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Post by nana on May 7, 2017 16:35:56 GMT -5
. The time has come. We kidded ourselves that it wasn't so bad. "It'll last another ten years," we said. Well, no, it won't. And before even more of our yard, plus the garage too, slides downhill, we are replacing our old wall. It was made of railroad ties, and while they lasted about 30 years, they have given their all. We will replace it with Cambridge ledgestone--fancy concrete blocks that approximate a cut stone look. Real fieldstone set by an actual stonemason was waaaaaay out of our price range and time frame as well. We flirted with a poured concrete wall when I found out it could be colored and I wanted to inlay the top with rounded beach pebbles like a mosaic while it was still wet(which I still maintain would have been a unique and totally cool thing), but it worked out to about the same price and my husband really liked the idea of the ledgestone and sometimes you just have to let the baby have his bottle. I mean, sometimes he gets to win one. I mean--well, you know what I mean. Anyway, all my perennials and bulbs had to be removed this weekend, to lie on a tarp in the shade or shoved into pots to survive as best they can until the construction is done, and I had just started when I thought to take a picture to memorialize this occasion. I didn't really realize just how many plants I had there. It was back breaking work, even with the soft ground from all the rain we've had lately. But I will get to put them all back in a little bit better placement with some rhyme and reason to it rather than the haphazard way they all were crammed in wherever I'd found room. I will probably lose a lot of the blooms this year, but I'm pretty sure the plants will recover. I have what I call a Darwinian garden--nothing but the real survivors stick around! Here they are, huddled together like traumatized refugees: Poor things!
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Post by mach12 on May 7, 2017 21:49:18 GMT -5
People pay a lot of money for that rustic look and you're tearing it out? Probably a similar situation as me complaining about all of the moss on everything this year and Dwayner being all excited about the variety of mosses we have around here.
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Post by evangeline on May 7, 2017 22:33:32 GMT -5
Heck yeah that's a lot of work. But so fun to put back together. Our spring has been cool and drenched! When can they start?
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Post by pooka on May 8, 2017 4:59:54 GMT -5
I envy your collection of perennials. I don't envy the task of replacing a retaining wall. While those rail road ties do have a rustic charm, they don't enure for many years till they're a crumbling heap. Concrete is an stout replacement, & can be dressed up to conceal it coldness. I favor stacked stone, but the materials alone can be pricey. To have a skilled mason to do the job makes it a big investment that can last many lifetimes. But alas, few of us have the capital to lay out for the job. Ledgestone is good looking stuff, & an appealing compromise, & if it makes your husband happy, so be it.
As you know, a good relationship is a dance of compromises. Sometimes you get what you want. Other time, he gets what he wants. It's a fair exchange. One of you can't lead all of the time. It's a dance of give & take that's never ending, as long as the music keeps playing. Good that your doing it now. It gives your plant until fall to recover. You may loose some summer color this year, but next year you'll have a new show to enjoy as the plant settle back into their new arrangement. Then you can fiddle with it by adding new things, & thinning where some didn't far so well in the shuffle.
Perennial gardens are a wonder. Once you fill them out, all you have to do is sit back & watch the show. Then add & subtract a little if you like each season. Or you can do nothing. I laugh at the people who put in annual gardens. They go through so much work & money year after year replacing everything every season. They may have a beautiful yard, but it's a never ending expense, & a back breaking chore that's ceaseless. A Perennial is a yearly show with little or no work once established, where all you have to do is a little weeding.
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Post by evangeline on May 8, 2017 7:35:43 GMT -5
Nana, I like your idea about the mosaic capstone. Can you make stepping stones through your large perennial bed? Here's a link: jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2011/08/building-pebble-mosaic-stepping-stone.htmlWe were going to hire Jeffrey Bale for a project at the Jacksonville Zoo & Botanical Gardens in Florida but at that time he charged $300/sf for mosaic & the project budget couldn't bear the freight. Instead Mark Kretzmaier did the work. He taught himself by reading Maggie Howarth's how-to books. What a sweetie. He labored in the hot Florida summer for weeks on that installation and never complained. Here he is: photos.jacksonville.com/mycapture/enlarge.asp?image=16212836So, I guess I'm just saying, if you go down that road you may never come back!
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Post by nana on May 8, 2017 14:01:53 GMT -5
People pay a lot of money for that rustic look and you're tearing it out? Probably a similar situation as me complaining about all of the moss on everything this year and Dwayner being all excited about the variety of mosses we have around here. You are kidding, right? That rustic look is the look of rotting railroad ties that you can break chunks off with just your hand; that are allowing the soil that my garage, peonies and raised bed sit upon to sift through the holes and gaps like sands through an hourglass (so go the days of our lives!). The guy we have doing it started today on ripping it all out and I'm all verklempt because I had hoped to not have to move the peonies at the top of the wall, but he had to remove quite a few of them. When I came home from work they had joined their fellow exiles on the tarp. My neighbor said she was watching him and said he really tried to be as careful as he could and was very respectful, so I'm sitting in the house now trying to stay out of his way and not be out there biting my nails and cringing at every move. The peonies will survive--they are one tough plant, but it will probably be about 3 years before I get the blossoms I used to. I like the stepping stone idea, Evangeline! I have about a three gallon bucket full of beautiful beach pebbles we collected on the north shore of Long Island. My friend and I had the idea of making a kitchen counter top by laying them out and pouring epoxy or something over them to encase them, but the menfolk put the kibosh on that. I do have a little angled spot between the walkway, basement door and deck that I've kind of paved over with old broken roofing slate just to keep the weeds down. I wonder if I could just buy a bag of concrete and pour it over that and set the stones in? No one walks there, I just set my houseplants there for the summer....hmmmmm. Pooka, there is always work, even in a perrenial bed! They need lifting and dividing and the weeds are always ready to pounce. It is a real joy to see them coming back faithfully every spring, though, like beloved old friends.
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Post by mach12 on May 8, 2017 17:10:45 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm kidding. I'm surprised what some people try to pass off as rustic though. My dad grew peonies since my mom loved them so much and he worked wonders with them. So many things I wish I could ask him about now that he's gone. I drove by their old house the other day and the young couple who bought the place have kept up with the yard and that was great to see, though the let the garden go back to lawn. They both work so it was probably a bit too much to do all the weeding and so on. Looked like the area where the peonies were planted is in great shape too.
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Post by nana on May 8, 2017 18:57:23 GMT -5
I searched for pictures I knew I took of my peonies and then I remembered they were photographs on actual film, and I had to go looking in my super efficient photo filing system of shoeboxes and shopping bags crammed in desk drawers and these from 5 years ago were the best I could do on short notice. I have a better series that has more flowers opened, including the red ones, but I couldn't lay my hands on them. I hope these give you all a sense of how pretty they are and why I love them so. They are such extravagantly gorgeous flowers, and yet so susceptible to a sudden summer storm--one minute they're showstoppers, the next they're all flopped on the ground like soggy piles of papier-mâché. I think that bouquet is something I ran out and snipped when I heard thunder rumbling. At least I could enjoy them in the house! PS. That was when the wall was still mostly doing its retaining....
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Post by Chuckie on May 8, 2017 21:00:37 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm kidding. I'm surprised what some people try to pass off as rustic though. My dad grew peonies since my mom loved them so much and he worked wonders with them. So many things I wish I could ask him about now that he's gone. I drove by their old house the other day and the young couple who bought the place have kept up with the yard and that was great to see, though the let the garden go back to lawn. They both work so it was probably a bit too much to do all the weeding and so on. Looked like the area where the peonies were planted is in great shape too. I haven't "googled" them-- YET--but we have BUNCH of peonies @ my (now late) M.I.L.'s house that came from HER parents place, that we need to transplant. They've grown "spindly" as they are almost in full shade now. IF memory serves me, the "old timers" said you were supposed to "split them" (think Iris') every 2 - 5 years. The peonies @ my M.I.L's place have been there since the '70's; the white ones @ my Mom's old house, my Grandmother transplanted those, when they bought the place in the late '40's or early '50's--and they've NEVER been thinned/"split"! So much for "old timers" sayings!! We get a lot of folks that comment about our peonies--only the ONE bush currently--and the hybrid Iris plants my Mother bought years ago. They are just "old time" plants, that the younger generations growing up in the cookie cutter houses don't SEE anymore!! Like Pooka said, they spend TONS on those annuals that never come BACK, and ignore the old standbys. The BIGGEST comments come from the Hollyhocks, which one "older lady" called "those are OLD LADY flowers, I haven't seen those since the THIRTIES, when folks planted them around outhouses & garbage cans!!!" LOL The hollyhocks pretty much reseed themselves, but often grown shorter over the years and eventually die off, IF you don't move those as well... CHEERS! Chuckie
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Post by evangeline on May 9, 2017 7:49:24 GMT -5
Nana, I might be crazy, and photos can be very misleading. . . this is just a thought. . . .but soil will not slump unless the pitch is pretty darn steep. Some public gardens build their shrub/perennial borders on a slope, w/shrubs upslope & smaller items in front. It looks like you have lots of room to spread the slope a little. Any chance you could avoid the expense of the wall with a little earthwork? Unless of course you just love a wall. Some people do!
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Post by nana on May 9, 2017 15:39:36 GMT -5
We thought about doing that. I had visions in my mind of a gentle slope with pathways and terraced beds full of fabulous garden. but the septic tank and leach field take up most of my back yard, and the slope would have covered up the access to the tank to service it, and there was also no way to get a dump truck in there to dump enough dirt. Plus, I do like a wall. It faces south and the little bit of extra warmth that it gets and retains helps the flowers. Anyway, work has already started, so that ship has sailed.
Chuckie, what I know of peonies, although I'm no expert, is that they are extremely long lived, but do NOT like to be moved, and I would assume that means also being divided. Sometimes if you want to start a new plant you can slice off a bit from the edge of one and nurse it along till it gets some size to it. They develop huge woody taproots. I was actually amazed to see roots as thick as a man's thumb reaching down about four feet when Alex removed the ties. It is impossible to get all of it without a backhoe. Just get as much as you can, plant them in full sun with plenty of compost, and keep watering them, and they will recover, but they will probably sulk for a few years before they forgive you. There are peonies you see in yards around here that must be over 100 years old still blooming beautifully.
Iris are cast iron. As long as they don't get borers you can't kill them with a killing machine! I've divided mine and had so many that one time I forgot a box of the rhizomes in the garage from August until the next spring. No soil, no water, no light, and freezing and thawing all winter. In spring I said,"I wonder what's in this box?" Irises already about 4 or 5 inches tall, pale from living in the dark, but still alive! I took pity on them and even though I had no room, I put them at the edge of the chicken yard fence to take their chances. Now I have more clumps, but they can just wait. I have too much to do with the rest of the yard!
