Have you Tinkled Today?

 Click for larger viewI spent three and a half hours this morning breaking my back, but I am so pleased!  Let’s start this with our boring and useless backyard.  There is no landscaping of any kind back here at all, other than the wonderful grass, most of which I’ll be removing, except for the “jungle”.

The “jungle” is going to be the home of my future “kitchen” garden… where I plant things in smallClick for larger view amounts that I can just dash out the door and grab a bit of whatever.  Mainly herbs, lettuce and spinach, garlic, shallots and onions, etc.

There’s already a watering system plumbed here, and lights (??) not that i need lights.  Jim insists we have to have a fence for the dogs, and I insist that whatever, it cannot be this hideous privacy fence.  It makes me feel like I’m in a cage, and it’s so ugly.  This section you see here behind the “jungle” is facing the road.  I think if we replace the front facing sections with the short (4 foot or so) black wrought iron fence, it will look very nice, keep the dogs in and let all the light in for my future gardens.  The rest of the fence can be whatever… farm fence (woven wire) is fine with me, I just want to be able to see out into the woods.

Click for larger viewSome of the bushes in the “jungle” were huge.  I don’t know what they were thinking when they crowded them in here like this.  There were three large holly bushes in here, and I detest holly.  Those I didn’t bother trying to save, I took the loppers and cut them back, then dug them up.  Everything else, I hope to save.  The barberry bushes were large and I had to amputate the roots severely to get them out, so I don’t know if they’ll survive the transplant or not, but I planted them out front around the trees and now have a basis to begin beds around the trees as well.  But there it is, I got them all dug out except for the border grasses, which I’m not ready to transplant yet but hopefully I can get them down this month as well.

At the end of the sidewalk is the ugly shed, which we may or may not move, and the even uglier dog kennel, which is definitely going away.  It sits atop a concrete slab, with water and electric, and Jim and I are going to tear it down and put our greenhouse there, I have to measure it but either a 10’ or 12’ by 16’ or so should fit there, and will look much nicer.

Between the patio and house are these funky little planter areas.  These get roughly 2-3 hours of west sun in the afternoon,Click for larger view and that’s it.  I have no idea what I want to plant here that will do well.  This huge banana looking plant (above photo) shot up this summer, courtesy of the previous owners.  Again… what were they thinking?  Excuse the mess… we had quite a downpour last night and these little beds overflow and make a mess.  When we moved in here in the spring, there were no gutters on the house, and when it rained hard, the roof is directly over these and you want to talk about a mess!  Since we added gutters to the house, it’s minimal.  The patio goes under water though, as the yard drains downhill to the back of the house (doh) and we have to come up with a drainage solution that looks nice, before I can put a bed around the patio and back of the house.

Click for larger viewHere’s some of the plants after I transplanted them out front.  These are the larger ones that I hacked off the roots, so I don’t know if they’ll live or not, but I figured it was worth trying to save them.  Behind them you can see three mounds, those are the bare root pecan trees we planted.

And here’s our mulberry tree we had to have.  We both have fond memories of feasting on theClick for larger view berries along side the road as children.  We know they’re messy, which is why we planted it away from everything, near the road.  Maybe future kids will stop and have a treat when they pass by as well.

It drizzled lightly all morning while I was working on this, but an hour after I finished, it poured!  How lucky was that!  Perfect weather for transplanting.

 Click for larger view These are some of the smaller bushes that came out of the “jungle” in back, around the other trees along the driveway.  Whatever doesn’t survive I will replace, and I plan to expand these two areas, filling in (outwards) with shorter plants, flowering bulbs, etc.  The trees are not nice trees but they are better than no trees as they provide some shade, so I’d like to draw the eye away from them below, where I can control how it looks.

And last, my box of fabrics arrived last night.  These are mostly blenders, and several solids, Click for larger view  all three yard cuts except the orangish fabric in front.  It’s just a yard, and I got it specifically to make pumpkins with.  I have several patterns with a pumpkin motif, I haven’t decided which I want to make yet, but orange isn’t a color I normally have.  This is a nice muted orange I can live with.

My chair that I ordered for beside the fireplace shipped today!  And also our beehives!  I’ll have to get some stain to paint the hives with so they’ll be ready come spring, and with luck we’ll be able to get a couple of nuc’s… bees are getting hard to come by.