The garden bed
directly in front of the house on the east side was a disaster. And I
don't mean it in the epic, tragic, storybook version like the Titanic.
I mean in the mess and destruction, Hurricane Katrina since, minus
death and injury. We couldn't stand the site of it, and also
kept thinking "it's going to take a ton of work to fix that sucker."
We were right.
Last
weekend, we dug up (and not easily, I might add, since we'd had a very
dry May up to that point) all the old stuff and hauled dirt and roots
and plant bits to the dump. This weekend, we had three tons (that
right, tons) of topsoil delivered, which we moved into place with a
walk-behind skid steer. At $21 an hour, my husband reasoned it was
cheaper than physical therapy. We mixed in compost and raked and
raked. Then, we put in a border to prevent grass from growing back and
laid a weed barrier. We concluded the day at Fiddler's Ridge Garden and
Nature Center (apparently they are old school and don't have website
for me to link to). My husband hates gardening and yard work, so the
highlight of the day was watching him walk around and look at one plant
after another, finally exclaiming, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but
this is kind of fun!"
I'm sorry but I don't have a good "before" picture. I forgot to take one last week, and the garden has been so ugly that I hadn't taken a picture of it since 2008. I looked.
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| Sort of before, which is to say, after the really hard work was done. |
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| After the new topsoil was in place. |
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| Plants sitting out. |
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| The stump still needs to be dug out. |
On the way home from church today, we took the old Moscow-Pullman highway, which we love to do on fine mornings. My son exclaimed "Mama it's so beautiful" when we stopped to take pictures.
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| My son too this picture of the sky! |
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| And these of the wheat fields! |