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Post by pooka on May 10, 2017 0:49:36 GMT -5
nana, in looking up some of the old perennials like irises, tulips, crocuses, hyacinths & peony's, peony's seem to be the most widely distributed. According to Wikipedia, "They are native to Asia, Europe and Western North America. Scientists differ on the number of species that can be distinguished ranging from 25 to 40, although the current consensus is 33 known species. The relationships between the species need to be further clarified." It goes on to say, "Peonies are among the most popular garden plants in temperate regions." Further under the heading Morphology, it explains how they're propagated. In terms only a botanist might fully understand, it explain the different way the various types multiply. As for irises, tulips, crocuses & hyacinths, they all seem to have origins in the near east & middle east, so they must be pretty tough to withstand the long travel times back in the 16th & 17th century's when they first started to appear in western Europe. I know there are some irises over at my brother & sisters that have been there since I was little without being touched. If they had been lifted & divided as you do, they'd be everywhere over there. I've got some of the old orange day lilies way back in the rear of the back yard, but they don't get enough sun, so they rarely bloom anymore, but they still come up every year. There's some Daffodils along the fence, but they've been trampled by the dogs over the years, & not many come up anymore. They're getting too much shade too from two large ceder trees, one in my yard, & one in the neighbors yard. When I was little mom had sweet peas along the fence. Since they reseed themselves, once established, they're hard to kill off. Forget-Me-Nots are good that way too, & will fill in & take over if you let them. In the front yard shade, I've got lilies of the valley between the house & the walkway, but now they're getting choked out by a kind of small leafed ivy that the birds I think planted. I tear it out, but it keep coming back. I lived for a several years in a one hundred year old house, & put in a flower bed lined with dusty miller, & filled with various colors of petunias, which are suppose to be annuals in this area, but after the first year, they would come back every year after that if I didn't pull out the old dead ones, except the petunias reverted back to their native color, rather than their hybrid form. Every year after that, I had pink ones that came up on their own. There was a beautiful pink & white climbing old rose there that was a most fragment type, although the blooms were nothing spectacular. The smell was well worth their less than stellar blooms. It had probably been there for decades or more of neglect, but would not die. Mom had a yellow one like that. She started it from cuttings from one my grandmother had down in Kentucky. It had the most fearsome thorns of any rose I've ever seen. The fragrance is heavenly. My grandmother use to tend some red peony's. She planted some at our house, & tended them till they were established. I don't believe they survived until today. There were some here at my house, but they were between the eight foot gap between me & the neighbors on the south side of the house. The only time that area get full sun is mid summer in the middle of the day. They don't do well, & I think they've died out from my neglect. In recent years I've let the yard go wild since mom got sick, & subsequently passed. Some of the flowers have been choked out over time. Some, I may be able to revive, but I've not felt fully myself since. The next three week, they're remodeling the dinning room at work, so yesterday was the first day in I don't know when I wasn't completely drained after work, because I only had half the work to do. I'm going to be scheduled my full hours, minus what time I don't go in early, & the hours I work over catching up. Monday is the Friday of my week. Tuesday & Wednesday is my weekend. Today was the first weekend day I've felt like doing much constructive. Today I got up earlier than I have in a long time, & got out in the yard & cut down a bunch of volunteer trees that I'd let get overgrown. One was almost as tall as the house. Well they're cut down to the ground now, but the rest of the yard has yet to be tackled. If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I'm going to have a bonfire of fallen limbs & other brush to start anew to try & to catch up on after my years of idleness. My yard is a wreak. My house is a wreak. My life is a wreak, but today is as good as any to make a new start. The only thing that's buoyed me in recent years has been my single minded obsession of my Chambers. I hope I've been constructive in that alone, if nothing else, so my time in the fog has not been in vain. Sorry for that soul baring. Back to the wall. Ive got a small retaining wall I built in a cut out off of my driveway. Every since this house was built, The sidewalk from the front door curved over to the driveway, then there was two steps down into the cut the driveway makes into the low hill from the street up to the side of the house. It's so narrow, you hardly have room to open the car door to get out, that is, if you park as close to the curb on the right side as you can. Some years ago I was at a bar I use to frequent after work. The bartender told me as the night passed that the business across the street was ripping out their landscaping to redo it. That included some split limestone that was no longer going to be needed. He said it was free to anyone who wanted to haul it off. Well that was music to my ears, cause I never pass up free stuff if I think I'll have a use for it. In the wee hours the next morning, I went back & loaded it up. It was all I could do to get home with the heavy load that was just about all my little GMC S-15 could handle. I piled it in the back yard pondering where to use it. It wasn't a whole lot, but it was pretty stuff, so I had to find just the right use. Not long after that, it hit me of just the perfect place. I'd dig out a little area next to the drive way nearest the house by the sidewalk. I'd lift out the old steps, & turn them to step down into the new cut out. I'd build a low retaining wall on the two sides with the stone. The third side was where the steps would be. I'd scrounge up some old brick to pave the cut out from the driveway into the little alcove so it'd look like it had always been there. It took me three days of digging by myself to excavate the dirt, & lift & rotate the slab of the end of the sidewalk which was the first step, & levered out the other two steps that were one piece with an old pry bar made out of the axle if an old model T. I used big old water pipes & small logs as roller to maneuver the slab out of the way so I could dig out it's new placement, & the place for the steps. It took a long time to collect some old & weathered brick that I'd lay down a few at a time as I found them. Some are regular pavers, while other are old street pavers from the last century that city streets use to be paved with. Little by little, brick by brick, I laid them down on a slight slop, so the rain runoff would drain toward the driveway. The side of the driveway where the steps had been, I had to build another short retaining wall so the sidewalk didn't wash out & slide into the driveway. I scrounged up a few old weather concrete block for that, & capped them off with an old cracked limestone windowsill that I found in the alleyway. I used a few other miscellaneous stones from here & there to try to finish it off. It's an imperfect product, but it works & it look like it's been there for a long long time. I've added more bricks as I find them to fill out the area. but over time, the hill has heaved, pushing some of the stones out of place. I need to get out there & rework it a bit to refine & improve it. These are