Garden Progress!! (We've actually made some finally.)

I hope you all had a happy 4th this last weekend.  Matt and I would categorize ours as lovely!  It was productive and relaxing.  On Sunday we wanted to get a good chunk of work done in our yard.  If you follow along here, you might realize that there hasn't been any substantial work done since.... let me look real quick, the beginning of May.  In between then and now we've thrown a few plants in the ground but nothing that took more than a half hour or so.  So without any more rambling I'll share our progress.

Here's what that looked like when we were finished excavating all the rocks from the ground.  Just a side note, this does not include the 10-20  5 gallon buckets that we dumped into our window wells to bring the rock level up closer to the windows, OR probably another 8-10 gallons worth of rock that my friend Karen came and picked up for her yard.

After filling up a empty flower bed that we have at the front of our home, and adding a few rock beds around the back yard we are left with this.  It's not gone completely, but I think we have found a suitable spot to dump donate our unwanted rocks.  It just so happens to be at the end of the alley behind the garage.  Nice and close.

Rock bed numero uno is between the patio and fence.  You may remember this piece of real estate from when we had a gas leak.

This bed is kinda covered up with things that are kinda heavy. I probably could have moved them but I really just didn't want to.  We have a little plastic edging material around the tree/shrub thing but filled the rest in with rock.  Also, please don't think that those pavers turned on their sides are a permanent fixture in our yard.  We will buy some retaining wall blocks soon, but these worked for now.

The last rock bed encompasses the A/C unit (that needs to be replaced. #sweaty) and disguised eventually.  It runs all the way down the new fence that our new neighbor had installed.  The old one was 30 years old and he has 2 large dogs.  Awesome.  (In case you're wondering, italic = sarcasm.)




I didn't really get a chance to mention the ivy but back before we left for South Dakota. I went over to my other neighbors yard while she was out of town and dug up her ivy then planted it in my yard.  Bwa ha ha ha ha!  Ok, I didn't really steal it, she told me to do that.  We thought it would be a good idea to have ivy growing over the fence we share to help keep things back there a little cooler and to also look more awesome.  I was glad to realize that I had not murdered them in the transplanting process, I've never done that before and had no guidance.  Here's MJ working on the intricate diamond pattern for our ivy to follow. Now we just need that ivy to grow a little faster and it will look beautiful.





Last week I planted my baby moon flower seedlings along the garage.  They are those things that look like baby bean plants, at least that's what everyone else thinks they are before I tell them.  Anyway, they are a type of  morning glory, but white and they bloom in the evening.  Fancy!  The trellis that I came up with will be made out of 1x2 boards painted white spaced evenly out that run the length of the garage.  We bought some furring strips to get started with for about $.80 a piece and got to work.  I sanded and painted them while Matt shoveled rocks.


I also cut, sanded, and painted 6 vertical boards to attach the horizontal boards to.  I painted these the same color as our house trim, which is only a shade darker than the body.  I wanted the finished look to have some empty space behind it so I used some little scrap pieces on the top and bottom to space the vertical supports off of the garage a little.  I pre-drilled the holes before adding the screws, then measured out the spacing and attached them to the garage.  I spaced them all out at 4 ft intervals so that the 4ft mark is centered except for the last one.  That way the 8ft long strips will have at least 3 points that are connected and they will have room to but 2 together end to end.







The first 2 strips had to start at the second vertical support because we have an electrical line and gas line in the way.  I just stapled one end, used a level to make it level, and stapled the other end and the middle.  After that I just used a scrap piece to space the next one out like so.  I also used the same scrap to keep the ends even.




As you might be able to tell, I still have a few more boards to do, but you can start to see where I am going with this right?  AND the best part of the day was that Matt's mom, Darlice, brought us lunch in exchange for our old dining room light fixture.  So after we finished up for the day we enjoyed some champagne.

At the end of the day we felt like we really accomplished something.  If you squint you eyes really hard and hold your breath until you start hallucinating, you can see what it will look like when we are done.  No?  Well we can.  Anyway, I hope everyone had a lovely 4th and played safe this weekend.  Until next week.

-Nikki