in my new raised herb bed, and mixed it all up with about 1/3 yard homemade compost. This morning, I'm wondering who hit me with a 2x4 last night, and how could I have slept through it all. :)
What is everyone else up to this weekend?
pam
What I did this weekend
Been running back and forth between my front yard and two blocks that of what used to be 50+ years old houses that have been razed for expanding the mall here. I have filled my trunk over and over with used bricks, rocks from old stone walls and just big rocks. (And to think that I used to whine about all the rocks in my yard!) Made one trip to rescue some poppies, daffodil bulbs and two kinds of hostas. Grabbed two big clumps of mystery day lillies (I think) out of a dump load of used mulch for a friend. Oh - I got three huge concrete blocks with two huge holes in each one to use for my mints. That will keep those guys contained! Although mowing is really a treat at my house as I have chocolate mint and fennel growing in the "grass". Or - green weeds cut short as it happens to be. I hope to glean enough bricks to redo my walkway. Let's see - at 4.5 bricks per square foot and a walk 25' long and 3' wide - - that is probably just a dream.
Yankee Cat, ROCKS: you can't live with them or without them!
I spent the day deadheading, carting over my neighbor's ground stumps (he was gonna throw it out!) then finally applying my first dose of Messenger to all my plants. I hope that works even half as well as people are saying it does.
This morning I split some firewood, started a small fire in the wood stove to take the chill off, planted six winterberry (for the birds next winter) Spent most of the afternoon splitting wood. Oh, tried to mow some overgrown lawn (has rained up here for almost a week and a half nonstop)
I took the day off Saturday and went " down the shore". Ocean Grove NJ, charming, historic, ginger bread houses, has more gardens in the smallest spaces. The ocean is always calming. I ate at Kleins Fishmarket in Belmar on the Shark River and watched the boats go by. The keylime pie is to die for.
Then I spent Sunday moving plants and re-digging a small channel to re-route gutter spill off to one of my tiny 'rain gardens'. Why does it always require everything to be moved and take hours longer then I think?
The weather is still amazingly cool, a real spring this year, Isn't it delightful?
Pixie
bensen - sounds like such a peaceful day!
We rented a big wood chipper for 2 days and went through many piles of routine brush cutting that had accumulated over the years and a huge pile from an ice storm that took down several big cedars and a big pine last winter. We cleared more of our property along our drive and cut back the encroaching undergrowth in our pitch pine woods. We cleared around some native beach plums that are in full bloom and thus easy to identify and a huge high bush blueberry that was lost in a tangle of vines and less desirable growth. We had all the toys out, the chainsaw, the brush cutter as well as rakes, pitch forks and the loppers. We had the ear plugs and safety goggles on so it felt more like a battle zone than a day in the garden. I managed to get a nice dose of poison ivy on my face and neck and was bone tired by Sunday night, but all worth it. The big joy was finding a pair of prescription glass that my husband lost last fall when doing some tree trimming in a pile of branches that I was about to feed into the chipper. The glasses were worth the price of the 2 day rental of the machine. And the yard looks good, but because we had been discrete in the hiding our debris, only we will appreciate how much work we did. Patti