When we moved in last year, our backyard was a mess. It still is, but it’s starting to look better. I have to be honest, I dreaded gardening. To me, gardening is being stuck outside in the hot sun being told to weed because it’s too hot for my dad to want to do it himself. So while I had good intentions to clean up our yard, it just never happened. Then one day a few weeks ago I sat down and started pulling up grass and weeds, and realized I was quite enjoying myself. We have four little gardens in the yard. Previously, they were full of weeds and grass. We didn’t know there were rose bushes in two of them because of all the weeds, that’s how bad it was. We discovered another type of bush in one corner too. Three of the plots are now cleared and I planted some flowers in one of them. I’ve thrown seeds in all of them, but I don’t know if it’s too late in the year. They may not grow. But at least they are cleared for next year. I didn’t think to take before and after photos until most of the worst had been cleared, but here are a few pictures.
My only gardening tools:
Some before pictures, though in both of these I’ve cleared away a lot of the taller grasses/weeds already. The bush in the first one is a rose bush, but it’s a very shady spot so we tried to transplant it to a sunnier part of the yard. (Unsuccessfully, I think it’s dying.) The pots were there when we moved in. (They were all over the place.)
And an after of one of the gardens. The bush on the left and the rose bush on the right are two we didn’t even know we had until I started clearing it, because of how thick and tall the weeds were. The left bush is starting to flower now that it’s seeing some sun and the rose bush is getting some leaves. In the center is the bush we tried to transplant.
We have a lot of plans for the garden next year. The ground is like clay, so we’ve added some organic compost and soil to it. Next year I think we will make the plots bigger and put wood around them and then raise them up a bit. I’ll post more pictures if the seeds actually sprout. I’m not holding too much hope for the gardens in the back. My dog likes to run back and forth along the fence and I’m pretty sure nothing will grow. I’m not sure how to keep her out though, she’ll jump any fence we put up unless it’s high enough you couldn’t see the garden anyway.
Meredith likes to “help” me garden. Yesterday she saw me with my gardening gloves on and she grabbed an extra glove and stuck it on her hand and toddled over to where I was. She started grabbing dirt and moving it around. I let her play, even though I had just seeded that area. I think telling her not to get in the way, not to wreck the garden, don’t touch, etc, is only going to discourage her from wanting to help and then when I actually want her help I doubt she’ll want to give it. Instead I let her play and keep up a bit of a dialogue with her about what I’m doing. She loses interest pretty fast now and goes to find her own thing to do. I figure next year when she’s a bit older I’ll give her little jobs to help me out with if she is still interested.
Related posts:
Looking good! That’s cute that Meredith wants to play with you, wait till she’s really walking, she’ll be all over that garden!
What a change! It looks so good. I’m so thankful that my friend Robin has been helping me with my garden. It’s hard to sometimes decide what to plant and where…
[...] my garden from last year? And the ambitious plans I had for it? Some of those are coming to fruition this [...]
[...] be a very pic-heavy post. For anyone who is interested, there are more pictures on these two posts: My Garden and Ambitious Plans. It’ll probably also be a long post, but I want to document everything [...]