More Landscaping Update

Well, we're rushing around getting ready for the movers to come tomorrow, but I wanted to put up a few last photos to remind myself of some of the landscaping we've done since last summer. We wanted to do much more, but then found out we were moving. I would have liked to till up the garden area and really plant it, but just had time to clear out the brush, pruned up the blackberries and raspberries and put in a few heirloom tomatoes and a compost bin.

BEFORE garden area

AFTER garden area

AFTER garden area with compost bin

Last Fall front flower bed after a lot of work

Last Fall side flower bed after a lot of work

This Spring flower bed after some plantings and mulch

The plantings don't really show in these photos since they are small, but I hope to come back someday and photograph them when they are bigger. You can't really see the hardy roses I put in or all the starts of flowers my friend, Marie, gave me. You can just see in the side yard how well the irises seem to be doing since I transplanted them from other places in the yard last fall.

Landscaping Update: The SCARY SLOPE

Before

I wish I had gotten better "BEFORE" pictures, but this is a photo of what we have come to call

"THE SCARY SLOPE." 

It came with the house in Utah we bought last summer. The photo above is after my husband lit into it with a machete. Imagine what it looked like creeping over the sidewalk before that. Most of the slope is hidden behind the trees. Notice you can see a small part of the random rock pile, the stray redish scalloped concrete tree surround pieces in the foreground and the volunteer sumac leaning over the sidewalk. Then call your attention to the tangle of crown vetch cascading down the slope covering over frightening hummocks of overgrown trailing cottoneaster bushes. Now imagine lots of little scampering sounds coming from somewhere deep inside the tangle with the cat from across the street acting as a frequent sentinel and pouncing on things periodically. One of the first things the adjacent neighbor told us when we met him was that he wouldn't mind if we did something with that slope.

All spring I've been spending hours working my way into that mess with loppers and thinning it out. It was just a tangle of long snakey cottoneaster tendrils. Imagine my surprise when I eventually discovered there was some pretty rock terracing under some of it.

After. See my neighbor's house? He's pleased he doesn't have to view that tangle anymore.

This slope really needed some sort of feature to make it interesting. Since my husband wouldn't buy me the huge and expensive natural stone obelisk that I've been admiring at the stone yard, I decided to recycle that heap of rocks and scalloped tree surrounds into terracing for a pathway that would meander up the slope and through an opening in the rose of sharon hedge into the front yard. My son liked taking this secret shortcut when coming home from school even before the trail was built. Here is the new trail (yes, there were that many rocks heaped up on the slope in a pile). The steps are covered in landscape fabric and mulch to keep them looking nice.

The rose of sharon hedge at the top is just starting to leaf out. It will be bloom from late July through frost.

The concept for the landscaping here is to keep it "meadowy" and to incorporate a few plants that will look well in late summer and fall. My friend let me "shop" for plants in her verdant yard. Alongside the trail I've put in several white daisies and a couple of purple aster plants that I'm hoping will naturalize into the grass. I still need to find a bush that will give me nice autumn color and winter berries for the birds for the left side. We planted two dwarf apple trees to shade the slope (and very likely feed the deer).

One of two new dwarf apple trees. The crown vetch is difficult to get rid of, but now that we can actually reach it with a trimmer it will help.

"Secret" entrance through the hedge.

Once the daisies and asters take hold and start to spread there will be flowers along the path softening the hard edges.

Like I mentioned most of these materials were recycled from my own yard. The cost has been $26 for two small bare root apple trees, $5 in mulch purchased from the landfill where they chip up tree branches and trimmings that people drop off, $13 for landscape/weed fabric and $6 for pins to hold the fabric down. And did I mention the MANY hours of hard work?

Totally worth it ☺

We'll be moving soon so it may be years before I see how it all turns out with the plants growing. I'm glad I took the time though.

Sue

Household Hint: Preserving Memories--School Art

It's the end of the school year once again.  My son, Caleb finished up 4th grade. The last week of school he brought home armloads of artwork and projects from the year. Sure, we're saving some of it, but we're moving soon and we're doing the pre-move purge. As much as we like them, the 2 1/2 ft long fish with glitter and the "parade float" made from a shoebox and Legos must go. The memories can be preserved with photos. We went outside this morning and snapped photos of him with his artwork. Now that we have lasting documentation he's happy to let some of them go. Later we'll scan some of his schoolwork papers and save them as files on the computer.

