Spring Gardening
It’s spring and I AM SO HAPPY! Spring and summer are by far my most favourite seasons. The past winter was really tough for me. The craziness began last July-August when we bought the house, and it hasn’t much subsided since. Buying, packing, moving, getting settled, fostering Leeloo, adopting Piper, having the hardwood floors installed, Christmas, building the shed, losing my job, fixing up the suite, and now the landscaping, front deck and suite patio; these eight months have been extremely stressful, and I’m ready for a little break. Once the yard is fixed up, there aren’t any huge projects left for me to work on, except painting some of our rooms, which isn’t really a pressing item.
A week and a half ago we had our severely compacted “soil” (well, clay really) tilled. Then we had 10 yards of garden top soil delivered, which last weekend we raked out and graded. It was rough work. My back and right arm suffered. (Side note: Ever since I sanded the suite, my right arm has been sore, and at night when I sleep it goes numb. Sometimes my left arm numbs too, and I can’t sleep on my tummy or back very well, so…yeah, I haven’t been sleeping very well for the past three weeks.) Last week I studied gardening magazines and the Internet for information on what types of plants would flourish in our yard. I spent a small fortune on shrubs, trees, seeds, ground cover, grasses and other plants, as well as tools, Sea Soil, and such. I’ve even made friends with the lady who owns a small nursery near our house! I keep running into her in town and we stop to chitchat — she’s so sunny, I just love to see her.
Ty took Thursday off, and we rented a truck to get the rest of the supplies we needed. On Thursday we picked up our new lawn, two yards of bark mulch and a truckload of limestone rock. On Friday, in three loads, we got another two yards of bark mulch, two yards of top soil, a yard of flatstone gravel, four barrels of sand, another truckload of limestone and blue rock, 16 18-inch round pavers, and nine concrete caps. We did that all in four hours. All those rocks? We had to pick through a huge pile of them and carry them to the truck. After we finished unloading, we each had a beer, went to Mom’s for lunch, and when I got home I slept in the sun on the chaise for about two hours. Holy crap I was exhausted.
On Saturday, we picked up another load of natural rock (looks like slate), three garbage cans full of sand, and 60 feet of concrete stacking stones for a wall around the driveway. Then we were able to finally start working on the yard, with all our supplies picked up, and so Ty took the clippers to the brush and old, fallen-down fence on the side of the house. I put in some landscaping edging and flatstone rock. It’s starting to look good! (See more photos of the progress at my flickr account.)
More projects planned for today, and tomorrow is our day off. Phew. I’m pooped.
Filed under gardening, landscaping, spring, yard | Comments Off