Larry’s Log

May 18 2008

Gardening

I spent the weekend working in the yard. After seven years of living here I’ve never had the time to do more than just the simplest maintenance and even some of that has fallen behind. With the change in jobs I’m looking at more time available at home and I’m also looking at two things that I really need to give more attention to, cooking and gardening.

So this weekend I’ve reworked the landscaping in the front of the house and created a planting bed at the side of the house and planted some tomatoes, peppers and herbs there. It’s been a long time since I’ve had my hands in soil like this and I find that I like it. Even the cussing I did was more of a relief of built up tensions than a display of frustration.

The landscaping at the front of the house consists of two areas on each side of the front door where some shrubs had been planted. Chinese privet was planted on both sides of the front door with a holly at the corner. All of this had grown so big that there was no way of trimming it back and it still look decent so I cut it all down last fall. As expected more of all of it has popped back up from the roots left in the ground. I dug up as much of the roots as I could this weekend, amended and turned the soil and then planted some periennials there.

While turning the soil I discovered what the guy that built the house did with all the left over bricks and trash from building the house. I found a pretty good sized pile of bricks buried just a few inches under the surface. I also found a drop cloth in surprisingly good shape for being buried for around fifteen years. Why do builders do stuff like this?

All the digging left me fairly tired but it felt good. This week after work I plan on tackling the mess at the back of the house. Blackberries are sprouting up everywhere. I’ve tried to keep them contained because I love fresh blackberries with pancakes and cereal but I don’t know that having the plants take over my yard is worth keeping this one patch for having fresh blackberries for three weeks out of the year.

It feels good knowing I don’t have to head to the airport any next week. I’ll be traveling the following week but this should only come up every four to six weeks. Let’s see if I continue enjoying this gardening through the summer and fall.

Tags: gardening