Garden doings

There was a little evergreen bush here that I asked Eric to cut down. This made Oscar and John cry, to have a bush killed for our own purposes. But now there is a raised-bed garden for lettuces and arugulas and sugar snap peas!

I thinned the seedlings today and we had some micro-greens with our dinner!

Last fall my man prepared this garden bed with me and we covered it with wire mesh to keep out the varmints and now I have an allium army! Or a fireworks party! Or a garden of magic wands! Unfortunately just now the sun passes almost directly overhead, so the garden is in nearly full shade except for ~2 hours around noon. All their stems have started doing a little lean to the south. But that's OK, the bees are still coming by.

The area around the compost has gotten a lot of love lately. The sod farm now resides under the office windows, instead of a bunch of mulch. The stones that used to be the garden border got repurposed, as you'll see. The whole mulch/sod farm part used to be lined with stones, as all the other gardens were.

The path is finished! It's hard to remember that it used to be an impassable ivy jungle - the children use it so regularly now. Where did they walk before? 

Now there will be many photos of rocks. I want to remember how hard we worked!

Phase 1: this used paving stones and rocks scavenged from the yard. Yes, those rocks!

Then we decided to expand and bought more pavers - but for now all the boulders and filler stones came from the former garden borders. One bucket of scavenged filler stones is worth one Oreo.

Making a patio, again with flagstones that were just hanging around. In the back of the patio area you may notice a gaily-colored tree: this is Oscar's magic tree, which I think was a large branch we trimmed off of something. Well, he "planted" it and he and John painted it with acrylic paint. Then we painted pine cones too and hung them from its branches in a most unrealistic fashion - Oscar wanted to be sure it was obvious to everyone that it was a magic tree. Some bones have been placed under its branches, along with shiny precious stones and a GI Joe that I found in the ivy.

Here the stones are all in place but awash with mud.

Ta-da! The patio is revealed!

Phew! Time for a break to do ninja practice and meditate.

And talk about Pokemon, of course.

Phase 2

Phase 3, heading east

A little break to do some outdoor weaving

In this clearing now stands the canopy, covering the hammock and two picnic tables

Cozy, innit?

  

Heading west, once it was all done. We did end up buying some filler stones and boulders - too much perhaps? - and they spilled over into the gazebo/tent/canopy area. The loose rocks don't slow the children down as much as you might think - they have ninja powers after all.

Tomorrow I will take some pictures from the bedroom window and post them along with the saga of the front yard garden!