Several changes have taken place around the garden and yard this week. Most were due to a domino effect.
For starters, I can now pull into my own side of a garage, a first in almost a decade. It gets even better. I can pull into my own side of a garage using a garage door opener AND without having to drive through mud. Yes, folks, the driveway width now matches up with the garage we have.
This little update was supposed to happen a few weeks ago. However, the guy doing it had to delay things a few days while the underground utilities were marked. Then it came to be planting time. Where I am, nothing much takes precedent over planting time if you are a farmer, a family member of a farmer, a friend of a farmer who can drive equipment, or any in any way associated with the farming community. So we waited.
A call on Tuesday morning changed all that. By supper time I was able to pull into my garage without having to drive through the ever present mud puddle. I also no longer needed to use the fairly redneck style of a ramp setup I had in place to get my car over the several inches difference between the ground level and the garage floor. Oh the issues you run into when updating old parts of a house.
While planning the extension of the driveway, I asked if he would be willing to leave the dirt on site. Turns out that little question fill a need we both had – I needed just a bit more dirt in low places along the garage and he needed somewhere for the dirt to go. By keeping it onsite the job also was a bit cheaper and was faster to complete.
With the dirt spread and rain in the forecast, the next morning I knew what my focus would be – spreading grass seed. This satisfied something my husband has been wanting me to address – the weeds in the yard along the side of the garage. This is the place where a very deep trench was dug to put in the foundation for the garage part of the house. With a deep trench comes a lot of dirt to move. This had been piled along the edge of the trench, thereby killing any grass that had been there. Over the past few months, the weeds have taken over.
Having the dirt from the driveway spread out in this area meant that I did not need to spend time loosening up the dirt and filling in depressions. Rain meant that I did not need to spend time every day watering the seed. So, while it is not the best time of the year to plant grass seed, it was the time I had available unless I wanted to wait several months and let weeds take over.
With grass seed spread, I moved on to getting ride of several buckets of wood chips sitting by the shed. These were added to the shade garden at the front of the house.
After dumping the buckets I decided to take “a few minutes” to address some issues in this bed – mulch needing spread out, weeds and tree sprouts removed, sticks picked up and stepping stone laid back out. Amazing how “a few minutes” to finish a gardening task never takes just those few minutes.
With the driveway installed, I no longer worried about leaving the spray painted marks from the utilities. However, when I went to mow the grass, I found out that my weed eater no longer seems to be working. Flashbacks of The Great Replacement washed over me. After a breath or two I calmed down and moved on. Hand pulling weeds in the worst areas would not be the end of the world. Also, our edger will take care of the ones along the curb. A new weed-eater will be in our near future. These are the things of life that I never envisioned being a part of being an adult. Sort of like property taxes and insurance.
Time was saved not using the weed-eater, so I spent it instead spraying the weeds that have popped up in the driveway. I used to pull these by hand, not liking to use chemicals for every little problem I come across. I may still do so, but wanted to see if I could save time right now by using a spray and perhaps save time later by them not coming back as quickly.
This is a point where my husband and I disagree. He is all for spraying. I want to see if I can find other solutions. It may have to do with our backgrounds, or with various studying/reading I have done over the years, or maybe the difference in how we view our time. Either way, we have finally come to an unspoken agreement – as long as I do not complain about it, ask him to do it, or leave it so it starts looking really bad, he does not care one way or the other. Some areas I have succeeded in, others (like the violets in the yard) I have failed at. I guess we are not all perfect. 😉
In other parts of the garden, the onion sets planted last week have sprouted, little tomatoes are beginning to appear and the blackberries are blooming. The radish seeds have begun sprouting.
My strawberries also have slugs. Once the rain stops I will try putting a trap out for them. I did not think they were too bad till I saw The Big Guy. He was so fat and slimy, he would have covered the finger nail on my pinky finger. That was the point where I resolved to do something about it, these were not just one or two little guys doing the damage.
I also went gung-ho on trimming up a fairy rose bushes that are in the middle of a side yard. They have really needed trimming, not exactly a job I jump for joy at though due to all the thorns. Last month I did a poor job of beginning the trimming, in hope that new side canes would form where I wanted them before I cut off more of the canes where I did not want them. In the end it only looked bad. So, I jumped in … well, not literally. Remember, thorns.
I did a more aggressive trim this week, also removing a lot of virginia creeper and hackberry sprouts that had been hiding among the canes. Once it was all cleaned out it looked much better. Emptier, but better. A few days later I noticed the roses blooming, so apparently my trim job did not shock it too much. We will see if I think the same thing come the end of summer.
