Instead I've been preparing the garden for the summer and so far the front is pretty much complete. The weather has been quite warm so far so I'm ahead of the game. The front garden last year was nice but not nice enough for me so I decided to ensure that I never needed to weed again. I got that black cloth for gardens and installed it on a windy day. I won't sport with your intellignace and describe that adventure except to say ... wait for a not windy day. The little plot you see here is the right hand side of the deck when you are facing it.
And this is it finished with a layer of cedar mulch on it. I'd like to get some more brick to put along the right side but I ran out. That little white blob in front there is a hound dog who needs some paint.
The other side is larger but was not too difficult to tackle. Here is the point at which I was laying out the brick to see how much I needed and where it would go best - the bricks are actually from along the path that leads from the driveway to the front door. They were almost completely covered in grass so had clearly been there a very long time. I like reusing things that already exist on the property because they have lived here longer than I have and deserve to stay. There were these huge rocks that bordered the front of the garden but I didn't like them because they can't make a clean line of delineation between the graden and the grass.
The biggest rock was a *bitch* to pull up but I finally managed it. I decided that instead of dragging it across the grass and giving myself a hernia, I'd only move it a foot or two and make it a nice backdrop for my little lion cub who came all the way from Alberta. He still needs to be painted but he's made it through two Canadian winters without a coat so I think he can go a few more days.
I never did get a photo of the larger garden area with the black fabric but really, how interesting could that photo possibly be? Here it is with it's new cedar mulch facelift. It looks a little sparse right now because the plants haven't grown in but that big round area in front there turns into a montrous lily thing in the summer. I want to wait and see how much room the plants take up before introducing any new vegetation into the mix. Where the ground is uneven in front of the brick will be filled in with some sod from the backyard. Wait til you see what I'm doing back there.
The front of my house, isn't it pretty? I'll take another picture again in the summer when I have had a chance to repaint the front step(what is UP with that?) and the plants are in bloom. Everything is budding happily and it looks like all my 2009 new plants survived the winter; even the lavender which, until a week ago, I was convinced was dead. Next stop ... raised vegetable garden ...
