Gardenfest!

[velvetpage]

Last Sunday, after my MIL read what I planned to do in my garden, she suggested laughingly that I wasn't being very honest. "At least when I make garden plans, I say my husband is going to do it!" she said.

I was slightly offended. So when Jenn came over to help me with my garden, we made sure to get many pictures of the process, including several taken by her, of me working. I will be staying home from church tomorrow so that my muscles can recover. :)

So, the day. We started with an extremely shady lawn containing (as I thought) one massive hosta, a few somewhat scraggly rose of sharons, a border about six inches deep along the back fence of lilies, and myriad weeds, roots, detritus, moss, and bare patches. I forgot to take true before pictures, so you'll just have to picture it. There were no defined beds beforehand. The soil had not been touched in any way for about six years, probably longer, seeing it didn't look much better than this when we moved in.



This first one is after the hostas have been dug up, their beds prepared, two weed trees dug out of them (one to a depth of about two feet) and all of them planted again. We got nine hostas out of that one clump! Here, we're starting on the back fence of the garden, where there were a row of lilies about six inches deep.








Elizabeth became the official Worm Rescue Ranger. This is her, with her worms.






The lily garden, now without lilies - or much of anything else. We took out all the lilies, and a whole bunch of Virginia Creeper vine, and some nightshade.









The lily garden, now with lilies. We pulled 98 viable plants out of that six-inch by twelve-foot space, most of them hardy and big enough to spread again by next year. We replanted a little less than half of them along the much larger back fence garden - it's now about three and a half feet deep.



More lilies, this time with lake rock around them. That's right - we took a trip to the beach, loaded my trunk with stones, hauled them back, and edged the garden with them.




We planted a few of the leftover lilies near the foundation of the house. The rest are being Freecycled. Hamilton people feel free to come get some - they're all still out there as of this minute, by the curb!




All in all, a good day's work. For the price of five bags of dirt, a few tools, several hours' work, and $34.49 in Harvey's take-out, I got a functional, pretty garden, without adding a single plant that wasn't back there already.

Next week, we're doing the front garden. :)

Comments

Yay pictures!

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

It looks great! Ignore critical MILs it is the best policy even if it isn't the easiest.

Re: Yay pictures!

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

She's an absolute sweetheart, and she knows me very well. It's entirely possible she was giving me a very deliberate push to actually do this. She did that before with the cloth diapers - made a private bet with my sister, which I then found out about, that the cloth diapering would last about two weeks. It lasted eight months, because she gave me something to prove.

Re: Yay pictures!

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

Nothing like a little reverse psychology, eh? I'm a little like this myself, if you haven't noticed. :-D

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Oooh cool, I hope you update thru the spring/summer/early fall with progression.

Actually, I wonder if there are Lj communities like that -- hhhmmm≥..

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I will! I'll do it once later in the spring, and probably during July as well, when everything's in bloom.

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

Which one of these people is you?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The one in the red shirt. The other is sassy_fae, and the child is Elizabeth.

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

I find I am particularly hard to identify solely by my rear :D

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I tagged that rear on facebook!

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Anybody who can identify somebody by their rear is probably not somebody you want to associate with.

(Somebody who can identify you, and only you, by your rear probably associates with you a lot.)

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

I think you're 100% right.

Now I'm trying to think of any possible situations where people would be identifying me by the rear (aside from the above example,) and I'm thankfully coming up blank :)

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

There's one image where you are facing the camera, behind Elizabeth -- wearing a striped blue-and-white shirt, right? Or is that someone else entirely?

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's me!

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

I recognised Elizabeth from your icons. Good to have seen sassy_fae too. You keep mentioning her.

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

Yikes! What an introduction :P Umm.. here's one (http://pics.livejournal.com/sassy_fae/pic/0009zc2r) that concentrates more on me from the front :)
(Pic taken by Pyat several months ago, right next to the spot where we dug a garden yesterday.)

[merlyn4401.livejournal.com]

Wow! It really looks great! :D

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

Good job, Erin et al! :) Looks great!
love, Krista

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks alot DIL, now my dastardly plot(not flower) has been exposed I will have think of new ways to work my mind control. HA HA (follow with a Snidely Whiplash laugh)
I love it! I love the garden and I love the fact you defended me and I love my granddaughters and I love my DIL and I love the fact that Sassyfae helped you. I will stop now as I am embarrassing myself.
MIL

[hannahmorgan.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's amazing! I am experiencing my first spring in our new house, and can't identify most of what's coming up. The oddest thus far is the daffodils in the middle of the lawn. I think I might design a flowerbed around them - less grass to mow!

Thanks for the inspiration!

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Daffodils are pretty hardy - they will bloom where they are planted, or transplanted, or thrown. Once they die down, you can cut them back, dig up the bulbs, and replant them somewhere where they'll make more sense, and you'll probably find you've got extra bulbs in there that didn't bloom, because daffodils spread like crazy. Make sure you give them lots of room in their new home - if they like it, they'll keep spreading.

They're a lot like lilies, actually. :)

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

Looks like a fun afternoon.

Lee.

[toad-hall.livejournal.com]

very nice!

and every home needs a worm protector!