My Weekend’s Work

On typical weekends I would spend some portion of each day working on new jewellery, reading blogs (I have become addicted), visiting with friends, and so on. That’s not the case for the last few weekends. It’s been gardening season around our place.

All the garden beds need attention. I handle the flower beds and leave the vegetable garden and lawn to my husband. We have a very large property for being in town and the flower beds are huge. Almost every year I shrink them down a bit, making the front and back lawns larger. To be fair though, he does have a riding tractor mower for the back yard and our daughter does the front yard.

One space I did make bigger was the shade garden. You can just see the hosta plants coming up between the ivy. (Those are weeds in the bottom left that I still need to pull, just ran out of energy before getting to them)

We used to have an old beat up tiny little shed, maybe 5 feet tall, that we stored the bikes in. When I say tiny, I mean really tiny, and beat up to the point the door would not even swing shut anymore. I guess the previous owners had built it as a play house. It was right beside a freeform sandbox which was overgrown and full of roots when we bought the house.

Anyhow, we took both the tiny shed and the sandbox out last year. The space is so shaded it was hopeless to try to turn the area into lawn so I started to expand the shade garden, by moving some of the hosta that had overgrown their location and adding a bleeding heart and ferns. This year I did a major clean up of the weeds trying to creep in, planted more shade loving plants, and added a permanent resident.

This cute little hare reminded me of the hares that many bead artisans have been making lately.  When I saw him at Lowes I couldn’t resist. My daughter, who is a huge furry baby fan, was with me and helped to make that purchase happen by putting him in our buggy. The grounds isn’t quite level so I stuck a flat rock under the one edge for now. As plants fill in and get added he’ll be in his own little forest. I am already planning more sculptural additions so there will be some sort of company too.

The big project this spring is a brick patio that I’m building around our (still) in progress deck. The idea is for my husband to be able to drive the tractor wheel onto the brick when cutting the grass. No whipper snipping will be required, a task we all hate. The bricks are finally all set, though I’m still fussing about the final shape. And boy do those steps need a good cleaning from all the sand and dirt being tracked in. They’re supposed to be stained black, not all mottled and white looking.

Of course I forgot to put the edging in place before starting. I did find a no dig edge fastener though that will be going in this week / weekend. I’ll just have to lift the outside row of bricks, put the edging down, add a little more week block fabric and put the bricks back again and redo the grass. That’s nothing compared to the effort so far. It has taken almost 2 springs off and on to get this far. Less time than the progression of the deck. (Hint hint honey)