older pics of it all in all it's unkept glory. This wall now leans out, so it need some work. I put the old street pavers closest to the driveway so their vintage feel is right up front. This is a sign of my lax attitude of not keeping it all tidied up. That's just a round old river rock atop an old sharpening on top of an old scrounged bird bath base. My attempt at impromptu garden art between the grizzled yews. When I dug this out, I found an old penny from the 1930s near the bottom. It must have been dropped by one of the workman when the house was built. The two maples in the front yard now are in need of some pruning & removal of dead & broken limbs that I've neglected for some time. They cool & shade the front yard & the house during the morning into mid day, but as I said they're in need of some tending, as they are now touching the house & roof, so more work for me. Ive got all these old tiles my uncle got from a place where an old now defunct tile factory dumped their rejects, but he never found a use for them. I've racked my brain for a use for them. They might make another retaining wall stacked in mass like this, but I don't know. For now they line the driveway on either side of the side door. They're a convenient place for some of my statuary & stone lamps You should see the house down the street as the road cuts deeper & deeper, dipping down then back up into the ground to make for even higher front yard embankments as it gets closer to the highway. The guy built three levels of terraces with retaining wall blocks. It looks like a fortified house that towers over the road. Here's a Google street view of it from two yeas ago. As the shrubs mature, it looks better. It looked really strange before he planted anything. He must have spent a fortune on the blocks. I'd love to build a lower wall of natural stone on the front of my much lower front embankment, but I can't afford the stone. OK, that's been soul scouring. I better stop there before I dig any further into my darker psyche.
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Post by nana on May 10, 2017 21:02:36 GMT -5
There is something very therapeutic about working in a garden. I am always more peaceful in my mind after I go out and poke around in the dirt, even if I don't seem to be getting anything big done. Spring is the time to go out and get started, while you're still excited by the sight of green and growing things. Later on in mid August I'm ready to say to heck with it, I'm so busy dealing with the vegetables and berries and that's when the weeds take over.
I absolutely love the picture of your Buddha, with his necklace, contemplating his lapful of overflowing greenery. It looks to me like a clump of violets and some of the juciest creeping charlie I've ever seen. Is that the ivy you think the birds planted? If it is creeping charlie, you better just learn to like it, because it will be with you always. Does it have a little purple/blue flower and a sharp, kind of medicinal smell when you crush a leaf?
I prefer a garden that reflects the individuality of the one who tends it, rather than a perfectly regimented and standardized display of specimens. Things that reseed themselves wherever they will, and that come up in strange spots or in different colors are like the survivors I was talking about in my yard. Even a neglected garden can have the kind of beauty that you find in nature--no one plans or tends to wild lands, and things grow every which way in all kinds of places and yet we look at it and can be impressed by the way that things seem to sort themselves out.
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Post by pooka on May 11, 2017 8:47:41 GMT -5
I'm not really a gardener, although I've putter at it here & there, but not the edible side of it. I've always been a night person. That's not advantageous to keeping up with a garden. I know a bit more than the average bear & I appreciate a beautiful yard & landscape. The last few years I've let my yard go wild. I only cut the grass out front when I had to. With the two big maples, the grass doesn't grow much past the early spring, except a bit on the embankment nearest the street. Then not much through the summer. The back yard I only cut the grass, what little of it there is, about once a month if that. The area behind the garage was taken over by poke weed if you know what that is. The young & tender leaves are edible, but only if boiled in several changes of water. Once it gets big, It's just a huge weed that can get seven or eight feet tall. The woody stalks can get a couple of inches in diameter later in the season, it has purple berries that are toxic to humans & animals, with the whole of the plant toxic and increasing in toxicity through the year, but the birds like them. Only the sunniest part of the back yard grow grass. the shadier part are flush with violets. That what you see around the Buddha. His necklace was my brothers doing. I got him years ago. I was wanting to put in a garden patio behind the garage, but it never happened. He was meant to be featured back there. He ended up just being placed near the fence at the very back of the yard along with a few small boulders of similar black volcanic rock some one had discarded, so I brought them home. I like odd rockery around the yard. The Buddha was likely a souvenir from Bali, but maybe a garden statue imported from there. I got him off of eBay. I never knew what creeping charlie was. We always called it wild strawberries, because of the red berries it gets. That stuff is everywhere. That's not the ivy as I called it. That stuff started in the front yard in the shade & has spread to other areas. It has small shinny leaves. The pics I posted are from some years ago from when I first joined this forum. Here's some pics I took yesterday as the light was getting dimmer. I raked out a lot of the leaves & hosed down the driveway & the cut out so you could see the brick paving & retaining walls. I cut down most of the little trees that come up everywhere. As you can see, the block wall is leaning from years of winter heaving. It need to be reset or replaced. That's where the steps used to be before I turned them. The far side of the stacked stone wall is being pushed out. I need to redo it with some sort of reinforcing behind the stones to keep it from being pushed out by the hill slumping. The ivy was spilling over it till I pulled a lot of it out. I'll have to take some better pics, so you can see the ivy up close. This is one of the street paver I've yet to put in. They're twice a tall as a regular brick Here's a jumble of stones where I need to do another short retaining wall. Most of this was there before. It's better than nothing, but needs work. The whole area of foundation plantings needs to be ripped out & redone. The yew bushes where way over grown. I've tried to cut them way back over the years, but they're too far gone, & are beyond rehabbing. I don't relish this job. This whole area is trying to wash out into the driveway. I guess I need to turn the whole area from the driveway to the porch into a flowerbed of low light perennials like hostas, & the like. It might be a nice area to put in some flagstone paving for a cool place to sit on some low benches in the heat of the day, with a planting bed between it & the sidewalk. I just don't know. There's always too much to do. I don't have your sticktoitiveness in your garden. I prefer a garden that once put in, it's a low a maintenance one that just matures with age, & needs a little weeding, & maybe minor adjustments now & again. That's the one thing I don't care for about my home. It's just too big for just me. I could live in a tiny cabin, if I had a big workshop, & some space between me & my neighbors. A landscape of native plants that need little or no help is more my speed. Hostas, ferns & wildflowers, that's the ticket for me. A setting that lays lightly on the land. Not something too imposing.
