Seven hours in the sun!

Last Saturday provided something we've not yet had this spring at Murder House: a weekend day of full sun. And so I ended up spending seven hours in the yard, continuing work on the Big Backyard Bed and also starting work on The Final Frontier (the other back corner of the backyard).

My results are not as glorious as those I see in my online garden club, but they sure are transforming our backyard into a nice place to be, so I am more than satisfied.

First of all, it can be useful to recruit some energetic garden helpers.

Okay, guys, time for work!... Uh, guys?

On the other hand, I find my gardening days to be more restful and renewing if I'm working on my own. Also, more bragging rights for you!

Long view of the backyard, looking towards the front.

So what did I get done Saturday? The Big Back Bed. It has no flowers yet, but it is constructed: weeded, edged, mulched, lined with gravel that we sifted out of our own dirt, and decorated with large rocks also excavated from our yard.

The fence side

The full view

Fence side, different angle

Full view with beagle

That one corner by the compost heap where I transplanted a few
hostas and that wild rose

Now, that final frontier I was talking about. The other back corner in our L-shaped backyard. It's dominated by a gorgeous giant pine try, and very little grass survives back there between the pine needles and the dogs. And also, we've found yet another treasure trove of bricks and rocks where, no doubt, someone in the past sort of paved everything back here, and then it got buried over time by leaves and pine needles. In short, this is soon to become a major archeological dig.

Mulch Boy dug up those pavers on the left in disgust before I stopped him. 

Now this little bed is the one you see in the right foreground in the pic above. It's actually not that small, but it is overwhelmed with weeds and (though not visible in this picture) a giant, deeply rooted ornamental grass under all those pipes (this was early spring and I had cut down the old growth).

Wasted space.

In short, there's lots of space back here, and lots of hidden resources, and I want to make this into a nice little area for sitting under a tree with a book.

The dogs have the idea.

So the plan, Stage 1: since Mulch Boy already harvested most of the border rocks of that bed for his stone wall, I raked out the bed, then got Rod on the job to lift out the remaining rocks and muscle that stinkin' ornamental grass out. I am not exaggerating when I say that took over an hour. Those roots were insane.

Oh, and rocks were temporarily located in front of these steps because,
apparently, no dog can resist climbing under these steps and getting stuck.

Next, I dug a trench from the drainpipe out to the farther edge of the bed and filled it with the last of the gravel we'd sifted, so as to drain the water away from the house. Finally, I covered the bed with a tarp in order to hopefully kill the remaining weeds over time (and also remove the temptation to try to do something with the bed right this instant).

Nighty-night

The gravel trench

Inspection

The next scheme: to slowly, carefully, begin excavating in that back corner to find out just how many buried bricks and pavers we really have. To dig up and relocate some of the many hostas. To figure out just how we want to move forward. Should be fun!