Dealing with Noise

In my secret garden, there's a fountain.

Mark says we can't have one because we won't maintain it.  

Sigh.  

So in the garden that I'm going to have to live in, there will be a lot of wind chimes.

It's Too Darn Hot

The weather has improved.  Sort of.  It was 72F today, so the back patio was a solar oven by 3:45.  I guess the next project is stringing a curtain along the west end of the patio cover.  The trick will be making not look like a shower curtain.

I cleaned off the patio today -- and I'm fairly certain that less is more as far as all the stuff that's accumulated there in the last month and a half.  After the curtain, I think some storage locker benches are the next order of business.

Mark and I almost bought a trellis-bench combination.  We were walking through a store when I saw a floor model and sat down on it.  Surprisingly, the black metal bench was comfortable.  In retrospect, we think that the metal conformed to our bodies.  Mark managed to take one of the decorative knobs off and saw how thin the metal was.  It bent like a tin can.

Sigh.  Plastic garden fixtures are looking better and better every day.  

April Snow ?

Area F2 -- Mark wielded a saw and a tired old rhododendron is gone. The sphinx got shifted a few yards to the west.

Area C1 -- Dug out more of the tropical grass. Man, that stuff is insidious -- it forms a mat of roots about five inches wide spreading everywhere (including our neighbor's yard). I put some of it in a pot with no drainage hole, which is probably the only way to contain it. But the rest went into the yard waste bin (not the compost).

Areas A1 & B1 -- Planted rosemary, sage, basil, celantro, etc. Then it snowed. In April. It never snows in April around here. Not only did it snow once, it snowed twice. Then it hailed. I put tarps and plastic covers over everything; the basil looks very unhappy.

Areas A1 & A1 -- The week before the snow it got into the mid 70's. It only reminded me that the next task is to purchase some 180lb wire and string a curtain along the west end of the tin roof for some kind of shade.

Sound Check

Yesterday I was playing with The Child on the patio. We had some chalk and I drew a map of the neighborhood.

Then I listened. Noise from Neighbor A bounces off of Neighbor A's house, crosses Neighbor B's yard, reflects off the back of Neighbor C's house and focuses on ... our yard. I drew green soundwaves on the map. Noise from Neighbor D bounces between Neighbor E's house and ours and focuses on ... our yard. More green soundwaves. Noise from Neighbor F funnels through Neighbor E's carport and sluices into ... (you guessed it) our yard. By this time the green lines on the map made a moire pattern about where our cherry tree is.

If only the noises matched themselves somehow and cancelled out.

So I went to Coastal Hardware today. Looks like a Really Big Fountain costs $200 and Really Big Wind Chimes cost $130. Time to budget. Or maybe I can weld some old metal kitchen bowls to a windmill and water pump....

But Where ?

We just got a child's basketball hoop.

Of course now the question is "But where to put it?"

On one hand, it's not bright orange or day-glow green, and it does provide The Child with something to do (other than clip back plants that don't need clipping). But on the other hand, it turns the only flat spot in The Garden of Discontent into a basketball court. And the ball rolls with suspicious regularity into the bulbs (OK, OK, the bulbs are in area A1 and A2, the lowest parts of the yard).

Maybe we can make it look like an Inca ball court.

Progress Report

Moved sage from Area A3 to the old rose site at Area A1. It appears that the bulbs moved around in last weekend's operation are doing OK -- only a few have died. I haven't noticed wilting on the moved rose; so perhaps it will survive the move.

We all have colds at our house, so this weekend has been a gardening-lite one.

Still have to replace the shovel.

Grave Results

"Dig 9 inches from the drip-line," the instructions said.

What they didn't say was what to do when the rose was sitting over a drain, wedged between a fence and a 1950's concrete patio, in Oregon clay.   About three-fourths of the way getting the rose out of the ground, the shovel handle snapped.  Using a combination of trowels and my hands, I managed to get the rose out of the ground.  I wouldn't call what was underneath a ball, exactly; more like the sort of snag that one finds by the edge of rivers.