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Post by nana on May 11, 2017 15:00:04 GMT -5
I like the brickwork you did, it reminds me of my kitchen floor! Those pavers are cool, and I'm glad you rescued a bit of history. It can be overwhelming, I guess, if you're not used to gardening, especially when things like pokeweed(ugh, yes I am familiar!) grow so insanely well that they take over. My weakness is that I always want to give things a chance, so when a strange plant comes up I let it grow to see what it is and how it does, only to find out too late that it's an invasive, dreadful pest. That's how I ended up getting burned by poison parsnip and I'm still battling the bishops weed that came over with the rhubarb I dug up from my mom's. She warned me that I should ruthlessly remove every smidgen of it from the rhubarb roots, but I didn't and I will regret it to my dying day after which the bishops weed will probably dance on my grave.
Start small, pick a spot, and move on from there, don't try to do it all at once. A garden is always a work in progress. You have a good start with your limestone wall and walkway. Hostas will be great along there--you can't get much more low maintenance than them! And you can often get a grab bag mix of 6-10 random hostas from a mail order nursery or a garden center for not much cost. They'll be puny the first year, but give them compost and mulch and in a few years you'll have a nice display. I bought one of the mixes and got some that are beautifully fragrant when they bloom, a nice bonus. You might be a good candidate for ground covers, if it's too shady for grass. Pachysandra is almost indestructibleand will spread to cover as large an area as you will allow it to if it likes where it is, and it is pretty. I have a ton of it. I could probably mail you some--I bet it would make the trip. Walk around your neighborhood and see what you like in other peoples yards that are similar to yours. You may find gardening getting into your blood too!
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Post by pooka on May 12, 2017 13:32:23 GMT -5
nana, thanks for the complement on the brickwork. It's sloped a bit too much, because I put them in a few at a time as I found them, but I'm an amateur at this. They are also laid right on the dirt that I hand scraped with an old garden hoe that I put a short handle on made from a branch cut from one of the yews. I should pull them all out & relay them in sand for proper drainage. That's just one of the down sides of being self taught. You lean new lessons as you go. A professional contractor would have thrown the old section of sidewalk & steps away, & poured new ones, & also would have used all new brick, but it wouldn't match. In fact, they would probably wanted to put in a whole new walkway, but it would've looked new. I didn't want that. I wanted the vintage look, plus I couldn't afford it.
You make due with what you have, & do the best you can with it. A side note is old concrete continues to cure with age, even after seventy seven years, getting harder & harder. That's one of the qualities of it. If & when I do more work to the area, I'll improve my method, & redo what was done incorrectly. If I had put in a proper gravel base under & behind the walls, & maybe some drainage pipe, It probably wouldn't have heaved like it has, but you live & learn.
That poke weed can interesting to look at, but it can take over, & take years to eradicate, because it'll come up from the seeds or the large tap root that's left in the ground, once the top of the plant dies back. It's scary to hear about that poison parsnip. I'm sure I've seen it in my wanderings, but it doesn't ring a bell. My grandma use to let things grow by putting a stick in the ground next to them so they didn't get mowed down, but growing up in a more rural setting, she was most likely more versed in poisonous plant than we are. She was usually marking trees that she wanted to get bigger before she could transplant them to where she wanted them. It was cheaper than getting them from the garden center, plus you know you're getting a native variety.
That bishops weed looks familiar from pics I've searched out. I'm sure I've seen it somewhere. My front yard can be almost dark at mid day from the shade of the two massive maple trees. They were planted when the house was built, so they're huge. Some years ago when I trimmed them back along the front by the street, nearest the house & over the driveway it was better, but I've always struggled to keep the grass from dying out there. It just ends up being partly bare earth or whatever weeds that will tolerate the shade. The only place real grass grows is on the embankment in front & about a third of the back yard nearest the house where it gets the most sun. The middle & back of the yard is mostly violets, which don;t get too tall under the shad of the cedar trees & the giant overgrown boxwood back there, but they can still get pretty thick. Behind the garage, it used to be mostly violet, but now the poke weed has mostly taken over from my neglect. That stuff goes from nothing, to six feet tall within a few weeks, so I'll be battling that for years to come.
My problem now is my garage is stuffed with junk my cousin shoved in there & piled around the yard when he got evicted from his house two doors down. He scrambled to move stuff out as quickly as possible, so it's a jumble making it almost impossible to even find my garden tool. He's just about wreaked my lawn mower from abuse, because he used it more than I did to cut his bigger yard over there. He's one of those people who's hard on things, because he's not very careful. Plus he borrows things, & they never come back. You have to go looking for them to get them back.
