Beautification in Progress

I have a professed black thumb. I confess that it's typically neglect that kills the poor things. However, I'm excellent at growing weeds! Here's photographic proof!

One of my poor sedum bushes in the midst of all this. 

Our house has wonderful flower beds. They run the length of the whole house and even wrap around the side and go down this small hill. 

This photo was taken before we even bought the house and moved in. See the rock wall running the length of the house and wrapping around? That is the scope of what I'm talking about. 

Well, the weeds are certainly winning this year as evidenced by the first photo I showed. The entire flower bed area is just way overgrown. Wild ivy and morning glories were making good progress at trying to take completely over. I do have just a few big bushes planted - all transplanted from our home up north. 

This week has been a lighter "extra" kid week, as in, I only had my "bonus boys" one day and no extra kids at all the rest of the week. So my boys learned the finer art of pulling weeds, trimming around trees, and cutting down the larger weeds that are trying to take over the hoop house out back. I tell ya, those weeds are determined this year!

For the last three days we have spent a couple hours every afternoon pulling weeds, laying down mulch, and trying to make the place just a bit more presentable. 

Before

After

I ran out of mulch (and steam). We still have the side garden to tackle. There is a lot more of that ivy in there. Although, I have to say, there is something therapeutic about ripping all those weeds out with my bare hands!

Gardening

The boys are in a local 4H group which I love. It allows all three boys to do the same thing at the same time which saves me from having to run them hither and yon to various "age-segregated" activities. This is our second year in 4H and the opportunities they continue to have are amazing.

One thing our group is doing is a Kids Can Grow program (our program is based on the one linked, but is not run the same way). This teaches kids about gardening using a square-garden/raised bed method. Our group of kids were broken in to four teams and they each planted a bed at our county extension office where we have our meetings. We have two Master Gardeners who live close by who have been helping us which is great since most of the adults in the group (myself included) don't have a lot of gardening experience. I should say I do have a lot of experience, but it was mostly the "weeding" and "harvesting" experience from the huge gardens we had when I was a kid. If I ever find a photo of them I'll post.

The kids were also able to plant home gardens and then used the techniques they learned at our meetings to create them. It's been a bit of a hit or miss for us. We were also able to get all the materials we needed including wood, soil, and seed to create all the gardens for all the kids. What a blessing!

Here is what the gardens looked like today - a bit overgrown and full of long grass. You can barely see the containers I have near the bed which hold squash and pumpkin plants.

And here it is mostly weeded with sawdust spread to kill the grass making it easier to maintain the garden. (Still need to figure out what we planted in all of J7's squares. I have a list somewhere!)

I had B14 haul over all the bags of sawdust from my inlaws next door. My FIL has a portable sawmill and we've been milling lumber for our addition. I used about six or seven bags here and will need another 4-5 to complete it. I may break down and buy some bales of shavings to finish it up. While I would have like to have thought ahead and put something down (like a tarp or plastic) I didn't, so I'm making do with what we have on hand. 

We certainly are having fun with the gardens and the boys do help as asked. Their favorite thing to do - of course - is water. Any excuse to use the hose!

My New Garden

I've been meaning to do this post now for a while but I needed to wait until the project was completely done. This is my first home improvement project that we started about three weeks ago. I've wanted a flower garden now for awhile. I finally was able to get started on a weekend when my hubby was home & my FIL was around to help out. My FIL came over with his backhoe & dug it all for me. That was a HUGE help. My oldest son took some of the photos for me.

Watching my FIL start to dig. It was kind of fun! That's me in the blue shirt & hubby is beside me. You can just see our middle son's head above the tractor.

This is the "before" shot of what my FIL left for me to even out & fix in to a flower bed. Still way better than digging it myself!!!

After about two hours of work - this is my "after" flower bed.

The big rock in the middle was dug up when my FIL was digging for me. I wanted to save it to put in the garden. My two small plants all set & ready to go. They are from my sister. Don't ask me what they are - I don't remember! :-)

One more after photo. This is after I hauled five wheelbarrow-fulls of sawdust out from under the sawmill to fill in the flower bed & keep the grass & weeds from growing. My hubby did use the lawn tractor to bring up another large load a few days later. Still pretty pathetic on the plantings.

This was just taken yesterday (6/26/07). I now have some extra color & extra plants. I even have a string fence up so that the dogs will hopefully keep out of it! They can get to running & playing & were going right through it. Yesterday I planted a hyacinth & a zinnia plus a whole bunch of daffodil bulbs that my hubby's grandfather had dug up. It will be pretty next spring. I planted them along the back of the garden & the front.