I need to go back in time to the summer before last (2009). We bought a lot in 2008 that was entirely covered with scrubby trees and brush, and I had NO idea about the shape of the lot. I'm pretty sure that Barry had sort of a topographic 'picture' of the lot in his head, but not me!
The builder (because we were in a different province whilst this portion of the project was going along) cleared the lot for us. And he discovered that we were going to be able to have a walkout from the basement (if we wished) and we decided that we did wish...
However, he also discovered that we had quite a hill on the back part of our property.
More info that you need to have to make sense of this: this house is a Kent Home - which means that it is a modular home or a manufactured home. In other words, it was delivered by two huge trucks, each with wide load signs and little trucks with whirly orange lights on top. AND one part of my house (I think the back part) took the stop sign on Cottage Street out when it turned the corner, as Brunswick Street was closed because new sidewalks were being put in. (As a side note to this, they are STILL replacing sidewalks on Brunswick Street!)
In order to put the house on the lot, they needed to make a 'temporary road' behind the foundation and bring in a huge crane and then lift the two halves onto the foundation.
And when they made that temporary road they made that little hill steeper - and they killed several small trees and one larger one.
We have been pondering what the heck we were going to do with that hill. We thought about it in the fall of 2009 while we had 4 truckloads of top soil put on the lot around the house and I went out and spread grass seed by hand (very patchy first effort, I might add.) And while we created and planted a small semi-circular garden with all the plants that we moved from Ottawa to here, we thought about it.
And we thought about it throughout the fall and winter while we finished the basement of our new house and while I painted the interior. (These new houses are painted completely white inside - very boring!) And we thought about it in the Spring of 2010 while we built a stone deck in the backyard, and in the summer of the same year while we built a wooden patio in the front, where we covered the pit of doom and reduced our front outside stairs from 8 to 4...
We thought about it while we planted trees, and expanded the garden, planting many plants that Helen gave me from her beautiful gardens!
We discussed it when we went for walks and looked at our neighbour's efforts with retaining walls, ditches and gardens.
And this spring we received in the mail, a list of things we could buy from a local supplier, that included river stones in a couple of sizes, and shale in several sizes (as well as mulch, triple mix topsoil and several sizes of gravel.)
So one rare sunny afternoon, we headed over to see what they had and how much it would cost. And we bought a pallet of shale in various sizes that we thought we would be able to lift by hand. And we got them to deliver it to us.
And we thought about how we were going to put these things on the hill and what they were going to look like and I finally got tired of thinking of it. I decided that we might just as well put the stones out there like flagstones and plant some sedum and other things that will drape over the rocks and get it over with. They would either hold the rocks there or they wouldn't. We'd be no further behind than we were now. We have been watching the bank and neither one of us thinks that the silly thing is moving - and if it is, the long roots of the perennials SHOULD hold it still.
We headed out to Great Village where there is a Garden Centre called Lowlands - and they must have had 5 different kinds of sedum (which I have been spelling wrong for 8 years!) and I bought several of them. I also went to a plant sale a week ago and bought three different kinds of sedum at it - wee, not-so-wee and f---ing huge!
And we brought them home, I took them into the back yard and set them on the Stairway to Nowhere (just like the Stairway to Heaven, only different!) and poured myself a drink and sat on the sun porch with my book.
This morning, I thought I ought to plant the sedum and geraniums, but Barry suggested that we go for a walk. I made soup for Edna and I and then made dessert (see the last blog!), which was ready to go in the oven just as Edna got here to play cards.
Mom, Dad, Edna and I sat on the sun porch and played cards all afternoon with me looking at my rocks, which Barry had laid out for me on the hill on Monday... and Dad complimented me on how they looked. Sigh!
Supper was easy. Leftover soup from lunch (a new broccoli soup, mmm!), leftover oven fritatta from yesterday and leftover dessert from lunch. After I was finished dinner I asked after tomorrow's weather. Now it seems that we are going to have typical weather - that is, it is supposed to rain. And rain, and rain and rain. And I looked at my two shopping boxes of plants out there and FINALLY managed to get myself motivated to go out there and do something!
I planted geraniums in an old enameled canning pot.
I planted a sunflower in a smaller one.
I added potting soil to the Hoy Plant, and hung it up on the deck.
I added soil to the Norfolk Pine and found a spot for it on the deck for the summer.
And I planted ALL the darned sedum in the rock garden. Now it can rain ALL weekend long and I don't care. I do have two Eunonymus to pop in somewhere, but I'm going to get Barry to dig the holes for me - I wasn't really able to trowel deeply enough - and the deer, sadly, like them, and have already been sampling them... so they are looking a bit sad anyway....
So, there you have it. Just the rock garden.
Deer eat sedum, in case you'd like to know. And they ate ALL the sedum on the hill in the rock garden. Except the flowers - evidently they don't taste good...
ReplyDeleteThis rock garden drifted slowly down the hill. So we have bought more rock and in the summer of 2012 built a retaining wall that we certainly hope will be more permanent. We completely covered this part of the hill (after transplanting the sedum that was left into a small garden closer to the house that I spray with a deer repellent that seems to work!!) with sandstone rocks. In the spring of 2013, we will continue the wall along the whole width of the backyard - this part was the steepest and the neediest part - about 8 feet tall and 23 feet long. :-)
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