He's just one of the crosses I have to bear being surrounded by useless people with no consideration for others. I'm continuously helping him in his time of need, but I almost never ask for help from him or others. That's one of the reasons I rave about the world gone mad. It's all about them, with no consideration for the next guy. It's no wonder I want to be an isolated hermit. Even when the other guy is helping me, they frequently are more trouble than they're worth, so I'd rather do things myself, which can be overwhelming. I end up getting nothing done out of exasperation. I end up being the fly on the wall shaking my head at the world wondering what the use in trying. I glean what I can from the margins of society, then go running for my solitude to escape the melee & madness.
It's no wonder my mind is so discombobulated from tying to deal with the world I find myself imprisoned in. I have trouble turning a blind eye to the disconcerting state of affairs my environment is in. I just want to turn in on myself & let the world go over the cliff & be done with it. The problem is, it will drag me along with it, so I'm in a death struggle that seems to never end. It's just exhausting, physically & mentally for me. I just want to survive & be left alone in peace, but that seems impossible.
I am lost, with no safe harbor but within myself.
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Post by karitx on May 12, 2017 19:43:29 GMT -5
Nana, I hope your retaining wall project goes smoothly and that you'll post pictures when it is in place and everything is replanted. My yard is in a constant state of chaos, but that's kind of what I want out there - the wild abandon that happens when nature just gets to do its thing.
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Post by nana on May 12, 2017 22:34:49 GMT -5
Poison parsnip was unfamiliar to me as well. It is something new up here, I guess some kind of invasive. I know we never had it around here all the years I was growing up running wild all summer. It is awful stuff. The juice from the plant reacts with the sun to give you a slow, second degree chemical burn whever it touches you. I allowed one to grow in my yard one year, not knowing what it was. When I realized it was too big and vigorous and weedy to be anything desirable, I reached down and wrestled with it to yank it out by the root. Later on that day my arm started to hurt and I looked and all up and down my arm I had giant blisters coming out, and painful like anything. It was a long time healing and the scars took a few years to fade. It grows mostly by the roadsides, so it must have originally been brought by some kind of traveler. If they would do the roadside mowing at the proper time for a year or two and get it before it goes to seed they could really cut down on it, it is a biennial, I think.
Pooka, bishops weed has a slightly less infuriating, and more attractive cousin called snow-on-the-mountain. It has a pale geeen and white variegated leaf, and is not quite as impossible to deal with. It is actually pretty until about midsummer when it gets a kind of rusty look to it, but then you can just mow it(don't worry, you won't kill it!) and it will grow back. It's tough stuff. It would probably grow even in your shady yard, in fact, that might slow it down just enough to keep it mannerly.
The wall is about 2/3 done already, but I'll have to wait till next week for it to be finished--poor guy deserves a weekend, I guess. Plus it's supposed to rain all weekend. It does look nice already. I will definitely post some "after" pictures when it's all done!
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Post by nana on May 21, 2017 9:00:17 GMT -5
Well, here it is! It looks a lot better than it did before! After he was done we realized we should have had him make it one row higher towards the front to help hold in the peonies, but we had about 30 blocks left over which was just enough to place one more row there, although they are not glued in place as the others are. We could always do that in the future if necessary, but they aren't holding in much, really just a few inches of mulch. I think they'll be OK. I worked this weekend putting those poor peonies back in, and doing a little rearranging of the herbs that were there too. I don't know if he had to bring in some fill to complete the wall, or if it's just that all my good improved flower bed soil got mixed up with all the subsoil when he dug the trench, but it is so stony and rocky now that before the plants go back in I'm going to take some of that off and use it to fill in some low spots in the chicken yard, and have a cubic yard or two of compost delivered and rototilled in. I do like the wall, but it kind of feels like the equivalent of granite countertop/stainless steel appliance garden architecture to me: beautiful in a less personally expressive way. It will take a few years for me to truly make it mine. PS. That carpet of green in the raised bed is all dill and cilantro seedlings that took advantage of 10 days of me not being able to access them(the pallets of blocks were set down right on the other side of the bed). My beets, carrots and swiss chard seedlings are lost in the crowd, particularly difficult to remedy the situation with the carrots, because until they get some size, they are nearly identical in appearance to the dill. It's my own fault because I always let too many of them go to seed.
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Post by mach12 on May 21, 2017 11:53:36 GMT -5
That really turned out nice! I need to do that on the other side of my driveway but need to take out about 20 fir trees first. Right now it's a hill but I'd like to dig it out for parking and a pad for the propane tank and then put two 4 foot retaining walls. We have to get a permit for anything over 4 feet and it has to be an engineered design but I can do a 4 foot wall, go back 4 feet, and then do another 4 foot wall without a permit, so that's the plan. The 4 foot wide bed would make a perfect place for some low maintenance shrubs and perennials. More stuff for the deer to devour.
