Randoms from the weekend

My 3 boys. E and G are talking about what shapes they see in the clouds.

Our nesting pair of hawks. They were flying quite low on Saturday.

No, really. I'm not zoomed in here. They were low.

The Curly Duo chilling in the front yard

C discovers grass

He's a very serious baby.

The rest of the yard

So, we still had a ton of mulch this morning. And we got off to kind of a slow start. While G crashed hard and slept till 8:30, C decided he was going to be up most of the night with...well, who cares? Either way he was up, and so were we.

So at 9am I ran to our favorite local coffee shop and picked up coffee for E and myself. Then I strapped C in the Ergo and continued attacking the mulch pile. I discovered quickly that E and H had only weeded the sand part of the sandbox. So I mulched what I could there and then moved on to the fireplace bed.

And then onward to the front beds. I got about half of the way thru one by the time it was lunch. We also needed to make a trip to the hardware store, so off we went.

Two hours later, C was down for another nap, so we went back to it. E worked on fixing the lawnmower while I continued mulching. Eventually, I finished mulching the entire front.

So that just leaves the rest of the swing set, between the garden beds, and the garage bed.

But, uhm...

I may have over estimated. A bit.

Landscaping the West Fence - Part 3

So, after we removed the sod and transplanted the dogwood, all that was left to do was order some mulch, plant the new plants, and then mulch the bed. Oh, and fill in the transplant hole and re-sod it.

But, you know, this is me. I refuse to make things that simple.

Because, really, all of our beds could use mulching.

Which means they all would need to be weeded.

But that's incidental, right?

So I estimated the size of all our beds and ordered 16 yards of mulch. They said they'd deliver 7am on Saturday. And so they did.

They showed up in a dump truck. Which TOTALLY made G's day. A dump truck. In his driveway. It was like all holidays rolled into one.

Did you know 16 yards is a LOT of mulch? I did, in theory. In practice I had no idea.

Still. So, we set about to work. We had borrowed 3 of my 4 nephews - T, A, and I, plus T's fiance, H. E and H started weeding, and T, A and I, plus G, started working on filling in the hole from the transplanted dogwood. I started planting plants in the new bed while C hung out in his exersaucer in the shade (or, later, slept in the Ergo while I continued working).

Eventually T, A, and I started working on mulching the bed where I had finished. And suddenly, we had a planting bed.

E and H finished weeding the bean bed, the sand box, the fireplace bed. and the front beds. We also mulched the bean bed.

But it was nearing dinner time, so mulching the rest of the beds would have to wait.

Landscaping the West Fence - Part 2

Last night I came home with the kids to find H in the back yard, digging up the dogwood. This is kinda how he operates - he'll be focused on something, like making dinner, and then go "Oh, I'll just do this 3 hour task real quick."

It's like my dad's version of a "half hour job".

So he and G stayed out there (WELL past G's bedtime) to finish digging it up and transplanting it. In his rush, he snapped off the taproot, so we'll see if it survives. He did get a nice large rootball otherwise.

Still, the results can't be argued with. She nicely fits in between our neighbors two shrubs - a lilac and another red-twig dogwood - to create some lovely screening.

Now I just need to get the other plants put in the ground and mulch the bed.

Which reminds me, I need to order a mulch delivery.

Landscaping the west fence - Part 1

FINALLY!  We've only been sitting on these garden plans for 2 years now.

Saturday we rented a sod remover and H went thru and cut it all out. G alternated between helping me roll up the strips of sod and playing in his water table while C hung out in his exersaucer. By the end of the day all of the sod was removed. The bed is 70 feet long. At the widest two points 10 feet wide and no narrower than 5 feet.

The Curly Duo were very curious what was happening to their running path. They're the reason we're doing this - they race along the fence with the neighbor's dog, so we're putting in a lot of screening bushes and plants. Just look at how compacted the soil is from them!

Of course, he didn't follow the landscaping plan or how I had staked it out. So now we're looking at much more garden bed than I had purchased plants for

Today we rototilled the bed, which removed the rest of the grass from the fence line. Then I spaced the plants out but didn't have time to plant them.  The dogwood you see in the top photo is going to be transplanted along the fence in the first large curve. The other plants are: 12 Karl Foester Feather Reed Grass, 3 rose bushes, 6 gailliarda, 10 daylilly, 10 shasta daisy. I am still looking for a supplier for the variety of spirea japonica that I want.

Baby birds

We have a nest of baby birds on our deck's pergola.

G is especially excited about this. He can just see the babies popping their heads up from his room, so we watch the adult robins feeding them each morning and evening.