Garden project

This is Wednesday and mild weather prevails.  Since I don't sleep well (or at all after 3AM), I decided to take advantage of the chilly weather and tackle the front flower bed.
It had been in bad shape for at least 4 years.  The problem is that people walking to the front door see this sad mess.
It started out as a large bed with a "moat" "creek" separating sides. The problem not to mention the moles, has always been poor soil and competing with live oak trees for nutrients.  The live oaks are a mistake we made years ago and hubby has a hard time "killing" anything with green leaves.
That said, something has to be done.

No boring pictures of before and after, just now.

I had taken out one side of the garden and just tried to keep the weeds pulled or whacked to be presentable.
One morning, I knew what I wanted to do. Had to wait until the weather cooled however.

The white things are plastic pipe I used as a means to hold the border upright.  Not too hard to pull out. The bush on the right is the red Knock Out Rose.  This is the only thing remaining from the "other" bed.  Plan: move it into the redefined bed.  Hopefully, it won't get too big and grow outside the boundaries.


The smooth brown edging  is too short (5") and I need at least 8" to be able to pound 3 or so inches into the ground.  The edging I am using is from Gardener's Supply Company catalog. I should have purchased this product years ago.  It is pricy, but in the long run, cheaper considering how much money, time and back aches in between. All in all, the 8" pieces are perfect and at 65 dollars, a steal considering the ease of installation and durability

 This another one of my "cheaper" mistakes.  I decided that cement embedded siding was long, flexible enough to accomadate curves.  It is siding, should last?  How it lasts on a house takes a bit of thinking. My edging idea had one flaw the siding principle does not.  The top edge collected water. It is layers of stuff. On a house, the top edge is covered by the next strip.
Needless to say, it held up fine until rain and freezing temperatures for several years. A shattered mess to take out.   Some sections did the job, but not enough.

The black pieces fit together easily, a little hard to control the equal depth for an even border.  I have a 4 foot long level and used it to keep everything as straight as possible.  

The dirt was a bit loose and there will be some settling that can be easily rectified. I watered it in and will wait to see what needs a bit of tweaking.
All in all, I am happy
with the results.  Now to
add amendments and plan                                            
for spring.

     I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit. ~Reginald Farrer, In a Yorkshire Garden, 1909  

            Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination.  ~Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897 (Thanks, Jessica)                                                                                                                          

I

Knockout rose star of the show

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. ~Emma Goldman

I checked the weather forecast for the rest of the week.  A slight chance for rain, clouds and after todays temp of 100, in the high 90's.  Other areas of the country have too much rain and we are praying for any moisture at all.
My gardening enthusiasm has waned and I don't even want to pull weeds that have sprung up full grown, I swear!! Where do they all come from? I have a great tool called a shuffle hoe, that is great for fighting weeds in a standing position in the gravel path. 

That said, I am slowly, slowly getting used to my Bloggie.  One problem?  It will get hot in my hand if I take more than 10  pictures while the temperatures are so high.  I am shopping on line for another as I think if I had a second one, I could get a few more shots in before I get too hot. Conversely, the camera also doesn't like cold temperatures.
This thing takes fantastic pictures!  Especially if I wear glasses to view the shot first.  I think a lot of my "blurry" shots were due to my vision and hand shake.
These pictures are less grainy due to my learning a simple (duh) fact.  The more pixels, the sharper the image.  Helps to read the manual................

This is my version of Facebook.  I want to be able to come to my blog and recall the fun and frustration of learning to take pictures.

A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring. ~The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams