| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Landscaping Around the Deck
This is a stay-at-home weekend. (Next weekend is Litha, and we're going to a Midsummer Scandanavian Festival to celebrate it.) The most important thing on the agenda was to relax a little and to do some improvements around the back deck.
Where the deck steps meet the cement stoop (into the garage) there is a quagmire of mud most of the year– its also a mess under the deck with weeds and ferns (though I like the ferns) that should be hidden if possible.
The solution was to make a garden bed with a climbing clamatis to go up to the deck railings eventually, and right next to it a graveled walkway. Its on a slight slope, so we also had to level the walkway out using layers of gravel and landscaping logs. The difference in usefulness and improved aesthetics is obvious, and I'm sure the couple who live next door (still have yet to say hello, they're a bit more taciturn apparently) approve of the improved look of that part of our yard which faces them.
In addition, the honeysuckle was planted against the deck on side facing the outbuildings and tiny house. I don't know how well it will do there, on a north side, but that spot gets lots of sun May through July, which is the plants primary growing and blooming season– so we'll see. I'm thrilled to get both plants out of pots and in beds at long last. They were just withering in our front yard and it looked terrible!
Finally, we discovered that we can buy 5.5 foot tall leyland cypress trees (which look rather ceder-like) for only $25. The advantage of this tree is how quickly it grows, both out and up– often 2 feet a year! Plus its a bushy evergreen, providing a privacy screen year round. Now that the neighbors are back from Alaska and around all the time, we're all feeling the need to not feel potentially looked at all the time and a fence would be too expensive and hard to keep up (on a slope in a wind tunnel zone between taller trees and our 2 story end of the house.) Besides which– we need trees on that slope to take up some of the moisture running down from the hill above (its right in the area where a creek used to be before the 60s.)
Now we mainly have the fountain area to clean up and improve and the landscaping to do for the expanded Japanese garden inspired expansion on what is there now. We already have a small pond put in there and the Japanese maples and a couple of shrubs and water-loving plants to put in. Once that basic improvement is finished, and the guys finish the Tiny House and move out (which frees me to move several things to their proper places inside our house) then we're ready to be seen at the housewarming on the last Saturday of the month.
I hope we make it!
Source: http://lucretiasheart.livejournal.com/1139917.html
