Sidetracked again!

I hope you enjoyed your Fourth of July holiday weekend. We relaxed with friends, our favorite way to celebrate.
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On Monday I got back to work, digging and planting the lily garden. Three cheers for Walmart's 50% off sale. There are three heights of lilies. The shorter ones in the front are a pale pink, but they're finished blooming already. The low plants in back and in the front are hostas. When they fill out, this corner should be green and blooming nearly all spring and early summer. The garden is framed by the little Japanese maple on the left and the crabapple tree. Very pleasant, and the cranes look right at home here. Next season I may plant a vine on the trellis, but for now, the cranes rule.

This morning, Tuesday, I went out to finish spreading the mulch but got seriously distracted by the startburst pavers. I bundled off to the farm store for paver base and a tamper and got to work. This is how far I got ... the stones in place on the paver base. I need to get sand to fill in between, and Lloyd promises to stake the frame so it won't shift.
By the time I finished this much, it was getting too hot to mess around outside, so I came inside to work on the kitchen. I got most of the cabinets, ceiling, and woodwork washed, so tomorrow we can begin painting.

Mulch, Lattice and Yard Art

Finally, photos. This is the entrance garden mulched. I used a dark brown dyed mulch that supposedly won't fade. It took longer to pull out the weeds than to lay down the mulch, but neither activity was fun for my back, knees, and shoulders. Inside the gate, I had to leave two patches uncovered. That's where I planted the tiny seeds for the Russian sage. The sage is sprouting, but I can't tell those seedlings from the weeds. I'll have to wait a few days until the sage starts putting out recognizable leaves. All of the other plants look so much happier with the mulch.

The pachysandra stands out against the mulch. You can see in the front a few that aren't going to make it. I left them in place in hopes that the roots are still viable. The plants farther back are much more robust.

I finally planted the arbor vitae bushes at the entrance to the back garden. The mud dauber wasps were unhappy, as they had begun to look upon the holes I dug and watered well for several days as their personal mud mine. They are building their little channeled home in the shed. I bought some wasp spray today. I hate to evict them, but it's too scary to duck into the darkness of the shed and not know what's buzzing around.

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The frame between the bushes is for the mosaic that's lying in the grass beyond it.

The lattice that was installed a few days ago has really changed the look of the yard. We used the style with smaller openings on the stairwell railing in hopes of keeping some of the autumn leaves from blowing in. It gives that area a nice finished look.

Here is a better picture of the mosaic sunburst. The tomato props on the fence are metal pipes. As the tomatoes grow, I'll use bands of cloth to tie them to the pipes. It looks nicer than tomato cages, I think. The "rock" edging the raised tomato bed is concrete from the old gate that was dug up to make room for the arbor vitae. I have some rocks to fill in the middle part. It was nice to be able to reuse what would have gone to the landfill.

Two of the lattices went up by the kitchen garden. [I'm calling it that because it has edibles planted in one section. :) ] At the base of the one on the left you can see the trumpet vine peeking out of its protective collar. It has a little way to go to reach the lattice. When it gets a little taller, I'll add some strings for it to use as a ladder. There is nothing planted under the one on the right. Instead of using a 4x8 foot lattice and trimming 2 feet off so it wouldn't stick up over the 6 foot fence, I had them cut in half, so each section is 4'x4'. I think it will work just as well, and at half the cost!

This section of lattice is on the north side of the yard, by the screened porch. The Autumn Fragrance clematis is growing in its protective collar. I marked it with a circle so you could find it in the dirt.

The last of the trellis/lattices is in the northeast corner, which is becoming very oriental. I had the handyman put it at an angle to soften the look of the fences meeting. I think it will get a trumpet vine. The metal cranes came from the farm store, on sale. (I'm jumping ahead here, but I want to tell you about the half-price lilies from Walmart. I just happened to see them on sale this afternoon and bought up a whole bunch. The area in front of the cranes will be planted with the lilies and hostas. If it doesn't rain in the morning, I'll get them planted.)

This sun caught Lloyd's eye at Big Lots several weeks ago. He said he didn't need it, but he kept mentioning it, so I got it when I was in Sedalia a few days ago. The picture doesn't do it justice. Looks as if it's skimming along the back fence.

I got another piece of yard art at Big Lots, the metal flowers above the shed door. The plain bulkiness of the shed has been annoying me. The flowers help soften it a little bit. Sorry for the blurry photo. There are three 18"x8' strips of the small lattice left over from the stairwell project. I haven't figured out what to do with them yet, so they're temporarily resting against the shed wall.

I thought I was caught up on the picture taking, then Lloyd moved the two large Mexican urns to the area between the kitchen garden and the fence, where the stones are. They block the view of the rainbarrel as you enter the back yard. Its presence was annoying him. You'll have to wait to see them, though, as it's now too dark to photograph.

On May 30, 2009, the demolition crew took down the carriage house. They were masters of their trade. Gravity sent a few boards into our yard, but the fence wasn't disturbed at all.
The vista really opened up with the carriage house gone. By the way, those sticks in the ground are solar lights that Lloyd got at Walmart. The ceramic sculpture at the base of the kissing tree needs to be raised up a bit, but I really like it there. One of the dragonflies I made is just to the right of it.

