New Garden- Part 2

I have had a hard time getting things posted lately. I started this post back in April when we were doing the work. I debated whether or not to post it. I have to fight against my perfectionism. When I can’t do something perfectly my initial reaction is usually to just not do it. But I am trying to change that mind set. So with that in mind, I am just going to post this. For anyone who might be interested. Our garden is growing really well now and I hope to post all the progress up to this point.

Well, it has been kind of crazy and unpredictable weather. But it turned out to be a perfect day for clearing out the rest of our garden. It was overcast and cool, which made it nice for wearing sweaters and working hard. After just an hour or two we could already see a big improvement. I made the comment that “it was amazing what a little digging could do”. Well, as usual, I said something before thinking about how it might actually sound. What I was trying to say was that it was amazing what hard work can do, even without money or a lot of equipment. But that isn’t what I said and Tyler has not let me live it down. It has been more than, “a little digging” but I must point out that Tyler does make it look easy. But it is helpful to keep in mind that you don’t always have to spend money to make improvements in your yard. You just have to invest some sweat into it. 🙂 Now I have to work extra hard so I can prove that I am doing more than “a little digging” to contribute. ha ha

In case you didn’t see my other post, or if it has been a while, here is a reminder of what this spot looked like when we started.

Here is what it looked like before we started.
This is where we were at the end of our last post.

So, we had already dug up most of the grass and other weeds as well as removing most of the stumps as well as the pile of branches. But there was still a wood pile and along the left you may notice that the fence is falling. So we wanted to address that. Also, the area along the fence moving toward the house had a lot of bushes that we wanted to get out to make room for more plants.

Notice that pile of rocks? Those all came from this area, and that’s not even all of them.

Some of them match the fireplace surround in our house, others match some of the flagstone flooring in the basement. I would really be curious to see what it used to look like, or if this was just a convenient spot to store surplus rock. Anyway, we pulled it all up and piled it in a different spot, ha ha, you know, just until we figure out what to do with it.

Here what it looks like further up. This bush is mostly dead, and it is overgrown with vines, plus it will shade our plants, so it is coming out.

So we took off the vinyl fence and dug up and cut out the vines that were growing between it and the chain link fence that was behind it. Once that was all cleared out we were able to attach the white one more securely to the chain link fence. It is looking much nicer already.

Look at that! The fence is straight.
There is Tyler, doing a little digging. 🙂

It turned out that this bush is melded to the fence. So we can’t take it out completely. But we did dig around it and cut it back as much as we could.

Looking much more open. We started by just cutting all the branches as low as we could.
Here is what it looked like by the end of the day.

We loaded all the branches into the truck and Tyler and the kids took it to the dump. They also picked up some compost and brought it home. Then Tyler tilled the compost into the garden area, which is why it looks so dark. So by the end of the day we had it all cleared out and ready to plant stuff. Making progress.

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