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Post by pooka on May 21, 2017 13:19:20 GMT -5
That's nice. As it weathers, & the flower bed in front matures, it will fad into the background, & have a more lived in look that's not as in your face as it is now. I could live with a wall like that out front along the street, though I'd prefer a natural stacked stone. It would most likely be more practical, & I'm sure the neighbors would like it. I'd have to put some steps in the middle, & a walkway connecting to the present walk that curves over to the drive. That would help to break up the monolithic look of it, & be a bit more welcoming from the curb. I like that your wall has a smooth flat profile to it, unlike my neighbors walls down the street, & their daunting stairway to the sky. My embankment is only about as high as the first terrace on this one above. I don't care for the choppy look of this style blocks. It's too busy looking, & is distracting, especially on this grand a scale. If this guy had done his walls like yours, the effect would've been much more appealing I think. A smooth face like yours would blend right into the old sidewalk. Your eye would be drawn up to the house, & less to the retaining walled terraces. The above installation is just out of scale with the house at the top. There's just no harmony of the whole thing. It's more like a thumb in you eye than a thing of beauty. My front yard is only about forty two inches high from the sidewalk. This pic from the 40s shows the the scale, even though the trees being a good deal larger now dominate the front yard. They're so overgrown & hanging down, you can barely see the house anymore. I need to do a good pruning them from bellow so they frame the house, not obscure it. Here's what it looks like now from sitting on the front steps, left, center & right. This was early in the morning last week. That why there's a little slice of sun that has risen enough over the trees across the street to peak through a gap where some fallen branches have made an opening. The rest of the yard is pretty dark through most of the day. Note the sparse growth of much of anything save the lilies of the valley left of the walk. This week I need to get out there to mow, rake & burn the pile of fallen limbs. There's some big widow maker hanging high in the tree on the right. They're from some storm damage from a few years ago that I was never brave enough to climb up to cut out. They've been falling out a little at a time since.
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Post by nana on May 22, 2017 19:37:37 GMT -5
I agree that those walls are a bit stiff and pompous for that house. Once the grass grows back and the plants are in place, mine will have a much softer look. I hope!
How cool that you have a picture of your grand front yard trees when they were literally just young whipper snappers.They do throw a lot of shade, which is probably really nice in summer. What type are they? Maples?
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Post by pooka on May 23, 2017 5:08:34 GMT -5
They're hard maple or sugar maple. There use to be one next door too, then two more in my uncles house after that. Only my two, & one at my uncles survive. The others were either stressed, or became diseased & died. There was a big fir tree on the other side that had become stressed from a drought here some years ago. It died the next year. Mine & one at my uncles are the last old trees on this side of the street, going all the way down several blocks to the highway. I take that back. There is a grizzled old cedar tree on the next corner, but the rest are young trees like small dogwoods. I think there's a few different kinds, but they're all small. Mine do cool the house until the mid day sun. Then, you can tell when the temperature jumps in the back of the house in the early afternoon.
I really like your new wall. After it weathers a bit, & the vegetation snuggles back up against it. It'll just be the hit of an old structure. Maybe an old farm wall of a building long gone. That style blocks look like rough quarried & laid stone. A lot of homes in this area from the late 50s, into the 60s used something people call Bedford Stone that looks similar, except it's lighter colored. They call it that because of the quarries around Bedford, IN. It's the finest limestone in the country & some of the finest in the world. It's used extensively in DC & New York City. The Empire State Building is made of Indiana limestone. So is the Pentagon & many more there on the mall. In the 1979 movie "Breaking Away", they go swimming in the old quarries, & the one kids dad use to work in the quarries. At one time I heard you could take a tour, & they'd show you the hole where The Empire State Building stone came from. There's so much of the stuff in that area to last for centuries of quarrying.
There's lots of lesser quality stone in southern Indiana, Kentucky & Illinois. But it's like the stuff my little wall is made from. It's rough stuff, really only good as split stone. There are various buildings & project in the area that were done by the WPA in the 30s that use the stuff.
That old pic of my house I found online in my wanderings. I don't remember where. I figure it had been done for taxes, or for when it was listed for sale when My grand parents bought it. The couple that built the house & lived in it for three years. Grandma & grandpa bought it in 1943. I figure the trees where planted by the original owner. In that pic, they looks like they've had a few years growth. We've owned it since. Now that I think about it, It had to be a little later, because great grandpa, grandpa & uncle Orville built the garage on a foundation the builder put in, but never finished. I remember mom saying they went on a vacation to New York City & spent all the money they'd set aside fore the garage. Orville told me the chimney is build from the reused bricks from the old septic tank they dug out when the sewer came through. Next year it'll the seventy five years since we bought the place. Somewhere around here I found the receipt for the deposit on the water meter when it was first turn on in 1943. I should dig it out & frame it.
My brother was a real pal. He came over & cut my back yard that was getting out of hand. I was going to try to get some yard work the next two days. I got a used electric mower at Goodwill for $25. It'll be a lot easier to cut that front hill & yard than with my old rattle trap of a mower I've got. My cousin has beat it to death nearly by using it more often & more roughly that I would. He's one of those people that uses thing up that should last much longer. My brother bought me a really nice used mower last year for $50, & I put $50 in parts in it. It's great, but it's a heavy big wheeled one. It's great for a big flat areas, but not my front yard. Hopefully I can at lest do some shearing on those front trees, mow & rake the front & burn the brush pile. We'll see what I get done in back.
I'm in the home stretch of paying off my house. Fifteen more payments & it's mine. Then I can start a plan of fixing all the things I've neglected over the years. The lawn & yard are just the beginning of catching up. Home ownership is a continual battle, but it'll be all mine, such as it is. As long as I pay the taxes, I'll have a roof over my head. I'll never finish, but I can make a start. We do what we can do, until we can do no more & are no more.
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Post by pooka on May 23, 2017 13:32:57 GMT -5
Here's a couple more pics taken at my house. They're of my mom & dad on their wedding day in 1952. The wedding reception was in my basement. The first is the glamor shot on my front porch. The other is standing in the front yard, ready to leave. You can just see the maple tree on the left.
