May 2-4 Weekend

This past weekend was a busy one for us. We went down to my Nanny's to help her do some outside things.   She had a long "hunny-do" list for John, which included putting shelves up in her new garage, getting propane for the BBQ, fixing the base of a lighthouse my Poppy had built.  He also found other things, such as trimming back some trees and mowing her lawn, to add to the list.  While he was doing all of that, I worked on her gardens, cleaning up one under a blue spruce in her backyard and then another against the back of her house and planting a couple of plants she had.  My mom goes down and does the majority of her garden as her mother's day gift to her, but since she hadn't gone down yet, I thought that I would get it started, so there wasn't as much for her to do.

We were able to get a lot of things accomplished in a short amount of time, which was really nice. I wish we lived closer so that we could help her out more, especially since my Poppy is gone, but I know that even a weekend like this, she really appreciates.  Plus it is really nice to get to visit with her, and as an added bonus my sister was there and my aunt came over for dinner!

We came back early on Sunday so that we could hit up the stores before they closed, as we did not have a lot of food in the house, plus we needed a few things so that we could continue work on the closet on Monday.  After we got everything and had a bit of a rest, I got John out to help me put some flowers in the garden under the tree.

Let me back up a bit.  Tuesday night I began cleaning up the gardens, as I knew I would be away on the weekend and not have enough time to get everything done.  When I cleaned up under the tree, I discovered that the majority of the flowers we put in the garden under the tree did not survive.  I was a little dumbfounded as we worked it up a lot and put a lot of new soil in (you can read all about it here).  I decided that I would pick up some more plants when I picked up the mulch that night and see if I could get them coming back.  I only picked up three because I wanted to see what would happen, as I really thought it was strange that the other ones did not survive the winter.  Well, when I went to go dig the hole for the first one, I realized why all but three of the original plants had died (and I'm not even sure that two of those three will survive...), the tree roots had taken over and there was hardly any soil!  It was like all the work John and I put into it last year did not even happen!  Needless to say I was not happy.  I was only able to get one of the plants I bought in and decided I would get John to help me.  As I thought I needed my big, strong husband to dig his way through the roots and help me plant the two little plants I had...Turn out the roots won!  Knowing that nothing was going to grow there, we came up with a new plan...put in another garden!

You see, we have this patch of grass which is directly under the tree which would never grow very well and we had been toying with the idea of putting in another garden, well Sunday night we decided that we would do that.  We had some extra bricks in our backyard, so John brought some up, and we roughly placed them where we wanted them.  John also dig up most of the grass and got it ready to make it into a garden.  Monday morning, I hit up the garden center nice and early (it's starting to become a tradition for me) and picked up garden fabric, soil, more mulch, and more plants.  We decided that we would put the spotted nettle plants in the new garden, as we really like them and know that they grow nicely in that general area.  I also needed a few annuals for my garden box in the front, so it was convenient to get it all done.

I spent about 3 hours picking up the stuff and working on the gardens, while John worked a little on the house (until it turned out he bought the wrong sandpaper for his sander and could not get very far with it) and mowed and weed wacked the lawn.  Here are some pictures from our productive Monday!

Beginning of the new garden!

The garden under the tree which has virtually none of the new soil
which we laid down last year.

Trunk full of goodies for the garden!

Part of my work from Tuesday night. Trimmed it back and
put mulch around it.

Put the bleeding hearts in a few weeks ago, as I took
them out for the winter, placed them in pots and put
them in the backyard garden.  They survived the winter. YAY!

Looks a little bare compared to last year, but at least it looks
nicer with the mulch down.

Soil is all in and ready to go!

Garden all finished.  Looks pretty nice.

All the gardens really opens up the entrance way
to the house.

Flower box is done.  The annuals fill in
the empty spaces.

Backyard garden all finished.  Was a little easier this year, as
pretty much everything is perennials, so I don't really have to do any planting!

We're trying out asparagus in the veggie part.  Hoping it will turn out!

The chives came back after sitting on the patio all winter.  They are
some pretty strong chives!!
We're also doing dill again as we went through a lot of them this past
year.