Good Grief! Where did the summer go?

I know I promised to be better about posting. I hear you! I get so involved in my gardening activities that I can barely think straight most days. What have I been doing? Well, a lot. Don't laugh! I've been totally busy hurting myself working in the garden!

So you saw the raised beds going together and now what? Then everything got planted and the weeds joined the party. Now I'm struggling to keep up with all the eating of veggies! There has been a pesky full yard clean-up effort going on off and on all summer. We bought this place last year and pretty much just let everything do whatever it wanted so that we could determine what was there. By "we" I really mean "I", since I'm the only one who cares about the yard around here apparently.

Anyhoo- the fence rows were (and some still are) filled with weeds the likes of which I can only begin to name. We have little weeds, big weeds, and full-on tree weeds! I started on one side working about half way down one side (266 feet of fence) and got to a point where the trees got so dense I could barely walk in there. I stalled out when I got bacterial pneumonia from inhaling some mystery crap back there. No doubt some mold-type fauna.

fence row in need of clean out

fence row in need of clean-out

after clean out

 Recently I've been back at it on the clean-out. I have now discovered a woodchuck hidey hole so wide and so deep that Clover (my beloved dog) ran right in and I couldn't see her any more! That's just not okay. So, I tossed in some cinder blocks for the time being. Of course the more I walk back there the more the ground starts sinking and caving in because of all the tunnels! I really don't know what to do about that at this point. I'm thinking I will just plant something invasive like Pachysandra back there and hope for the best.

next summer's project- the back fence row!

Ideally I hoped to complete the clean-out all the way to the corner fence so that I could do some much needed fence repairs in that section. I will see how far I get by late September. There's plenty more work to do on the back fence row next summer...

flower bed removal to make way for the fire pit

Meanwhile, there are other things going on in the yard. I scratched off a couple of huge projects from my to-do list along the way. First was the installation of a new fire pit. Originally I didn't really think of it like that. My plan was to just remove an unused flower bed. That thing was an eyesore filled with weeds and tree stumps! Along the way it came together in my mind as something more. We did occasionally burn stuff there and roast marshmallows. In the early days in this house we had no furniture or TV, so this was our nightly ritual with the kids to hang out and roast marshmallows, and we actually talked to each other. What a great thing! It also allows us to burn a lot of brush in the process of getting that fire going. Brush is of course something we are not in short supply of. I really need a wood-chipper grinder thing to take care of some serious business!

Anyway, back to the project: First I moved the giant stones ringing this flowerbed. There were a couple that had to be several hundred pounds! I rammed a shovel under each end and weighted them down so that the rocks were lifted out of the soil a bit. This enabled me to shove them out of the way. There was a lot of sweating and swearing involved to get this job done proper!

After the rocks were moved I started digging out the soil, which was approx 10 inches deep and filled with tree roots from the dead stumps. That was easy in comparison to the rock moving. I was able to dig the stumps out fairly easily since we had been burning there. The stumps were more or less charcoal for the first few inches. After the stumps were out, I raked it all smooth, cutting the roots as I went.

Then came landscape fabric to help keep weeds from growing through. I'm never entirely convinced this does a lot as there are still weeds. I dug a 6" deep trench all the way around the perimeter and put in plastic edging material to keep my gravel from mixing into the surrounding grass. The edging was the worst part of the whole project, except for the giant rock moving of course! From there, the soil got tamped down around the new edging.

Of course those giant rocks couldn't stay all over the lawn, so I moved some of them back into the center of my new pit area to create the actual fire ring. The soil was soft from the earlier digging, so it was easy to smoosh them into the soil so they were seated well. I then cut the landscape fabric on the inner edge of the rocks and dug out the center to create a deep bowl shape to contain the fire. This is important so that the embers and such stay in the pit and down catch my lawn on fire!

Last but not least came the pea gravel. I should have purchased it in bulk I'm thinking. It took 3 trips to Home Depot to buy enough bags of gravel to fill my pit area. The last trip was purely because I needed 4 more to finish. The first two trips were because I couldn't physically fit any more bags in my car without breaking the axle or something! While I unloaded bags of pea gravel from my trunk (100 pounds each) I learned a valuable lesson.

My intention was to carefully slide them out of the trunk and into the yard cart below. This way I didn't need to actually lift the bags at all. I just scooted them and let gravity do the hard part. It is important to note that the yard cart needs to be positioned in such a way that the gravel doesn't come down hard and hit the front edge of the cart (this I realized too late). The gravel bag hit the front of the cart and caused it to propel the handle up and over smacking me HARD on the forearm! Immediately I had a giant lump on my arm just above the wrist and lots of bad words came spewing forth from my mouth.

This was my arm when it first started to turn black and blue

Once the pain subsided I went on about my work with no further issues. Even the lump went away! Of course three days later my entire lower arm turned black and blue and the back of my hand hurt so much I could barely move my fingers for three weeks. I'm thinking now I may have given myself a small fracture. But I didn't bother to go to the doctor, so I really don't know that. It is feeling much better now after 6 weeks, but a bit tender at times. Lesson learned there!

After the fire pit project was complete, including 4 tree stump stools (another long story I won't bore you with), I decided it was finally time to remove all those day lily. These are the winter home of literally thousands of garter snakes! I really don't want to encourage snakes living next to my patio en mass! I'm not scared of garter snakes, but hundreds at a time hanging out by my patio is more than a little creepy.

removing the dirt after the day lily were gone

Digging day lily bulbs is not difficult. However, there are thousands of them, and they are also under a large tree, so tree roots complicate the process. I managed to get some women who wanted lots of day lily (I LOVE Freecycle!) to come dig 2/3 of them out and take them away. It's always great if you can get someone else to do your work for you. I also watched them to see what the easiest method for removal was. I noted they had the easiest time of it using a garden fork. When it was my turn to rip the last of them out, I was prepared.

smoothing the soil for grass seed

The tear-out took me about 6 hours, then came the dirt removal. This was much more complicated because of the tree roots. I basically had to comb the dirt out of the roots which were all growing on the surface since this was a raised bed. I cut the roots with bypass clippers as I went. I continued to find a LOT of day lily bulbs and had to resort to sifting the soil through a mesh sieve that I made for this purpose. This made the project go much faster and I felt more certain that I got most of the bulbs out. I knew there would be some reappear for a while, but I believe I got at least 90% of the bulbs out.

creating planting area under the big tree for azalea

Once the soil was smooth I decided to use some of the remaining rocks from the fire pit project to create a small planting area at one end adjacent to the fire pit and to enlarge the planting area directly under the tree for some hosta and azalea. The remaining area was seeded with grass. It has now grown in and looking terrific! I can't wait until spring to see my new azalea bushes in bloom!

this entire area from left edge of mulch to fire pit was all daylily.
Sorry I don't have a picture of the before!

ready for a back yard party!

What projects have you worked on this summer? I'd love to hear about them if you would like to share.

Check my other blog for my how-to on making marinara from home grown tomatoes! 

( http://serendipityandsun.blogspot.com/ )