pira

Greetings from beyond the internets.

It's April and I have a brief window in which to attack the garden while the weather is cool, the ground isn't like cement and the plants haven't taken over the world.

This image is of my backyard what just had a tree removed. I wasn't willing to pay hundreds more for stump removal at this time but will be dealing with the busted fence with my fathers' help at some point...(I am hopeful that it will sucker)....It's really rather the least of my worries ~ now that the insanely old pussy willow is no longer threatening to crash into my bedroom window during a windstorm.

I suddenly have a LOT of sunshine in my backyard...so much so I can actually grow...grass maybe? I had (out of sight to the bottom right) a huge arctic willow removed and the well past their prime, 40+ year old lilacs cut down to allow the youngsters room to stretch and strut their stuff.

So one daughter and I have hand picked out half a garden's worth of *beach rocks* and moved them from one side of the garden to the other (doubling the rocks depth on the right). I dug out endless numbers of small trees and bushes that were worthless and bagged them up. I've dug a hole by that white trellis thing to transplant a Rose of Sharon bush from my front yard and am so grateful I trimmed back the Climbing Hydrengia and the Concord grapes last month or I think I'd have gone mad. We have 4 huge bags of yard waste just from this small patch of ground.

After transplanting the bush I will then dig up that grassless area, bring soil around from the mound sitting on my driveway and after working it in...re-seed the lawn.

The front is a MAJOR undertaking...I haven't a photo but we've finally got to ripping out all the vegetation under the windows and dumping wheelbarrow fulls of fresh soil into a garden that hasn't been worked in over 20 years. I have no less than 4, meter high, SACKS of day lily bulbs going out with the *garden trash* today.

Several plants were replanted elsewhere, but this area is NOW going to be my veggie garden. After 10 YEARS of saying I'm going to do it I HAVE. :)

*I don't like to be rushed you know*

The work that still needs to be done out front is mind boggling and I can only think one day at a time. I have a mental schedule ~ since there is a very logical order to do the work in, because we were given a movable basketball hoop. Now that I have the measurment for the base I need to build (cut out the heavy clay soil & make a base with rocks and brick) the spot in the garden by the driveway where it will stand ~ so the family can play ball on the expanded asphalt.

THEN the retaining wall needs to be built.....that means hauling rocks (flagstones) and of course then it's time to attack the perenial bed in earnest and ...well plant the veggie garden and...and...etc.

Once everything is done I can turn my attention BACK to the backyard and work on the flagstones back there...then back to the front to strip the front porch, repaint it (since the people I hired to do it last year did a HORRIBLE JOB), replace the outdoor carpeting at the top (which is there because some ass put tiles onto the cement 20 years ago and it's a hazard to your health as it ices up in the winter)...

....but that's for June. I don't want to think that far ahead...must concentrate on surviving April and May without breaking any body parts XD

....yeah...been busy ;)

Got the Rose of Sharon dug out of the front and planted (hard to see it against the fence where the ugly white trellis thing is) and....

...then I dug up the back yard with a garden fork. As deep down as the tines go, turned over, soil broken up, weeds removed at the root level. It wasn't too hard slogging...considering it hasn't been dug up in our 12 years here.

Get this...I actually BENT one tine on a fork...had to go to the shed for my 2nd one. THOSE are NOT easy to bend I tell you!! I have to wonder what I hit to cause it to bend so thoroughly *0__0!

Anyway..I'm leaving it till tomorrow to give my shoulder a chance to rest ~ then it's bringing in soil from the front, turning it over again, raking, seeding and moving on to the next project ~ while keeping my fingers crossed that I'll get some grass growing back here before the season moves into regular warm days and past optimum grass sowing weather.

*whew*