It begins with a garden

It begins with a garden. Or I'd like to think it is, now anyway.

I am new to this blogging thing, again, so please bare with me while I try.

I wanted to use this as a place to share the projects we are working on to make our house a home and to improve our yard and garden.

I will try to share something each week day.  Whether it a picture, and update on a project, something I've read, something I've learned.  I figure if I commit to it, I am hoping I will do it. 

This will be today's post.

We bought our home nearly 8 years ago.  It was built in the mid 70's and had one owner, who did nothing with the yard but what had been done when it was done being built.

Our soil is sad, if you want to call it soil.  Usually you can dig, and you hit rock, whether it's pieces in the ground, or a large boulder.

Over the years, we have tried to choose one area a spring to improve and make it look like someone lives here.  Make it look as if someone cared about this house.

That was while I worked full time, and so I had no real energy left to do much of anything at the end of my day.  SO, needless to say, our soil is still very sad.

The builder put about 1 inch of top soil on, birch trees have grown and died here, and still grow here. They are one of my favorite things about this yard and I am so hesitant to allow DH to cut any down that aren't already dead. I redid the natural stone beds they are in once already, a few of them twice.

Don't get me wrong, I like these garden beds, with the rock from the yard, and the birch trees.  There are 6 of them all together, three in the main yard, three in the side yard.  The two pictured above are in the main yard.  The one on top is of my newly done Iris bed.  The Iris plants were my mothers.  My father gave them to me after mom had passed.

 My plan for that bed, next year, is to plant some dill and chives to the back of the trees.

The bottom picture is of another of the beds in the main yard, and that is a bit undecided at the moment.  There are some Iris, a variegated Hosta that we found while out riding our quad, someone had dumped their yard waste in the woods and that was sitting there looking for a home.  You can't really see it, the pole anyway, but this is where I hang our birdfeeder.  I plan to put Sunflowers at the back right of this bed next year.  Plus, I have to think of something else to put there.

Because our yard is a hill, not much of it is usable.  It's hard to mow, which I can't do, and my DH doesn't care to do because it's difficult and he's fallen a few times.  There really isn't a "lawn", though we do have some grass, mostly it is moss, which I like, and weeds, which I don't like.  I can usually keep the "weeds" under control with the weed-whacker, so the grass only needs to be cut twice a month during the growing season.

I look forward to any comment, please be kind.  Until next time, grow where you are planted!