Herb garden

A continuation of last year's transplant of some herbs from seedlings, to pots, to the north side of our flower bed. I've been closely monitoring these herbs to watch their regrowth and their current season growth. Logged (and edited over time) here to note the progression. (Note: the 3ft basil from last year died out over the winter, and given its ability to take over combined with our lack of interest in using it much, I opted to not replace it.)

April 10th 2013 - the first few signs of returning life after a mild winter

LtoR: lemonbalm, rosemary, spearmint, white sage

May 1st 2013 - fully engaged growth season with regular watering 

LtoR: lemonbalm, rosemary, white sage, spearmint 

(and monkey grass at the stone border in front)

This area gets about 30% sun on any given day, particularly in the middle afternoon. It is surrounded by shrubbery established prior to our purchasing the property but this area itself was barren. I installed a Mister Landscaper (black pvc and green hoses) above ground sprinkler system last year to keep everything alive in these hot TN summers and move it around as needed.
Overall, the herbs seem pretty happy here, despite the largely red clay soil underneath a heavy layer of black mulch. I will continue to try to stake them and keep them contained as I am very aware of how easily rosemary, sage, and mint will take over any area if left on their own. ;)

Trellis Tower, completion

There were several severe storms, class days, work days & nights, and a million other things stalling out the completion of this project that began a week or 2 ago. As of yesterday, it is completed. Horay!

INSTALLATION: 2 diagonal rebar stakes add stability to the trellis tower 

(a piece I bought on clearance almost a year ago from my favorite garden shop downtown) 

INSTALLATION: set the perimeter of the bed with 56 retaining wall blocks & fill with 12cuft of topsoil

Unfortunately it seems somewhat necessary to leave it at a 2 block height for monetary reasons 

(and they've discontinued these blocks at Lowes so finding another full ring of 28 is not possible locally)

VINE: I found a lovely vine for the trellis - Silver Bells Chocolate Vine (aka: 5-leaf Akebia),

according to my consultant it should withstand the TN summer sun & grow fast

COMPLETE: finished off the project with more soil, mulch, Jethro Tull Coreposis, and the vine. 

Still giving some thought to adding in some more shorter perennials but that can be done whenever. 

The vine was placed on the backside of the bed because it's not entirely centered around the tree stump/root structure, leaving more space on the back. The only way to completely center it would be to have the stump ground down completely, which would cost me the trellis platform (not what I wanted here). 

Overall I'm pretty pleased with the transformation of this space and it's SUCH a vast improvement over how it was before... 100x better than the eyesore below. This area is in direct view of our garage where we like to chill and hang out away from the brutal sun's rays. It's nice to actually enjoy the view again. 

B E F O R E 

(2012)

Horay for chainsaws, determination, and time off to do this myself! :) 

Stump Leveling: advanced achievement

FINALLY!

After 14mos+ of staring at this huge stump, left by the former property owners, I have finally taken this thing down to a workable level. What I mean is something I can actually use, build atop, and actually like. It was probably the most major of the projects around the yard to date, given the sheer amount of time & energy involved. 

OVERALL SHOT: taken from the rooftop (April 2012) - for a wider perspective

BEFORE my adventure began - approximate height of 6ft with a 3ft diameter and starting to rot on the side.

This massive OAK tree stump was left for us to deal with. There was a previous cut mark at one side of the stump where it looks like someone started to tackle it but ceased (probably because it was SO big!)

AFTER my massive series of cuts to take out the bulk of this 6ft stump 

(and dodging the blooming tulips the whole time)

AFTER getting the chainsaw stuck for the 2nd time and having to 

chisel it free with the man's blacksmithing tools

AFTER 

7hrs+ of wailing on this thing with, not one, but 3 different chainsaws (don't ask!)

There was some additional shaving that needed to be done also to make it more level. 

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: my trophy shot, about 8hrs after beginning

I'd only used a chainsaw one time prior to this adventure, so there was a bit of learning curve involved - specifically dealing with tension pulls and the like. I began with an electric, returned it, and completed it with a proper gas saw. 

And while I'm pretty proud of myself for managing to get this done, I don't think I ever want to do this again as it was a massive pain! 