With any luck I didn't kill it.  Now all I hope was that I didn't do the ornamental straw a huge favor by digging it up, shaking as much dirt loose from its roots as I could, and using the dirt to cover up the rose's roots.   Otherwise in about three months I'll have foreign weeds poking up along a dead rose cane.<

Gardening Rambo-style

It's true, we're going to have to destroy this flower bed in order to save it.  If you look closely, you can see where bulbs are poking up around the rose.  When we move the rose to its new home, we're going to have to dig up the bulbs, too.  

I won't miss the small river rocks someone cluttered up the bed with -- they make a poor retaining wall as plants just grow over and around them and dirt eventually washes by them.  It wouldn't be a problem if the rocks had been mortared together, or placed in front of a more effective dirt barrier.  Although, given the track record of the previous occupants, we'd probably have an ugly concrete mess to deal with.  

Wishing Well

There wasn't a dead squirrel in the water this morning -- at least I didn't see one went I took this picture.  As you may infer, the clay content of our soil fifteen inches below ground is quite high.  

The Rose Pit

Area C1 -- Managed to find out a bit about transplanting roses.  This requires digging a pit roughly two feet by four feet to receive the transplant.  On the plus side, all that digging has removed a large portion of the tropical grass straw planted by a previous occupant.  On the minus side, I'm pretty sure all the water that I put into the pit to losen up the ground is still there.  

Maybe a wretched squirrel will drown in it and my irises can grow in piece. 

Culling

I visited my folks' house today. Much of the social space in their yard is deck. I like what they've done with some well placed planters. When I got home to our yard, I was energized (OK, and the sun was out and it wasn't freezing).

Area C1 -- Clipped back the dead ornamental grass straw clumps to prepare the bed for the rose bush from Area A1. By the end of the week, we should have three roses in a row along the east fence instead of rose, weeds, rose, funny looking ornamental grass, rose, dead rhubarb.

Area A2 -- Swept out the dirt from when the patio was flooded with some help(?) with The Child. Cleared some of the more odious detritus and managed to reclaim some of the patio space.

On a whim, I browsed through a magazine at my folks' house that promised on its front cover to give tips on how to make your backyard like an outdoor room.

I flipped the magazine's pages, fished around for the table of contents, and finally found the article. As near as I could tell, their approach was to take a $600,000 plot of land and spend $50,000 in landscaping, granite, a fountain, and a giant matte black stainless steel globe.

Be Gone From My Sight

Area D-1. I don't know what it was. I only know that it put out a feeble spray of yellow flowers for a week once a year. So I pulled it out with my bare hands. It was easy to do because most of the roots had rotted.

I look through magazines like Architectural Digest and Better Homes and Gardens and I see the clever patio arrangements: the pathways in different hues of gravel, the basalt spires with cascades of water, the hidden stone statues; the red velvet chairs, the tables with white linens, the chandeliers, the little candles and elegant flower arrangements; the tea and scones presented on a white service, and the hidden outdoor speakers playing Edith Piaf.

But not in my back yard.

The First To be Smited

Area E-4. Whoever lived in our house before us tried to fill the backyard with trees. It was an abortive attempt, and we find evidence of past failures in the form of small sinkholes which line up with still existing shrubbery. When we first moved in, we thought this Japanese Maple was dead; alas, it had merely been underwatered, and showed signs of lingering life when the rains returned.

Unfortunately, it had a case of maple root rot. And it was badly placed, floating in the middle of an otherwise clear space of lawn. It looked half-dead most of the time, it didn't really match the ornimental cherry tree or tie into the tool shed. And it required mowing around.

It filled me with discontent. So I sawed it down. The yard looks better all ready.

Manifesto

Now is Summer made dreary Winter by this Garden of Discontent. . .

Well, OK. It's not really a garden, it's the back yard. But I'm still filled with discontent.