Catching up.

Happy Birthday Dear Haaarleeey, Happy Birthday To Yooooouuu..

September 9, 2011, Harley's 2nd birthday.

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted, I've been so busy but I feel that I haven't accomplished much!  What an awful feeling!  The landscaping is still not done, it's the never ending project, and it haunts me.  Instead of sitting here, I should be out there, even if it is raining! 

So, what have I been doing?  I've been rockscaping when I've had time to work on the landscape, which means that I've been recovering "my rocks" from all over the yard from flower beds and the pond which are being discontinued!  Silly as it may sound, these rocks are special to me, some of them I've had for a very long time, and quite a few have a story behind them!  I have moved them from various locations whenever I have done away with a flower bed and started a new one, and they originally came into my yard through lots of searching, digging, and very hard work to bring them home.  I'm not about to discard them now!

I finally have the border finished, with one side being a "rubble wall".  Any rock that weighs more than 40 lbs. was moved with the hand truck, and there were quite a few of those!  Several times I had to get Chris to help me, and he'd roll the rock onto the hand truck for me, some will never be moved, unless I hire someone with a backhoe.  The secret to rockscaping using the hand truck method is all in the placement, load the rock on the hand truck so that when I reach my destination I can just tip the hand truck and the rock rolls right into place, no adjustments needed.  I got pretty good at it!  Rockscaping is like putting a puzzle together, a really heavy puzzle that has the potential to harm you if you're not careful ( and I did! Smashed my middle finger on my right hand between two rocks, and the nail eventually fell off!).  A lot of thought goes into which rock to put beside the last one, I study the edge of the rock already in place, then walk around looking for another rock that will fit in right beside it- nice and snug.  It is a very long process, and I want to get it right the first time,occasionally I don't like what I see and start again.

Getting started. This picture was taken over a month ago.

  

The square marked out by landscaping fabric is where I want the only flower bed I'll have to be, and I'm planting it with shrubs and carefree flowers like daylilies.

This picture taken today shows the completed rubble wall and border. I've moved all shrubs and trees I plan to keep and am working on the daylilies and rock arrangements on the inside of the square.  I have a big pile of mulch to finish it off with.

I have 6 tons of flagstone waiting to be laid, they will be a patio off the deck and a walkway from the sidewalk on the other side of the fence to the patio.  That will have to wait until next spring.  Any rocks that I don't use will be made into another rubble wall along the edge of the woods.  Any daylilies I don't use will be planted along the edge of the house.  I know I won't be done transplanting this year, I don't have anywhere to move the hundreds of daffodil bulbs to, I wanted to plant them randomly through the woods just off the yard, but it turns out I can't dig a hole in the woods because of all the tree roots!  I may just plant them along the edge of the yard, then when they're done blooming they can mowed over... but for now, they can just stay where they're at.. there's always tomorrow.

And when I wasn't moving rocks, or working at church, or whatever I did all summer, I was working in the garden.  I was surprised at what grew in the horrible clay soil there!  I had about 3 bushels of sweet corn that we ate right away or I froze to eat later this winter.  I pickled cucumbers and beets, and made spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, and salsa, and canned green beans.  The potato harvest is horrible, as is the pepper crop.  The pepper plants grew beautifully but the sweet peppers produced nothing, and the Jalapeno's are just getting started.  Same with tomato plants, very little production.  I planted one plant each of 12 heirloom varieties for the fun of it, at least half I will never grow again, my favorite for sauce was "Box Car Willie", the prettiest tomato in the garden was "Big Rainbow".  The green beans are still producing heavily (please stop!).  I also froze a little butternut squash, I'm the only one who eats it so I didn't need much. And I still have lots of onions that will grow for another month or so. As always, I look forward to canning and freezing, and a month later I'm looking forward to it being over! 



There are 5 varieties of tomatoes in this picture, not counting the sweet cherries behind the pile of beans. From these few tomatoes I made enough sauce for seven pizza's.  Those are Jalapeno peppers on top of the tomatoes.