This was me by myself, by the way, except with the cleanup phase when the man helped roll this thing 500 meters to the neighbor's dump site that he generously lets us use as needed and calls to have picked up by one of his guys. I cleaned up the giant chunks that were scattered about and all the way down our driveway and the street with a wheelbarrow, broom, and dustpan. If you ever try this, do yourself a favor and ENLIST HELP. (Don't kill yourself like I did!)

Now what? The column trellis, mounted with rebar spikes, of course. To be continued...
(waiting out a major storm front that's rolling through this evening before erecting this thing)

Corner garden

This kind of began on its own - the rocks were scavenged from the back of our property line (along with the concrete blocks). I'm not entirely certain what the previous owners were going for with their odd formation of stone but these are not native to our hilltop so at some point someone brought in these sandstone rocks that resemble many I've seen at creek beds.

I had the man help me recover them all and move them up to the driveway/parking area and then I proceeded to build this small little wall to define the corner of our parking area that has some cracked asphalt  - an area that makes me crazy to weed and/or mow around. The plant holders were left here by my mother-in-law when we brought over her 20+ potted plants to hold while they were moving. I've decided that she can't have them back, lol. Barrel pots picked up on a major sale and spray painted in an effort to both mellow out the bright cedar color and seal them from the elements a bit. Stepping stones were left by the "house flippers" we bought the property from and relocated from the south side of the house.

I will continue to develop this corner garden over time.

Small scale challenge : terrarium

I've wanted to create one of these for awhile... Today I spotted a nicely setup terrarium at one of my favorite  garden shops, alas, it was priced at $40 - ouch! But oh how I coveted this gorgeous miniature world!

I picked out 2 mini plants (one looks like a miniature elephant ear and the other a miniature ivy vine) and a pint of irish moss for a grand total of $9, determined to create my own for far less than their price tag.

However, I still needed the large jar with a removable lid in which to set up my tiny landscape so off to Hobby Lobby I went! With a coupon, the large apothecary styled jar was about $10. (Running total = $19)

Returning home: Jar + rock layer (stones I already had) + spanish moss layer (left over from another craft project) + 2 mini plants - irish moss that was too big for things and ended up planted in the flower bed instead = Terrarium Success!

Note: According to the sages on Google, you're supposed to leave the tight-fitting lid on... I keep wondering about this (O2 build up?) but will try it for awhile and see what happens. Cheers. 

Front yard: drainage at walkway

Front walkway drainage issue
(4.14.13 - 4.16.13)

On the "to deal with later" list has been a minor drainage problem along the front walkway. The issue is that the soil (aka: red clay ground) is higher than the walkway - this creates a problem when it rains  a lot (something that happens fairly regularly in TN) as the water simply has nowhere to go and tends to pool up until it evaporates.

Exhibit A: the shift of ground over time to the left has created somewhat of a basin on the walkway that can take several days to fully absorb/disburse the water.

B E F O R E 

My solution? Exhibit B: dig out and ultimately remove some of this soil (if you can call it that). By the way, I highly advise either enlisting some help with the movement of dirt and/or enlisting some help with the digging itself. With a small wheelbarrow and a square shovel it took me almost 3hrs to move all of this (partly because my dirt dump site is at the back of the property line in between some trees where I've been piling brush/branches/etc. over time.

D U R I N G

The second phase of this is to add some actually USEFUL soil and border plants to aim for a slightly lower level at the walkway, thereby creating a slope of sorts that will enable the rain to run off properly. This current trench (aka: dragon moat, if you're one of the nosy neighborhood kids that asked me wtf I was doing) is approximately 37ft long x 1.5ft wide x 0.5-1ft deep depending on problematic root structures uncovered during this excavation process. Phase 2 pending.

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As I came out to remeasure and check things this morning (day after digging), I noticed something else had been checking out my project:

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Completion: fill, plant, mulch & set. Mondo grass can get kinda pricey when you're buying by the flat without a contractor's discount so hopefully my 20 will do okay and double the spacing. We'll see!

A F T E R 

Now I just have to wait about 3mos and see if nature handles the rest to "test" it out and see if this solves the issue entirely. To be continued..?

Backyard: raised bed

We scavenged these blocks off the back of the property line - I believe they may have severed as the footprint for someone's shed, long ago. I enlisted the man to help me lug them from the back of the lot and up closer to the house (mostly to "lay claim" to them before someone else got the idea). They've been sitting in a wall formation along the back shrubs by our patio area for about 6mos and I've finally figured out what I want to do with them all. In total, we had 32 + 9 toppers + 1 that broke in half when it was tossed.

