Mission Accomplished!

If you garden, it's nice to have your own compost pile.  It's good for your garden, good for the environment, and probably good for your soul.  There's a lovely sense of accomplishment when you "make dirt" and then use it to enrich your own plants.  You avoid filling your municipal landfill with recyclable materials, and you have a place to put all the cleaned-up stuff that comes out of your beds - without filling your weekly trash cans!

At the top of my garden "To Do" list for the past two [probably three] years has been "turn the compost pile".  It's one of those things that is ultimately satisfying, but in the moment ... not so much.

 Before:  all sticks and branches on the left; one the right there's good dirt on the bottom with this season's "new" stuff on top.  This was in September.

There is a convenient corner in the back of our yard - behind the sheds - where I built a compost pile that is 4 x 8.  It's "constructed" of four metal fence supports and the back property-line fence and is actually two 4 x 4 "bins".  The idea is that there would be "old" ready-to-use stuff on one side,  and "new" work-in-progress on the other.  That worked great for the first few years, until we got the chipper/shredder.  

It's one of those "role" things.  Deep in his heart Mitchell thinks that he should operate the shredder, but he doesn't get around to it often.  Recently, I have discovered that it's easy to do, so without discussing it, I just took over doing it.

With the last two weeks of mild temperatures and sunny afternoons, I dragged out the shreader/chipper and then took pitchfork in hand and finally got it done.  It took me three afternoons to get the limbs and sticks shredded and down to small twigs that could be left to decompose.

 This is November.  See how the right side has grown in two months!  It was over my head.

The chips.  About the equivalent of one bag of mulch.

Under the right hand pile was nearly three FEET of good composted soil.

 Chips spread on top of the piles and the left one stomped down ... we're ready to add leaves (on the left) and use the good dirt in the spring to replenish the beds.

And like so many other things that we put off in life, I'm now asking myself why I wasted so much time finding reasons not to just do it!

Wednesday Workdays

How can you beat fall crocus?  They just seem to pop up out of nowhere.  [Well, you could say that about the whole garden, but fall crocus give no prior notice.]

And the zinnias are still going strong and providing at least enough flowers for a weekly bunch on the dining room table.

Now, that it's cooler, I'm back in the mood to work on a couple of projects.  Turning the compost pile has been a permanent resident at the top of the list for at least two years, and I am promising to get it done this year.  Recently we've realized that all of the landscaping timbers that are supposed to provide the border around the back garden have rotten or gotten broken up by the lawn mower guy, so they need to be replaced. 

And, my new project is removing this very overgrown and oversize shrub - Loropetalum 'Pizazz' TM - and re-doing this little corner of the garden. 

I have a ton of PTO built up, so am planning to take the Fridays off in October to get some of these jobs - and hopefully more - done.  You'll be the first to see the progress.

Wednesday Workdays

 There's a project - always, a project somewhere.  I have a couple in mind for the fall, but the one I have started on is renovating one of the big beds in the front of the house.  Since we live more in the back of the house overlooking the "real" garden, it's easy to let the front get out of hand - which I have done.

Seeing this picture made me realize how much shade we have lost and how much I really loved that oak tree.

Let's start with history.  We bought this house under construction and got the builder to leave the yard alone except for the lawn seeding that the county required.  They did nothing about shrubs or planting.  In a hurry to do it all at once - and having no clue how big a job that was - we launched into everything all at once.  Shrubs went in along the front porch and a Thuja occidentalis at the corner.  Sadly what was sold as an 'Emerald' arborvitae (10 - 12 feet) was actually a 'Green Giant' (40+ feet) and had to come out.

By the second summer we had put in a serpentine concrete edging that included the two existing trees and created two beds with vastly different needs.  We had started planting azaleas in the sunny, drier one on the left.

 

Then I discovered St. John's Wort and finally a small creeping version of the same.  It seems like the perfect answer to filling in a large space with a low-growing, yellow flowering expanse that turns the most gorgeous bronze in the fall.  A few flowering perennials and space solved.

Five years later and the oak tree has died, completely changing the conditions of the site.  Happily, a volunteer dogwood has chosen to establish itself there so we will eventually have another source of shade.  Altho smaller than the oak, I think it will eventually be a good size for the house.

A big planter has given me a bit of height and a place to put a few flowers over the past couple of summers, but everything had become overgrown and crowded.  Most of all, tho, the creeping St. John's Wort had starting taking on the azaleas!  Can't have that.

And, finally, the conditions out there.  We have two drains off the house that run under the sidewalk and provide some irrigation.  It's not the best, since it tends to be feast or famine, so i augment with weekly sprinkling most of the summer and into the fall.  So, here is where we start.

The St. John's Wort is overgrown.  There is plenty of vinca minor everywhere, as well as Bermuda grass that thinks it owns this bed.  The chrysanthemums in all three pots have already bloomed once this silly summer, but are in bud again, and the small chrysanthemums I put in the ground are starting to bloom, too.   Meanwhile, the azaleas are in very good shape for such a hot summer, but would really like to get rid of the grass and creeping euonymous that has invaded them.

It's time for a little Round-up!  More next week.