Under a Red Roof

Happy Monday, dear reader, and welcome to our June 2016 garden! Though, it would be far more accurate to say our 2016 weed patch. A very small portion of the plants here were anything but the insidious and horrible little boogers. This was after pulling the mega weeds that were as tall as the hubster and filled one third of an equally mega dumpster with their remains. It is before we replaced the cool looking but falling down and totally lacking in privacy fence or jack hammered the hideous and quite unsafe patio. And people wondered why we weren’t inviting them to tea. Our house was a shit hole, that’s why.

Here we are a couple of weeks ago, with all the latest plants in the ground, and the majority of last year’s (seen here – scroll down a bit) doubled in size.

Fifteen TONS of rock delivered!

We got super serious and rented a Bobcat! As you can see from the photo above, it was a rather spritely one, the actual smallest of the lot, at 36″ wide, but perfect for maneuvering around plants and in and out of our back gate. In a hindsight is 20/20 world, we would have done this first, but honestly, the thought never occurred to us before our backs were sore and tired of digging. Hopefully I am now saving you much, much time, and aches and pains, of the bodily and pain-in-the-ass to shovel variety.

The dumpster was 4.5 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and 18 feet long. We filled it about one-half of the way, mostly with rock from the unsafe patio. It was a LOT of trips down the alley. A LOT.

This morning, under the shade of our neighbor’s massive cottonwood. The paths are made from the rock we had delivered. It’s called Sunset Breeze, and we are both super pleased with it!

In front are my hail-mauled peonies, looking rather sad. The two patches of crocosmia are going like gangbusters and making our resident hummingbirds (Rufous and Calliope, mostly the latter) very, very happy! Also pictured, but not easy to discern: milkweed, horehound, foxglove, yarrow, iceplant, mallow, feverfew, honeysuckle, red birds in a tree.

I really couldn’t be more in love with the way it’s coming along and delight in thinking about every plant growing bigger and even more beautiful. Our red hot pokers, for instance, only made five flowers last year. They’re on their way to more than fifteen this time around! It is worth every bit of effort to walk along the freshly laid paths and admire the flowers teeming with bees and butterflies and to watch the scores of birds, squirrels and rabbits flitting happily about. As our friend Travis says, “It’s like a Disney movie!”

There is still much to be done, like moving the rock that delineated the paths before the addition of sunset breeze, putting weed barrier and rock down in the fenced garden, planting more plants, moving a couple shrubs, finishing the woodwork on the patio, building a shed for our bicycles (currently stored in the basement), and possibly getting a wee patch of grass for Juniper Beulah to roll in. Soon, I hope!