Progress Report on the Landscaping

When we bought our home in Utah last summer this flower bed by the front steps was a slope of dirt and weeds. We'll be moving soon and I won't get a chance to see how all of my hard work looks once it's had a chance to fill in, but I thought I'd show some photo updates.

How it looks now all terraced and with new perennial plants. The Alberta spruce is a dwarf variety that should only get to be about 5 ft tall. There is another set further back on the other side of the front steps as well. The carpet phlox in the upper portion should gently cascade over the top of the rocks

In progress last autumn. I hauled rocks from elsewhere on the property in to terrace the bed.

Hoping these flowers fill in nicely this summer. The purple and yellow flowers will complement the house color.

Composting: easier than you might think

If you read gardening books, articles and websites today they'll almost always lead you to believe that composting is an art and science for those who are willing to put in the time, space, money and effort. They make you think that the rest of us are better off buying it in big plastic bags at the garden center. What they are not telling you is that your great grandma did just fine with her composting by tossing scraps and yard waste in pile in the corner of her garden or yard.  When she needed some compost, she dug down a little until she found the layer where the compost was ready and used it.

My very simple and cheap compost bin. I planted morning glory seeds around the outside, but they are not up yet.

Great grandma didn't have a $150 black plastic bin that spins, she didn't have a two or three bin system with compost in various states of readiness, she didn't buy special worms, she didn't worry about getting just the right combination of "brown" and "green" materials to compost and she didn't worry about keeping the moisture level of her pile or the temperature at optimum levels. She didn't run her leaves through a shredder before adding them to get them in the right size pieces. Wonder of wonders, she still got great compost for her garden for FREE! She didn't even have to haul it home. She didn't put her potato peelings into a plastic bag to haul to her trash can to set out on the curb getting smelly in the sun and then sitting in a landfill not composting for decades.

We moved into the house we live in in Utah late last summer. I didn't take time to build a compost bin then so I just picked a spot in the garden area and tossed my kitchen scraps in a heap every day. We just have three people in our family so we don't create all that many scraps. Even with all the fruit peelings from canning, pumpkins from carving, daily coffee grounds, egg shells and tea bags and everything else I just had a small pile by spring. Even in frigid Utah temps and utter neglect it continued to break down into nice black compost.

Above you'll see a photo of the inexpensive, easy compost bin I just built. It wasn't really necessary that I have a bin at all, but it does help to keep stray dogs and magpies out. The magpies tend to scratch through it for earthworms and spread the pile out. It also keeps light weight things like dry leaves from blowing out. Simple containment is nice.

To build this bin I reused a metal fence post that I found on the property to anchor it and keep it from blowing away in our high winds. I then staked it in three places with some plant stakes I had. A couple of inexpensive pieces of rebar from the building supply would work just as well. I purchased a roll of 3'x10'  1/2" grid wire from the building supply, gently unrolled it easing it out of it's tight roll, looped it into a circle and used a few plastic zip ties to fasten the ends together. Then I put the wire part over the fence post and staked a plant stake on the other side to secure it in between the two. I used some other plant stakes to pin the other sides down. $16 in materials for this bin that is sturdy and plenty big enough for us.

As I mentioned, there are very few "rules" of composting that you truly have to follow. Here are some common sense things to think about:

1) keep animal products and greasy food out of your compost. Animal products will smell nasty and anything fatty or greasy will keep things from composting properly.

2) don't keep your pile too damp or put too many "wet" or "green" things in it. This will produce a compost that smells like manure and attracts insects. You don't want that. You want compost that smells like good, rich dirt. Layering in "brown" things like dried leaves, corn husks or shredded newspaper will keep this from happening.

3) light and ventilation will keep nasty things like fungus gnats and flies out of your pile. Those black plastic bins are pretty good for dry climates, but an open bin can be better for other places.

4) stirring the pile will help everything break down faster, but if you only have one bin it will mix the nearly done and just added things together which will keep you from using the compost. For a one bin system you can stir it all up well in the early autumn and then just layer things in the rest of the year. In spring you can dig down to find the layers of completed compost.

5) if your pile is very dry it won't break down. This is only really a problem in very dry climates or sheltered areas.

6) consider above factors when siteing your bin. Mine is at the edge of a wooded area to keep it partly shaded so it won't dry out too much and partly sunny so it won't stay too damp. It's about 30 ft from the kitchen door so taking scraps out is easy and right by the garden for convenience.

We'll be moving soon so we didn't till up the garden space.  I couldn't resist planting some heirloom tomatoes for the next residents anyway. These concrete scalloped edging pieces were around trees all over the property I removed them and re-used them here.