Balancing, kind of.......

I have not posted on gardening in quite a while although I have been posting garden images on facebook and instagram quite often but neglected the blog!  It's a time thing and there just isn't enough of it this time of the year!  I wish I had taken more before images but alas I just jumped in, head first.  I know shocking.........

When I walked into this little half acre sometime around early March I realized how focused on all things pottery I had been the last 3-4 years.  The way back veg garden had weeds 6-8 feet high, wall to wall.  We had an old locust tree taken down and I had spread the chips over the paths; thinking it would be so soft to kneel on, wood chips instead of hard ground.  If I had only decided to take a knee in the way back, just once after spreading acres of wood chips.  After 3 years they had dissolved to dirt and the invasive creeping charlie had created a lovely carpet and true to it's name, creeping into every single bed and choked out blueberries, raspberries, the blackberries had rust due to no circulation and anything else trying to do it's thing.  Cutting in the bed lines I started at one end and rolled it up like an old carpet.  The beautiful rotted wood chip soil underneath the green carpet was moved to the beds and the paths were reclaimed!  What a project but I could finally walk through the "garden".   I remember what this used to look like and I remembered the things I wanted to change about this garden.  It also gets loads of shade and competes with a couple maples.  Every evil weed was in this garden!  One weed in particular was stoloniferous..... roots that travel under  ground and spring up everywhere.  I had done battle with an elderberry I had transplanted and just keep springing back; a gardeners game of whack-a-mole!

I was in garden triage!  What to tackle first.  The outer beds had encroached to the point they were over hanging into the veg beds.  Get out those pruners and start whacking....... like an explorer headed down the Amazon.  Three years, just three years and all this place had exploded to little shop of horrors!  Gives me hope for planet Earth if humans die off.

May 21st I got a few seeds in the ground and a couple plants picked up at Madison Ave Greenhouse around the corner.

Then the heat hit hard and my triage brain went to to weed and mulch ASAP!  Abandon the veg garden and get busy.  I ordered 20 yards of mulch, put on my good knee pads, divided the yard into sections of need.  Front yard first! 

The front yard had a dying spruce, four nasty Norway Maples and another pine that beat the hell out of the house.  This time I actually hired a guy to grind down the stumps instead of digging them out.  Brilliant but holy wood chips and pine needles!  I shuttled wheel barrow after wheel barrow to mulch the blueberries, gooseberries and currents.  Eight hours later I was ready to start mulching!  

pretty ugly huh? 

May 22 the mountain arrives.  This is about the time I realized I wasn't getting any younger and I had a tiny little wheel barrow and had sat on my butt all winter!   Oh well at least it wasn't a lava flow chasing me down the driveway. 

Prune, Prune, Prune again, cut in bed lines and ....... May 23rd the front was done! 

Next the Southside garden, which takes a beating!  Rinse, repeat and rework the water feature! 

Onto the foundation plantings, patio garden and patio pond...... 

beans are up!

By May 29th the studio beds were mulched and this area was done.  

Sitting on the patio and listening to the pond was high garden satisfaction :) 

The end of May was just an explosion of color and I had a very hard time staying focused in the studio.  These pictures were taken on May 26.  I took Memorial Day off as it was 101F and my body just plain needed a break.  The strawberries were loaded with berries and I knew the first half June would be sprint.  I was pretty happy, my body was sore but a good sore and growing stronger by the day.  We had been eating lettuce from the garden topped with various herbs.  The studio called but I wasn't panicked to get there.  The biggest expense had been that pile of mulch but it was worth every single penny as the temperatures started to climb and the rain fell, hard.  The majority of the transformation was labor, cheap! 

On rainy days I'm back in the studio and the shelves are filling quickly.  I still have a kiln to re-wire and it will get done the next rainy day.  

After a very long winter it feels like a little bit of balance has finally entered this little half acre and I am reluctant to leave.  The wren is busy feeding her little ones, the robins are growing fat on service berries, the catbird is obnoxious as can be and the goldfinches are finally wearing their summer best attire.  Rufus visits often and at the moment, life is good......