2007 – Wellyssa's Womb

Noodle Gardens

I call them “noodle gardens” because I think they look like wet spaghetti noodles, kinda curvy, only surrounded by rock, not tomato sauce. Because I hate straight lines, I had our neighbor Roy, who delivered the dirt for us, shape the south berm into a curving form from east to west, pushing two sections into the property and leaving one section at the edge of the ditch. These two indentations were the result.

Taken from my neighbor’s driveway across the street

I knew that I wanted to plant trees there, and we planted the red maples in 2005, so far so good. But following that, I’ve been trying to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of the space.

I put down fabric and edged it with black granite, filled it with 1″ black granite, and then made a noodle shaped raised garden bed in the center, to be planted with bulbs. My thinking was two fold: 1) it’s one less expanse that I have to weed or spray, and 2) it continues the use of rock from the front around the sides.

First spring for the noodle garden – the daffodils are up and some of the early spring bulbs are popping out of the ground in the noodle garden! Yea!

Starting to look like something

Stinky, (the cat) enjoying the verbenas. After we put in this retaining wall last fall, I finally felt like this front porch bed could be finished. A few colorful annuals did the trick, oh, and a kitty.

Front porch garden: Dwarf Korean lilac in the back, Carol Mackie Daphne, and mixed verbena in front. The bright pop of yellow to the left/rear are the Maximilian sunflowers; they’re about 6 feet tall. And the little T fan shaped shrubs in the foreground are my little hedges; they greened up nicely after a heavy snow last winter, and they have their first branch sets on them. Fingers still crossed.

In the picture below, you can see the stone steps we put in to lead down from the front porch to the lower willow garden. Wish I had taken a better picture. Also in this

picture, you can see the front south rock berm, in the upper right corner. There is a berm like this on each side of the front of the property. Eventually they will be covered in stone. But for now, I was able to afford 25 tons of large boulders, 3-6 tons each boulder, to put on the berms. These boulders are the anchor stones for these two berms. I know, it looks weird right now, it looks undone – and it is. But these things take time, and money $$$.

On the north, front side of the property is the other large berm. I don’t think you can see the boulders from this view, but you can appreciate the second year’s growth of Aunt Judy’s daylilies. They’re right out front behind a row of pink mums. Appreciate them! They came all the way from Missouri and are working really hard in this nasty soil.

All in all, I feel good about this progress. It’s finally starting to look like something, at least out front.

The Great American Way – Lawn.

3 years in the making, we finally put in the lawn. I’m sure our neighbors are relieved! But first I needed to figure out how wide the hedge border was going to be; then we needed to figure out where the concrete border was going to go; then I had to plant 4000 crocus; then we had to dig in the irrigation lines and the sprinkler system (the digging of which killed many of the crocus!); and finally, after much research on grass varieties, we planted the lawn in our 3rd summer. (2007)

Concrete edging installed by L&P Concrete.

Concrete edging, south side, including a tree ring for the catalpa, 2007

Trenching in the irrigation lines for the sprinkler system

We planted 4 types of grass. 2 types of warm season grass, and 2 types of cold season grass. Our plan is that the lawn will look great during both seasons, which should be April through November. Blue grama, crested wheat, buffalo and rye grasses. We’ll see how it does, but so far it looks great!

Also, in this last pic you can see my lovely little baby hedge shrubs starting to grow. (The line of green between the lawn and the edge of the driveway.) They made it through the winter; I had my doubts as they were completely buried in snow for 2 months.

And the green scraggly looking plants in front of the lawn are orange day lilies which we brought back with us from a visit to Brian’s grandparents farm in Missouri. Aunt Judy was all too happy for me to dig a bunch of them out for her. I planted 75 on both sides of the driveway, in front of the lawn.

What’s up with these pigeons?

We used to get snow

Snow storm in 2007. 18″ to 36″