Dragonflies for the Garden

On May 17, 2009, my friend Norma Jeane and I took a class at Powell Gardens in which we each made two dragonflies out of old insulators, metal rods, and sheet metal. The instructor supplied aluminum for the wings, but NJ and I raided her husband Charles's stash of copper, so ours were special. This photo of the finished dragonflies is from the Powell Gardens website. I haven't take a photo of our efforts yet.


Here's NJ straightening up the insulator so the body will be properly aligned. The wing patterns and copper are on the table, along with the glitter that was added to the resin fo give the tail some sparkle.

There was a variety of stamps available, including an entire alphabet. It was interesting to see how people used them. I made one set of wings using only Us, overlapping them like scales. Some people hammered the whole surface and some just made lines of shapes. They all looked fine.

Before

These photos were taken May 2, 2009. It's hard to believe that was just a month ago. The entry will be the longest and most photo-intense. Future posts will deal with day-to-day activities in the garden, but here I want to record an overview of where we began.

The front of the house. It's a cute little house built in 1941 with 1970s or earlier landscaping. The bushes need to go, to be replaced by softer plantings. Only the back yard was fenced. The little picket fence and gate was the most picturesque part of the yard. I was sorry to lose it, but it was made of wood and ready to retire. This view is of the SW corner looking toward the NE.

The north side of the lot had a wooden picket fence, also rotting and ready to fall. It needed to go. This photo shows some of the original brick sidewalks of the town, circa 1900 or slightly earlier. Many have been replaced with concrete sidewalks that have buckled and cracked from tree roots. The nice thing about the brick is that it can be repaired when that happens.

The next view is along the north side. The greenery along the fence are the leaves of surprise lilies. They are the kind that put up the greenery in the spring and then die down completely; in July or August, lovely pink lilies pop up on a single stem, no greenery. In California, we knew them as naked ladies. I guess the Heartland is a bit more modest when it comes to flower nicknames. There were big flagstone walks in front and back. I don't know where this one led. It just sort of ended when it got around the corner.

This is the north side of the house, facing east. The overgrown bushes at left had just about taken over the fence and kept trying to grow into the screened porch. The carriage house in back was in our neighbor's yard. The line of greenery stretching toward the carriage house comprises more surprise lilies.

Just beyond the screened porch is the big oak and the stone carving we bought at Powell Gardens last year, when the Chapungu exibit was on display. The huge rock carvings from Zimbabwe were wonderful in that setting. We were pleased to be able to buy this one, called Precious Possession, by Brian Nyanhongo. Other sculptures can be seen at the Chapungu Gallery & Sculpture Park in Loveland, Colorado. It is of a young mother holding her baby. You'll see better photos later in the blog.

Here's another angle, looking NE, of the big oak, the surprise lilies, the ugly wire fence, and the carriage house. The bare spot under the tree is where I started to remove grass by hand digging it. The plastic back of peat moss made a great seat, but this project got old really, really fast.

You can see how the carriage house is leaning backward. The tree is a flowering crab apple, and the little reddish tree in front is a Japanese maple I planted last fall. It overwintered quite well, as did a couple of dogwoods of about the same size.

This view is looking along the east fence, toward the north. The carriage house was not only leaning backward, it was heading for a crash landing in our yard. Another view of the unlovely wire fence.

This is the SE corner of the yard with its Bradford pear, and our nice sturdy little shed. There are two rows of ornamental grass growing beside the shed. It will get moved. The small tree in front is the pink dogwood.

The view to the south, our neighbors' house. It is brick, with concrete flooring. If ever there is an air raid, their basement will be the place to go. In front is a garden I built last summer. All of the rocks were edging for the bushes in the front yard and the hostas by the screened porch along with some of the smaller flagstones. It was hard work turning over that much sod, but there was little cost for materials, just some weed barrier cloth and white stones for the part adjacent to the shed. The greenery is Stella d'Oro daylilies purchased for pennies at the end of last season. There are some mums and ground cover, also purchased last fall on sale that overwintered there and will be moved, offering a nearly clean slate for this year.
A view to the SW, showing the backside of the old picket gate and the garbage/recycling cans. Those were moved into the shed after we put a lot of junk on the curb for the citywide cleanup to make room for them. I didn't see them figuring into a pleasant landscape. That's the pink dogwood in the foreground and the trunk of a maple tree at the edge of the patio.

This is the south side of the house. The rose bush in the middle is an old one. It thrives on being pruned down to knee level. The two tiny bushes are raspberries, also purchased on sale last fall. We may get a dozen berries from them this year, but I have high hopes for next year.

This is the back of the house with the camera-hogging pink dogwood in the foreground. We use the screened porch a lot in the summer. The big pots came with us from New Orleans. The lawn mower is from some dear friends who gifted us with it when they moved away. When the fence crew discovered it, they treated it like a new toy. They'd not seen one, much less used one and spent some time taking turns running it over the lawn.

Here's the view of the shed & garden from the patio,, looking ESE.

This is the railing to the basement stairs. I have plans for those open spaces.

Unfortunately, there aren't many photos of the fence construction. The old fence was out and the new one in in four days, and that included a half day's delay due to rain. Here are the picket posts by the front sidewalk.

And so the adventure begins.