As The Garden Grows

Spring 2018
This page is a concept in progress.
Like a rare seed waiting to sprout.  We will be worth the wait and anticipation.

Boots On The Ground

This garden is a process, a journey.  Exciting and promising.  Work with reward.  Planning and dreaming. Vision and fulfillment.

The photo progression is as much for myself as to share with you.  It is so easy to see only the ‘current’ status and forget how far one has come.  This is true of life, as well as of this garden.  When I am feeling like there is yet so much to be done I look at the progression and I smile.  I can see the rewards of my labor and the dream coming to reality.

In the beginnig there was ‘space’; opportunity waiting to happen!

The ground was rocky and uneven.  The ‘location’ was out of my everyday route of travel, yet it was ‘so close’.  Up until NOW there  just wasn’t any reason for me to ‘go there’.  Attempts in the past had been given a half hearted effort to bring some sense of purpose to the ‘area’. I had decided to develop a MOON GARDEN.  A garden with all white flowers.  I have seen it done a find it breath takeing.  YES! I will do THAT.  Yet progress was so SLOW.  It just seemed to be missing ‘some thing’. It was NOT happening!  My Moon Garden was just a dream that never look root. Something was missing, like decent soil and excitement.  Then an idea was presented to me by my son in law. Since it was close at hand with water at easy access and in need of ‘development’.. how about a raised bed garden. Something  that I had been thinking about for quite sometime.  WELL… why did I not think of THAT myself?  A perfect idea!

Let the Game Begin 

And so the plan was hatched!  Ease of maintenance was primary. I was reminded, “we’re not getting any younger” (uhum… speak for yourself….lol).  But the point was well taken and supplies were secured.  Industrial grade weed cloth for a start. Buying every leaky stock tank I could find.  Then, delay.  I could not decide WHAT to mulch the weed cloth with.  Past experience had taught me that using wood chips was NOT ideal.  Wood chips decay and turn into ‘dirt’ and weed seeds blow in and take root. OH NO!!!!!!!.  Wood chips would NOT do.  How about gravel? Honestly as much as I like the crunch-crunch of gravel in the old Sherlock Holmes movies I could not wrap my mind or heart around it. Just shoveling tons of gravel into a wheel barrow and dumping it onto a 40 x 40 plus area was a daunting thought.  NOPE, not gravel.  So the plan sat, brooding for almost TWO years.  Dum De Dum Dum.  THEN a solution! RUBBER MULCH! Three pallets of Rubber Mulch later and WE have a garden (well we have three pallets of rubber mulch in the driveway).

The heavy lifting

So now the ‘floor’ has been selected it is time for the ‘furniture’.  I had been collecting old stock tanks for a couple years. What I had was not going to even begin to provide enough planting beds. NO, I needed something BIGGER and QUICK! I had a stack of cinder block, a common raised bed material these days. Problem, they are a bit UGLY.

But function over form won out and so the task of moving the blocks to the garden site began. Pick it up, load it on the mule.  Unload from the mule and carry to the garden.  Thank you Tammy for matching me block for block on the lift and haul – AND – Thanks to a good friend (who’s name withheld, witness protection program and all that 🙂 The block began to turn into raised beds and the vision started to become reality.  Thank you LR

          
Four yards of soil and another four yards of compost and yet ANOTHER four yards of vermiculite and we have . . . DIRT!  Well, shovel by shovel and the loan of the cement mixer and we have dirt. Which is now toted to the beds from the driveway (where the components were DUMPED) to the ‘garden’ in that little yellow wheelbarrow.  Oh,  you say, poor dear, she needed a BIGGER wheelbarrow.  NOPE! could not have managed a bigger one.  With the help of my daughter and grandson we could (after shoveling out half the dirt) lift ‘little yellow’ and dump it INTO the beds and tanks.  PROGRESS is slow but it is sure.
Oh, forgive me for forgetting to mention the UNDER FILL of the beds. UNDER the dirt you will find logs (BIG LOGS) and wood chips. LOTS of wood chips!  Thank you to my son in law and his father for doing the ‘heavy lifting’. Men with heavy equipment are a WONDERFUL thing 🙂

So the day ends with excitement and promise.
Tired and sore but the feeling of accomplishment is SO worth the efforts of the day.

This is where the aid of heavy equipment stops and the shovel will begin.

Tonight the ‘gardener’ will sleep well. Visions of Sugar Peas dancing in her dreams. The smell of good earth filling her senses and a heart full of joy and thanksgiving!

Sometimes you just need to remind yourself:

After the dreaming and scheming and heavy lifting comes the part you did all the dreaming and planning and heavy lifting for.  The actual design work! Laying out the tanks and adding the personal touches that will make planting and harvesting take place in an environment of loveliness.

Hatching an idea and brooding over it for a bit is a part of the journey.  It is the ADVENTURE.  The HUNT. The SCORE.  It is all this that brings a smile to your lips and joy to your heart.

      

More to come!

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