Clean up continues

I've spent most of today working on the side yard, cleaning all the pine needles out of the rock walls, digging up vinca and cutting it back, cleaning up the stairs, raking out the flowerbeds, pruned the trees and cut back the Alder, cut down the Black Locust that found its way into my flower bed, and cleared out broken and old gardening supplies from the shelves by the shed. I'm covered with dirt and tired, but when I look at what I've accomplished today I feel a sense of satisfaction and as Scarlet O'Hara said, "Tomorrow is another day."

Transplanting

Today I moved the blackberry bushes from next to the path to along the chain link fence. I am told that it's really hard to kill them, so I hope they survive. I also transplanted two Indian Hawthorne bushes (small ones) from the front yard to the back yard. I hope they survive there. The soil looks rich enough. I lost my Blue Nikko Hydrangeas to the snow this year, so I'm hoping the new shrubs will get established and provide me the privacy I'm looking for in my "dining room". This is what it looked like before I put the shrubs in...

And this is what it looked like after...

Not as exciting but still necessary I did some more raking and cleared out the dog run. I'll leave the bagging up for Eric. I also pulled a ton of invasive vinca from the front yard area by the bedroom window and along the fence line in the backyard.

Things are getting greener

A lot has happened in the yard since my last post. The trees and shrubs are all in full leaf, my blackberry bush has awakened from it's long winter nap, and we had our first Spring cleaning in the yard last weekend. We bagged up 13 large garbage bags and 5 trash cans full of pine needles and yard waste! And there's still more, but I'll work on that next week. As you can see in the photo the vinca (on the right side of the steps) is coming up nicely and it has a lot of flowers this year. The Lady Ferns (on the left side of the steps) are coming back and of course, the grass. The steps will get a good weeding and the errant vinca vines will get pruned back.

The vinca along the fence has grown in thicker this year and the suckers around the sycamore are growing in. I'm trying to find out what they are. My garden buddies say it's some kind of Alder, Alnus incana ssp. tenuifolia - Mountain Alder. The leaves are similar but they don't match it exactly, and it's supposed to grow near riverbeds. God only knows how it got up here.


The trees and shrubs are starting to fill in and hide the view of the neighbors house which I'm happy to say is now, thankfully, vacant, but with the leaves comes the weeds and my flowerbeds are in need of a serious clean up.

Today, I took on my first gardening project. As I said in an earlier entry, we had the concrete and rock surrounding the spa removed and hauled off which left me with a blank spot in my yard and no ideas of how to fill it. There was a concrete slab (3x5)under the spa, and I had no idea what was underneath it so I just had the guys leave it there. Unfortunately the thing was right in the middle of the yard, (it's right underneath that grouping of pine cones). Anyway, I asked my friend, Linda, (she's always got great ideas) what to do with it and she gave me a great idea for a waterfall garden. I bought one of those small pre-formed water fountains a couple of years back and I made this the focal point of my new planting area. Linda said that since I couldn't hide or remove the slab that I should incorporate it into the plan. She suggested that I should place a line of rocks on either side of it and put the waterfall at the end.


Next, I put a couple of steps in to take me down to the same level as the slab. There was enough of a drop that I put in two steps.So, here are the steps with the concrete slab in front of them.


I found a soaker hose in an area of the garden I was no longer using and brought that over to use in my new planter. I moved a few rocks around the yard, transplanted some Lamium and strawberries, and I had a good start for my new planter. Once the groundcover get established I'll bring in some flowers and maybe a couple of shrubs behind the waterfall. If I'm lucky the Lady Ferns will find their way over there and I won't have to plant anything at all.

A Facelift For The Front Yard!

Our neighbor across the street is having a bunch of grading done on his lot in June and he didn't know what he was going to do with the excess dirt, so I offered to take it off of his hands. He was more than happy to give some to us, so come June we will be able to level out our front yard and I can terrace it the way I've always wanted too.

The first buds of Spring...

Things are slowly coming to life. The blossoms are almost gone from the cherry tree and the vinca is beginning to pop up.

The large shrub at the foot of the parking pad is beginning to get it's leaves.

A Harbinger of Spring

I just saw a male American Robin grooming himself in the cedar tree outside my kitchen window.



The daffodils have blossomed in the planters, and my iris are beginning to peek out of the vinca. I found out from my garden web site that you can mow vinca down in the fall, and it will come back in the spring with a lot of new blossoms. I think this year I should do that since mine hardly blooms at all anymore and it is getting a bit unruly. It's still to early to plant though, last night it was 29F.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish...

The Ortega’s finally came back, and hauled off the last of the rocks from the spa they busted out in October. I’ve been living with those eyesores in our dog run since BEFORE Halloween. After the snow hit I was concerned that the dogs might jump the fence because the rocks under the snow made the snow bank a lot higher that it would have normally been. We called them several times about coming back over to finish the job, but got no response, so we thought they were going to stiff us. We were really shocked at their behavior because we have hired them for several jobs before, and they always showed up on time, and did the job efficiently.

We ran into a slight disagreement over two of the pieces, which were large concrete footings, they tried to tell me that they weren’t part of the job (ha!), and that they shouldn’t have to haul them off, that and they were too heavy for them to lift. They were part of the job because they were within the rock they were busting out. As a solution we could both live with I asked them to bury them over where we stack the wood, so now they are out of sight, and won’t be in the way of any future planting projects, or the new location of our patio set.

It just goes to prove that you shouldn't pay somebody before the work gets done. They bid the job very reasonably, so when we agreed on the amount (under $150) we expected to have the work done in a week. We even felt sorry for them because they had to make so many runs to the dump that we gave them an extra $70. I later found out that they just pocketed the money, and dumped the rocks in the river bed!