Garden Report: October 7

OK, let's see, a week or so ago I had moved about five or six roses and done a bunch of fall weeding, and made some inroads on the enormous pile of dirt in the front yard.

Over the last week or so, in between rain showers, I worked my way around the front of the wall, digging out roses from the pile, pruning them back to manageable size, then planting them in the proper space (about 18" away from the wall). At the same time I used the pile soil to raise the overall level of the yard to the top of the wall; this was part of the wall plan, so that we would not have tons of soil left all over the place. (In landscaping terminology: cut-and-fill.)

By this afternoon, I had gotten most of that done. With the newly freed-up green bin, I was able to stuff all those weeds into the bin, as well, though not all the weeds fit in there, and I had a bit of an awkward moment because the wire plant tied everything together into one dense mat.

I still have about three roses to deal with: find a place for them, or dig them out and get rid of them. I think I'll be able to find a place for them. Then I need to roll and rake the open space until it's reasonably level.

(The magnolia still has quite a tilt, doesn't it? Better than it was before, but it just seems to want to lean.)

I also moved roses on the driveway side of the front yard: I moved some of these from where they'd been stored in the pile, but two of them were actually still in the ground by the wall, so they also got dug up. There are now no plants I want to keep alongside the driveway, which works pretty well with our plan to use that as part of the driveway, like so:

Only, y'know, not concrete. We have a bunch of extra bricks we can use to pave out a place for a car beside mine. Then Noel doesn't have to move my car out of the way to use his.

I'm also thinking of laying some sod inside the wall on the driveway side, just to cover the ground. That, or maybe buying a flat of creeping thyme or something, because as it is now we have the neighborhood's largest kitty box in our front yard, and I'm getting a little tired of cleaning it up.

posted by ayse on 10/07/11