I opted to watch the morning/daytime sun for a bit before committing to the space. (Eventually I ended up moving the entire setup about 5ft west to both keep a mower path and straight line path towards the hypothetical location of our new shed/workshop -a much later & more involved project.)

This is probably the 3rd formation design I came up with to get max use out of them. 

We have an insane amount of moles and other critters roaming around our yard (and the entire hill) so I've decided to at minimum make it a bit more challenging for them to burrow through to the goodies. 

Unfortunately I found myself 2 blocks short in this pattern and was thinking over putting the 1 split block to use - alas, that idea was retired for stability reasons so I picked up 2 extra blocks to complete the shape. 

This is almost how it looks at present (4/10/13) with approximately 40cuft of soil atop wire, moisture barrier, peat moss, and manure. Yesterday I added another 8cuft of soil and also filled in the block holes to add more stability to it. I'm waiting for tomorrow intense rain storm to compact it all down a bit more so I can check the real soil level. Cypress mulch will be added after planting later on. 

As of 4/17/13: I'm waiting for the weather to stabilize a bit more before planting as we've had some rather erratic temperature shifts (one day it's 40 degrees, the next it's 80 degrees) lately. Eyeing the end of this month or mid-May to plant. What will I plant? TOMATOES! YES!

Front yard beds

The past 2 days I've worked on some improvements I've been wanting to get to for quite some time - since we delayed the deck we're going to build in the backyard, I opted to get these knocked out first.

(VERY OLD IMAGE - posted here for perspective) This image was taken from the net, long before we looked into possible purchase (a ton of renovation has been done since). The smaller tree clump to the left is the current location of the shade garden (and the tree is double in size now). The larger tree to the right is gone (lightening strike) and that is the current location of the small sun garden.

Shade garden - 42 landscaping blocks + soil w/ peat & manure + irrigation extension. The tree was preexisting and I have been looking for a way to "clean it up" some. 

Sun garden - 20 landscaping blocks + soil w/ peat & manure. This spot covers a preexisting tree stump that the property owners left us after removing a lightening struck tree (stump runs very close to the water lines on the house so I was hesitant to have it removed). The down side is that this spot requires manual irrigation, unless we add another extension. It's a small spot though so that shouldn't be a huge issue overall.  

Fort Sussex: before pix

New state, new home - relocation. 

Some "before" shots, taken just after closing on our new home (early 2012). There is SO much to do and such huge potential spread out across the hill. The photos below were taken by me after closing:

BACKYARD: WEST

BACKYARD: SOUTHWEST

FRONTYARD: NE CORNER

FRONTYARD: SE CORNER

FRONTYARD: EAST 

FRONTYARD: NORTH

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The photos below are OLD, collected from the net while we were considering this property - note how run down this house was before the "house flippers" picked it up - wow! 

You find that same old painted iron railing on so many of the 1950-1970 home builds - hate that stuff! 

(Glad they removed it!)

Random image positioning - backyard area, but not showing all of the space 

(0.83 acres in total)

The property owners and the neighbors told us this beautiful tree was hit by lightening - sad. 

Arial lot shot from Google - we're the brown roof (now gray shingled).

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These 2 exterior photos were taken by the "house flippers" and used in all their listings for the property. General shape has stayed the same but the landscaping was pitiful IMO - much has been changed already with plans for much more on the horizon. 

They really did do a huge amount of work on this house to get it "up to par" - including: New roof, new hvac, all new duct work under the house, new electrical/breaker box & mostly new wiring throughout, entire kitchen remodel w/ granite countertops and brand new appliances, new windows (except for the 9-pane main room window - still needs replacing), refinished hardwood floors throughout, new ladder to attic space, r25+ value insulation blown in attic (at my request), new dryer exhaust, new hot water heater, and more.
We've been very pleased with this property in the last year+ ...hoping for many more!

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INTERIOR RENOVATIONS

B E F O R E

Old school! Check the paneling - yikes!

A F T E R

Brand new appliances, cabinets, granite counter top with stainless sink undermounting, stone splashwall, and so much more!