The list of projects around the yard for this year was a bit long but I’ve slowly been chipping away at it…

Project #1: Dirt moving and a new paver walk-off
I started with moving a large mound of our garden bed adjacent to the back patio. It had been home to some kind of ivy -like growth for a few years that we really didn’t like, so I dug all that up and removed another shrub that just about was on its last leg. I spread most of the soil around the base of the Nishiki Willow tree to expand the bed there. I replaced the small layout of pavers that we originally had with a larger area about 4′ x 8′ in size. It’s now a lot easier to walk on and off the patio without getting slapped in the face by the branches of the tree, and it gave a nice home to our grill.

Project #2: Rock wall border around the front garden bed
Over the Easter weekend I collected up some of the Pennsylvania Bluestone that is abundant around the property my in-laws have up in Tioga, PA.  We already have a nice rock wall border around the garden beds that butt-up against the house. Here’s the area that didn’t:

The collection of stone that we hauled down from the mountain:

And the completed rock wall border:

Project #3: Paint the rain barrels
Last year I added a set of rain barrels to the back yard that stuck out like a sore thumb. I decided to paint them brown, to match the shed… and now they look like two big pieces of turd – at least that’s what the wife thinks. :-) I also built a better platform for them to rest on with some of the extra cedar I had in the garage.

Project #4: Join the two garden boxes
I had originally built two separate square foot garden boxes a few years ago. But this season I decided to combine them to form one large box. After dismantling the two facing sides and rejoining them, I have 44 square feet now available (which still may not be enough).

In this picture you can see the strawberries in the foreground are already off to a good start, and towards the back are my garlic shoots that I need to split.

Project #5: Re-mulch the garden beds
Every other year I replenish the beds with new mulch. This year it took two truckloads… and I still ended up running out.

Projects still on the to-do list:

• build a permanent fire pit
• build a series of smaller, portable garden boxes
• paint the trim on the shed
• fix the front door screen (the dog put a hole in it the other day)

Tags: garden, mulch, paver patio, rain barrel, rock wall

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 9:06 pm and is filed under Around the Yard, Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.