Marching toward April

So big news is that my landlady just gave me 80% of what used to be her garden.  She's 85 and going to be away fron mid-June to mid-August.  Apparently her grown sons lived with her for a while in the 90s and made it into a vegetable garden but she's just been doing tomatoes and flowers for a while now.  The soil needs help - I just started in with some manure and am using my coffee-grounds hookups to get myself premium nitrogen input (I've got a bag that will go in as soon as it cools off).  I'm hoping the poo and coffee combo will get this ground back into shape.

To start, some inside seed-bits all cloched up and waiting:

I've got tomatoes, brussels, eggplants, and onions in so far.

Brussels (Long Island Improved, for the record) getting their secondary leaves!

These guys just sprouted today! (they were definitely right on the edge yesterday) they're about to get moved into a brighter spot.

Basils and a Rosemary in the kitchen.

Peony a-comin' - I'm thinking about moving this inside over the weekend...it's supposed to snow, although I've seen plenty of other in-ground peonies coming up in the neighborhood, I worry about my babies.

Spinach Babies!

Chard babies!

New garden spot!  Colleen and I turned the soil at the back part already and you can see the dark area that I've amended.  The trashbag in the right corner is coffee grounds that I'm going to do another amendment with...and probably mulch a little high around the garlic sprouts in preparation for tonight's snow.  They're supposed to be planted out before the frost, but I still worry about them.

Composter all nestled in the shrub line.  You can also see the wire fence that I'm going to use as a trellis for my gherkins.

Light sprinkling of poo.  I have 3 more bags in the car.

Garlic I transplanted yesterday...not terribly gracefully, I must say.

Garden watchers.  I want two others.  I have to find my goose...so maybe I only want one more.

 

 Dirty Garden Sketch.  Really the best kind of map.  It's about 11' by 18' (not totally regular and punctuated by random tiny trees that may or may not do anything).  Starting upper left and moving clockwise there's a watermelon patch, 4 tomatoes and 2 eggplants surrounded by frilly borders of marigolds, the next rectangle is the partly amended part - garlic, bollyhocks and brussels sprouts, lettuce, spinach, onions, carrots, beets, and chard in rows followed by two cuke plants on the trellis fence.  In the upper right is the composter that I plan to partly screen with dwarf sunflowers. The rectangle full of circles is my three sisters area that will be corn, snap peas, and then two mounds of Jenny Lind Melon and three mounds of Luffa.  Next is a spot that I'm going to put two seed bombs that I have no idea what's in them, and then last (beyond the drain pipe) is the pumpkin patch.  There's going to be a row of nasturtiums between the watermelon and the pumpkin.  There's also going to be a row of Titan sunflowers behind the three sisters.

Another big day.

So this afternoon after finishing the wedding I was working on and an engagement set I'd promised, I set to work on what I knew was going to be a big day. I was keeping an eye on the weather and this had promised to be the nicest day this week...and luckily I'd done enough weeding to make it work.

I ran out, rented a pick-up truck, and then hopped on over to Home Depot and rented a rototiller!!

When I got home, Dougie (who knew I'd left on said mission) had decided to attack the killer bamboo patch.

Arial view:



You can see where I cleared the ground over the past few days...and Dougie's butt.

Anastasia realized that there was more concrete than I'd thought and so moved some cinder blocks and dug that out a bit-- more room for the grill! (No pic tonight).

Apparently Dougie had used a rototiller before, so I let him get down with his bad self in that department:



Then Anastasia and I team-worked it up shoveling the loosened dirt through a screen and sifting out the roots and rock. (And giving me Michelle Obama arms)





Also making the piggy piggy greedy magpies happy:




They're so bold! At one point one sat right on the handle of the tiller while I was only about an arms length away. I also took both of the above pics with a wide-angle lens (aka, I was not far away). At one point one of them grabbed a big fat worm or grub and danced around for a full minute with it before it flew off! I has the foods now!!

Also in our tilling adventures we found:
-A license plate (too rusty to read)
-A radiator
-A buried pet cat or dog (at least 20 years buried, it was all tiny bones, sorry Fluffy)
-A leggo dog (unrelated)
-2 wrenches (same set)
-A hockey puck, a golf ball, a tennis ball, a baseball
-A sharp tooth (like a canine) at least an inch long.
-Lots and lots of chicken bones and oyster shells
-Several cans (no lables)
-A milk jug
-A hershey's syrup container
-Lots of metal bits (a hook, an old bike pedal (?), screws, nails)
-Lots of broken teracotta, bricks, roofing slates, etc.

We also found a brick wall that runs perpendicular to the fence adjoining the cement slab... The current theory is that there must have been an out-building of some kind there when a property was subdivided and it got taken down all but the slab which is now under part of a raised bed over here and must be below the neighbors' yards (which are about 4 feet higher than ours) too.



Tomorrow, I plant things! And bundle sticks! And try to find patio furniture and a portable dishwasher before I need to return the truck at 4!

Garden Demolition Continues Apace

I am to the point in my garden demolition where I'm really feeling that it's time to go get a rototiller and go to town so I can get my veggies in. It's exciting but for the fact that I also have to rent a truck to accomplish this.

This is the area where the garden will be:


but more recently:







I found this 2' (ish) by 3' (ish) hunk of patio when I was clearing out that daylily patch-- bet you didn't see that coming-- I certainly didn't.



It's got a heads up penny pressed into the cement. I tried to read the date on it but it was so covered in dirt (and oxidized) and it was dark when I got it all clear, but I think it dates our patio at 1960. I'll look again in the light tomorrow.

Anastasia thinks it's a great spot to put the grill once the area above and beyond it is cleared out more, but that's much lower on my priority list.

Getting into that area of the yard felt very garden-archeologic-- found an arc of bricks that paralleled the shape of that huge daylily patch (but smaller by about 2 feet) where I assume they were once planted ornamentally - boy have they taken over! I also found some parsley growing at the edge of the raised cinder-block bed (under the strawberry, creeper, grapevine, and knotwood that have taken over) as well as something that looks like a cottage rose, although it's not in bloom.

So my next big to-dos are:
-Till cleared garden bed.
-Line the edges with logs from the log pile and add some fill to make it a bit higher.
-Get my veggies in and then some!
-Take away the rest of the log pile (see appendix A)
-Clean up the other side of the fence and weed the cement.
-Find a table and some chairs so we can enjoy it!

Other house/garden tasks include:
-Pull everything out of the raised cinder block bed (where the evil bamboo stand is)
-Try to kill the evil bamboo.
-Weed the bed beside the driveway so that the peonies can actually do their thing next year.
-Pull everything that's coming up through cement.
-Put hostas in the bare spot in the front bed (move them from other parts of the yard)
-Try to train the ivy to grow up the house (I think it deserves it)
-Dig up all the mini-quinces that have dropped and spread around.
-Sprinkle some grass seed around.
-Convince the landlady to remove the 50 gallons of gas (ongoing project)
-Also convince her to mend the hole in the front step.

Does that sound ambitious?

I also think I want to get a wisteria and let it eat the porch. This house, to me, deserves to be swallowed up in vegetation in a prettier way than it has been.

Appendix A:

Just call me Paula Bunyon.

Yesterday I cleared space for my veggie garden. The clearing is about half done-- and then after that I have to pick some logs out of the log pile to make a surround for it and then cultivate the soil a little and probably add a little more in on top of it. There are some pretty exciting before and afters on this one:





and...


You can see the stump sticking out in both pictures...just for reference of what you're looking at.


Still have to clear the ground over here....but at least I feel like the light will get in now.

There was so much shade back there that there were tons of snails just chillin' even in broad daylight. I've been rehoming them into the compost bin. Yummy food for you in there, snailies!

It took about three hours and I feel like I pulled down about 10 miles of Creeper and overgrown and possibly diseased grape vine. There were also some morning glories and strawberry in part that I cleared down, but they were so tangled in the mess that there was really no way to be selective.

There was also a pile of logs and a radiator buried in the undergrowth which I moved to another part of the yard where there was already a different log pile started:



That's a really shady part where I am not confident that much will grow, it's where I'd eventually like to put the chicken coop. (If my chicken plans succeed).

There's also a tree bit...that's growing out of the stump. I want to take it down. It's making shade and it just doesn't belong there....it's pushing the fence all out of shape too. It was full of grape vine until yesterday:


I found a rusty hack saw in the basement, but it wasn't doing the job.


This morning Anastasia went and got an axe....but about 15 minutes into the job...




The blade flew over the fence. I'm planning to go get it, but I have to run an errand first. SO that's all for now!

New House Introduction

Well we've moved back to Davis Square and are somewhat happy to have an absentee landlady who will let us do whatever we want inside and out. The down side is that she doesn't do anything, hasn't done anything in a while, and previous tenants haven't done much either.

Right now, we're watching Life After People and I feel like our back yard is definitely a taste of it.

Here's a bit of a tour of the exterior:

Front of the house-- a bunch of those bushes have been cut haphazardly-- have thick stumps in the middle that the branches are stemming from.

(like so:)


Beside the driveway:

Peonies, among other things, being choked out by Evil Evil Japanese Knotwood and somewhat evil Concord Grape.


Other side of the driveway...two scrawny pansies.


Top of the drive- knotwood jungle. That stand is at least 10 feet tall.


Random back yard stuff.


Back fence.


Gertie among the pots.


This is a section we're working on clearing right now.


I pulled this down this morning.

We clearly have our work cut out for us. I got some loppers, gloves, and some grass seed and some new plants in addition to the seedlings and seeds I already have.