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Post by nana on May 23, 2017 15:23:40 GMT -5
Thanks! My Dad says it reminds him of an old castle wall. I said well, that's about as close as I'll ever come to living in a castle, I guess. I don't have pictures of my house from when it was new, but we also own the house next door where my daughter's family lives, and she was given a picture of it from way back when by a lady whose husband's family had lived in it since it was built--not sure of the date, but the clothing of the two people in front seems to place it from before the turn of the LAST century. She said it had hung on the wall in the living room for probably over a hundred years, and when they sold the house to us she'd put it in her home, but finally felt that it should go back to its old place. The most noticeable change is the streetscape. The way the street used to be level with the front dooryard, and now it slopes down to it because every time they repave it it gets a little higher, and there used to be curbs and a sidewalk! The porch is a little shorter too, and no more picket fence, alas. The lilac bush is probably standing almost exactly where those two old Mattisons were. I'd love to take those awful asbestos shingles off the house, the clapboards are still under there, but we can't afford the costs of doing it right, and don't want the risks of doing it wrong! .
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Post by pooka on May 24, 2017 6:40:49 GMT -5
That's cool that despite the passing of time, it retains many of it's details like brackets & filigree. The old pic does appear to be a hundred plus years old. Well I got out & did a major shearing of my trees in front. You can actually see the house. The neighbor next door commented that she can see the little park across the street again from where she sits on her front porch. I need to get out there with a ladder to saw off some of the bigger stuff the pole lopper couldn't cut. Nothing I cut off was bigger than my thumb. Right now my hands are raw & blistered from using the pole tree trimmer. Here you can see the damage wind did a few years ago. It ripped up several big limbs in the very top of the tree. One bigger than my thigh fell right away. Other have been slowly snapping off & raining down periodically. Some just laid over & are hanging up in there. I can't afford a tree service, & I'm not brave enough to climb all the way up there myself with a saw. The same storm lifted the roof off of a house four blocks south of me & it just laid the roof in the street in one piece. I think they deemed it was from strait line winds. I was in my driveway, trying to leave for work when it blew through. At least it's not touching my house or the neighbors any more. It'll be better once I get the ladder & saw off some of the bigger limbs. Here's a view looking south. The highway is three blocks down. There's the puff of my two trees & the one in my uncles, then open space on that side of the street. This is looking north. There's the grizzled cedar tree on the corner. There's a good sided slippery elm beside their house. Mine is the second porch light down. The fifth house. Here's an old wall for you. I guess you'd call it a stacked rubble wall. It leans back into the hill, so the weight of the stones press down on the slop. It's got to have been put in when the house was young. The other side of the street has a four foot concrete wall. Now I can sit on my front step & see, rather than being shrouded in a draped green curtain. I need to clear the brush piles & see if I can get anything to grow on the bare dirt. I went through all this ten or fifteen years ago, the last time I did this. I read somewhere once that 90% of life is maintenance. We have to make the most out of the other 10% that's left.
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Post by karitx on May 24, 2017 13:49:11 GMT -5
That turned out really nice, Nana! I think once the plants are growing again, with some of them draping down the wall, it will really soften the look and help it blend in. We have a large, sloping "cut" in our yard to the south of the house from leveling the lot. We debated on putting in a retaining wall when we were building the house, but our bank account told us no. I ended up just planting it with various flowering plants and despite having almost pure sand for soil, we've never really lost anything to runoff. I need to figure out a way to keep it looking nicer, though, because while it's a haven for lizards and baby bunnies, it's not particularly pretty at the moment.
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Post by nana on May 24, 2017 20:54:15 GMT -5
Thanks Karitx! As a fellow cat lover I'm pleased to report that the cats have given the new wall their stamp of approval. They love walking up and down on it, and hanging out on it, I think because it soaks up the heat of the sun and is nice and smooth for lounging on and surveying their kingdom. They used to walk on the old wall too, but they didn't spend time on it. Hobbes plunked himself down right in the middle of it today, and Molly kept walking up and down the length of it and since Hobbes was not going to budge, every time she came to him she would jump over him. I should have filmed it and won some money on America's funniest videos. (Is that still on?)
Things are looking good Pooka! You live in a nice homey neighborhood, it looks like. I like that rubble wall. I would call it cobblestone--that has more cachet. But it caught my eye in the picture with the porch lights. I would have loved to have something like that, but $$ and time--not enough of either.
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Post by nana on Jun 20, 2017 18:03:28 GMT -5
Well, I'm about 80% done with the replanting. I had to contend with heat waves, torrential rains, and not enough time, but it's almost done. Probably won't have much flower to look at for this year. I finally got my compost delivered last week. Too rainy and wet for screening, the guy said. I finally said I don't care, bring it to me chunky. I'll pick the sticks out myself. It was pretty chunky, but loaded with worms, and after we dug it in, I'm sure they'll get right back to work, so I'm not worried. I got to put everything in just the way I wanted it, because I learned over the years what a bunch of mistakes I made years ago putting big floppy spready plants next to short low growers and so on. Well, I probably made a whole bunch of new mistakes, but time will tell. I'll post a pic when it's all done.
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Post by nana on Jun 27, 2017 19:50:45 GMT -5
All done except for some geranium cuttings that I'm rooting so as to have a little color this summer, and the daffodils, hyacinths and alliums, which I'll put back in in the fall. I'm not expecting any real blooms from the perennials this year, although a few of them are sort of trying. I got one teeny, tiny peony blossom. Amazing, actually, considering they were out of the ground for more than a month! . One lonely flower! .
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