into the garden
My little bit of property is a 50x150' lot. The house and carport take up about 30x40' of it, which leaves a front yard about 45x50' and a back yard about 65x50'. The back yard also has a little bit of a slope partway down, with flat areas right behind the house and at the back end of the property. Alongside the house, on the N side, there's only about 5' off the boundary, and 15' on the S side, much taken up with paths. The back yard is fenced.
Yesterday being sunny (sunny garden, rainy quilt, ya know), I raked some leaves away from the house. I should point out that gardening mavens are saying that one needn't rake all the leaves off the grass in the fall, or rather, it depends what your leaves are. Most of mine have been maple leaves, which will decompose over the winter. Therefore it's good for the lawn to leave the leaves on it. As I raked yesterday I saw some leaves with little pinholes all over, spaced with machine-like precision. So I'm happy to take the mavens' word for it. Oak, btw, takes a lot longer to decompose, so if you have oak leaves, you'd better rake. My neighbors have oak leaves, which mean there are oak leaves among my maples, so it's really inertia and not obedience that keeps the leaves on the lawn most of the winter.
I raked the leaves off the flower bed nearest the house, in the front, plus a 4-foot space from the front door to the driveway, in order to lay pavers for a sidewalk. Now, I already have a sidewalk. It runs from the front door straight toward the street -- but it stops cold about 10' away from the street. That is, it goes nowhere. I had all kinds of elaborate plans for it, but they all take money, which I don't have. Yesterday's, and today's, plan is that I lay a new sidewalk myself from the front door to the driveway, and that I use the old sidewalk as a border for my future rose bed, and scatter attractive pots along it and plant annuals & maybe a veg or two, in a most artfully casual and fetching way. Now, to paraphrase the song "There Was an Old Lady", I raked the leaves to expose the grass, I exposed the grass to lay the pavers, I laid the pavers to make the sidewalk -- along which the postman can walk. So I laid 20 pavers, but I didn't dig out the sod like I was supposed to: I just laid the pavers right on top of the grass. So? I have moles. They'll cause the pavers to subside into the lawn very nicely. You should see what they did to the patio in the back yard! My next task is to buy more pavers, 58 in all, to make a 20x3.5' walk, a herringbone basketweave sidewalk with little triangular edges in which I can grow thyme, creeping jenny, clover, and suchlike. And next winter I can shovel this sidewalk instead of the grass, so the postman doesn't slip and break something and the USPS collects alot more from me than 39c per letter.
The maple tree, btw, is toast: it was badly damaged in a snow storm in Nov. 2004, and rather than pay big bucks to prune out the damage then, and then big bucks in a few years to cut it down altogether in pursuit of my 30-year garden plan, I paid the big bucks to cut it down this fall. Not soon enough to keep the leaves from piling up. Next year I'll have only oak leaves and then I'll have to get off the couch and rake them up. Meanwhile, I plan to put a Cladrastis kentukea (American yellowwood, native to NW Missouri) in the middle of the front yard, clear of power lines, sidewalks, and maple roots; and a witch hazel, a spring-blooming variety, right next to the front door in front of the chimney bricks that go all the way down to the ground. IMO that'll make a pretty picture, golden-yellow and/or orangey flowers blooming against all that red brick. The bed already has daylilies & irises and I plan to put in more, plus roses (Alchymist and Applejack, if you must know), asters, and crawlies like the creeping jenny, wild violets, thyme, etc. But this spring it's only the 2 trees, and annual seeds broadcast with wild abandon, to duke it out with weeds.
Yesterday being sunny (sunny garden, rainy quilt, ya know), I raked some leaves away from the house. I should point out that gardening mavens are saying that one needn't rake all the leaves off the grass in the fall, or rather, it depends what your leaves are. Most of mine have been maple leaves, which will decompose over the winter. Therefore it's good for the lawn to leave the leaves on it. As I raked yesterday I saw some leaves with little pinholes all over, spaced with machine-like precision. So I'm happy to take the mavens' word for it. Oak, btw, takes a lot longer to decompose, so if you have oak leaves, you'd better rake. My neighbors have oak leaves, which mean there are oak leaves among my maples, so it's really inertia and not obedience that keeps the leaves on the lawn most of the winter.
I raked the leaves off the flower bed nearest the house, in the front, plus a 4-foot space from the front door to the driveway, in order to lay pavers for a sidewalk. Now, I already have a sidewalk. It runs from the front door straight toward the street -- but it stops cold about 10' away from the street. That is, it goes nowhere. I had all kinds of elaborate plans for it, but they all take money, which I don't have. Yesterday's, and today's, plan is that I lay a new sidewalk myself from the front door to the driveway, and that I use the old sidewalk as a border for my future rose bed, and scatter attractive pots along it and plant annuals & maybe a veg or two, in a most artfully casual and fetching way. Now, to paraphrase the song "There Was an Old Lady", I raked the leaves to expose the grass, I exposed the grass to lay the pavers, I laid the pavers to make the sidewalk -- along which the postman can walk. So I laid 20 pavers, but I didn't dig out the sod like I was supposed to: I just laid the pavers right on top of the grass. So? I have moles. They'll cause the pavers to subside into the lawn very nicely. You should see what they did to the patio in the back yard! My next task is to buy more pavers, 58 in all, to make a 20x3.5' walk, a herringbone basketweave sidewalk with little triangular edges in which I can grow thyme, creeping jenny, clover, and suchlike. And next winter I can shovel this sidewalk instead of the grass, so the postman doesn't slip and break something and the USPS collects alot more from me than 39c per letter.
The maple tree, btw, is toast: it was badly damaged in a snow storm in Nov. 2004, and rather than pay big bucks to prune out the damage then, and then big bucks in a few years to cut it down altogether in pursuit of my 30-year garden plan, I paid the big bucks to cut it down this fall. Not soon enough to keep the leaves from piling up. Next year I'll have only oak leaves and then I'll have to get off the couch and rake them up. Meanwhile, I plan to put a Cladrastis kentukea (American yellowwood, native to NW Missouri) in the middle of the front yard, clear of power lines, sidewalks, and maple roots; and a witch hazel, a spring-blooming variety, right next to the front door in front of the chimney bricks that go all the way down to the ground. IMO that'll make a pretty picture, golden-yellow and/or orangey flowers blooming against all that red brick. The bed already has daylilies & irises and I plan to put in more, plus roses (Alchymist and Applejack, if you must know), asters, and crawlies like the creeping jenny, wild violets, thyme, etc. But this spring it's only the 2 trees, and annual seeds broadcast with wild abandon, to duke it out with weeds.
posted by Carrie | 7:51 AM
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