DIRT

There is nothing quite so rewarding as a good dose of diggin' in the dirt come spring time. By mid summer I am sick to death of garden work, but this time of year I delight in turning over soil and planning what to plant.

For years now I've hated the ugly strip of nasty grass & weeds that lie between the sidewalk and the road along the side of our house. So we finally decided to reclaim it. The area is 20' by 100'. We've spent the past month preparing the area. We killed off all the grass with round-up and then tilled, raked, sifted, tilled again until we had all the old junk out. Then my beloved did the serious work of totally reworking the irrigation. He dug trench along the entire length of it and laid pipe. Connected to that pipe are drip hoses every four feet.

Tomorrow we get to go shopping for trees and shrubs. We'll get the big stuff planted and then lay down landscape fabric. Next will come several truck loads of bark and a few big rocks. Then will come the color splashes - two whisky kegs to be filled with bright annuals and a couple of wrought iron shepard hooks to hold hanging baskets of wave petunias. The final touch will be a series of bird feeders and a bench.

For trees I'm planning on two dogwoods (one pink, one white), a weeping cherry and two SOMETHING (haven't yet decided between magnolia, pussy willow or something else)

For smaller plantings I'm putting in holly, lavendar, purple sage, some varigated ground cover and a few other things I'm still undecided on.

In the fall I plan to plant about two hundred bulbs - lots of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, giant alium and some red-hot poker.

No more mowing and it should turn out looking pretty nice.

I'll have blisters for sure before the weekend is over, but I'm looking forward to doing some serious work on the project. I love spring time when everything starts growing again.

Once we get done on this we are going to completely re-vamp the vegie garden - put in some raised beds and possibly experiment with HANGING tomatoes plants.

I'm sort of an upside down girl, I suppose I can grow some upside down tomatoes. I like the idea of having them up off the ground, not having to fight weeds or bed over to pick them.

We'll see how it turns out.