Green Thumb

I have really good news about my gardens! I have a plan for revamping the front yard that involves no grass! The neighbours are very interested, now I just need to price it out. I want to do a combination of paving stones with ground cover, like thyme. I'm very excited... but I think it's a next summer project.

My current project is to mow the grass... sigh... my flatmate who has been doing it this summer is away working in the field... good for him, bad for me. I won't mow it today cause I am home sick, but perhaps later this week.

I have good news about the dead shrubs in the front yard. My flatmate cut down the mostly dead tree and dug up the root ball, wire mesh and all!!! So I planted an Evan's Cherry tree! So far, it is still green. We had to meet the waste removal specialist and put the root ball in his truck because it was too heavy. I thought these specialists were supposed to be really strong!!??

In the back yard, some of you may already know, I had to dig up some of my yard and edging to erect a garden shed last fall. Well the garden shed is doing well, the dug up yard became a haven for weeds... so over my holidays a couple of weeks ago (I know, my blog should have been my first priority) I dug up more lawn... oh right, I aslo dug up lawn and edging earlier this summer so I could put in my corn pots. I found corn requires lots of fertilizer, so although they look good, if I don't fertilize them soon I'm not sure I'll have any corn. I want to use my worm compost, and I have some, it just needs to be extracted from the worm bin. Anyways, you can imagine the yard... smooth lawn and mulch with rubber edging sticking out at various intervals. =) So I dug out the lawn to reform it and put the edging back, I was going to leave the edging out, but really, then the grass roots would spread faster and that would mean more work. Now all that remains to to lay newspaper and wood mulch.

Oh and you may remember all that topsoil I had for give away last year!?! I kept some for my front yard plans that are still just a pipe dream... but they are getting closer, I have gathered numerous rocks for my rock garden wall... a few more trips to friends' farms and I should be good. Anyways, the topsoil was left under a tarp in my back yard as a temporary measure because it was covering the planned location of three saskatoon berry shrubs. Well over my holidays another accomplishment was to move the remaining dirt into roughneck rubbermaid containers... well I underestimated the amount of soil that was left and ended up scrounging bins... 9 in total!!! I used 3.75 to fix the lawn I dug up... that leaves 5.25 for the front yard. But the point is! I was able to plant the remaining three saskatoon berry shrubs and they are very happy... though I suppose I need to check on them. I am happy the shrubs are planted and the soil contained... I now have a number of not very decorative bins in the back yard that are too heavy to move. =)