Spring is Here! I watered really good Friday night (See previous post) and this is my reward. I transplanted these little yellow beauties from the back yard several summers ago.When I moved in, I swore up and down that I wasn't going to fool with a yard, but within a year, I couldn't stand the accumulated neglect any longer and launched into a serious yard sorting out program that has been ongoing for the past 7 years.
In the back yard, I cleared out dead wood and cut down "volunteer" seedling trees till the world looked level. I put in edgers around the existing rose bed in front of the storage building, created and edged beds around the climbing roses along the back fence, and created a new bed along the back of the house that I planted with honeysuckles. I began "treeing" the roses that were already there and planted more rose bushes. There were already a scraggle of purple irises in the rose bed, and I discovered a little iris growing right in the middle of the path up the side of the house to the front gate. I relocated it to the rose bed; it not only survived and bloomed (yellow) but prospered and begat many corms. The one above is one of its offspring I relocated to the front. I bought a packet of every color of iris Wal-Mart makes and planted them in the rose bed, too (plus some in the front bed), and my late sister-in-law gave me some of the two-tone purple irises from their yard for my birthday one year, which I also planted. I planted a jasmine vine to climb the trellis by the storage building, and some clematis vines. My brother gave me the old concrete bird bath from their yard. The bowl was cracked and wouldn't hold water so I turned it upside down and made a sundial pedestal out of it for the sundial a friend gave me one year for my birthday. I trained the climbing roses to the fence, and got a happy surprise when a bush I thought dead grew out pink climbers. I was actually able to transplant some of the pink canes into the red bed and they are going to town now too.
In the front yard, somebody had tried to make a rock garden without laying down the black plastic first and the front yard was a mishmash of bricks, *&^%$#! little white rocks and weeds. I dug up about half a pallet of bricks that had been laid out in some arcane design in the rock garden and sifted about half a ton of *&^%$# little white rocks out of the dirt, leaves and 20 years of neglect they had sunk into. I laid a catch basin filled with the rocks along the front walkway to catch the runoff from the roof, then laid out a flower bed beside it. I used the bricks as edgers around my new bed and the bed I created around the crepe myrtles. I put more rocks beside the front door and used eight 12 x 12 cinder block pavers to make a front porch and then used 6 x 12 pavers to continue on to make a walkway along the front of the house behind the boxwoods all the way across to the gate. I pruned and shaped the crepe myrtles, thinned and pruned the boxwood, and planted day lilies, spiderwort, and a honeysuckle in the front bed, which has gradually extended from about a 3 x 5 plot right beside the door, to a 12 x 8 plot that extends almost all the way down the walkway, and then put in a short little cinder block walk from the side walk to the edge of my flower bed so the yard guys can get the mower in to mow the grass I will have in my front yard if it harelips the governor. I paid a friend to cut down all those *&^%$#! holly bushes by the car-port.
This past October, right before my shoulder surgery, I made a new trellis out of rebar and bailing wire (third time is charmed) for the honeysuckle by the door and it has begun climbing it in earnest. I got drip hoses laid in both beds in the front yard and connected them to a "Y" connector by the hose. And I FINALLY got the last of those *&^%$#! white rocks sifted out of the yard and all the dirt pretty much leveled out.
All I've done since then is pick up trash that blows into my yard from the employees and visitors at the nursing home across the street, the clods who live next door, and all the trashy people who drive up and down the street short cutting to the fast food places on the other side of the loop. I desperately need to lay a drip hose in the beds along the back yard fence, and weed all the beds in the back and get them leaf-mulched good. Less urgent is picking up all the *&^%$#! sticks and twigs from my neighbors trees so I can rake the leaves out of the grass and into the flower beds where they belong. I'm going out this afternoon, and at least lay the drip hose and weed that back bed -- which reminds me, I need to charge up the old MP3 player. . . .
