Soil quality seriously lacking

It turns out I do have a before picture of sorts after all. I cropped out the subject of the picture, The Boy aka Smoochie (isn't that just the most annoying nickname I could have come up with, heh.) This was my yard last summer. Isn't it ghastly? I made a meager attempt to plant a few things, but never really had a vision of what I wanted the garden to look like, nor did I make much effort to encourage said plantings to grow, so alot of them (ahem!) perished due to my negligence. Nice weeds though, no? Plus I think that dead limb gives it a certain je ne sais quoi. This year however, I did start to formulate a vision of what I wanted to do. The basic structure has stayed intact, but the garden is evolving on it's own as one idea leads to another before I have even gotten to the implementation of the first idea. So far, each successive idea has seemed like an even better one than the last, so woo, go garden!

I'm going to have to give the readers digest condensed version of my gardeny beginnings if I want to get up to current events at some point. Gardens don't stop growing to wait for you to blog, after all.

So, Sunday dawns, as lovely as the day before and I set out to put my plants in their respective places. First, I had to trek to get the soil & mulch at Home Dump (or Home Despot, as my friend & horticultural geeniyus, Doodle calls it). We couldn't resist combing through their meager selection of perrennials & herbs for some other goodies while we heely'd around the store (yes, Turtles on wheels, we're quite the sight as we both fly recklessly through the store, me aided by the shopping cart cum training wheels). We also got some strawberries for our strawberry pot, hoping to get actual berries this year.

So planting time is nigh. The short version is that it took me all day to get a dozen or so plantlings into the ground, fighting through Grendel's roots, rocks, clay and other archeological artifacts of residents past. Phew, I was a grubby sweaty mess by the end of that adventure. But by this point, my little rectangular planting boxes are not looking so forlorn any more. I end the weekend feeling accomplished and pleased at a job well done.

The following weekend found me in the garden again with my friend (& horticultural geeniyus, remember?) putting in some pretties she dug up from her own garden. We were all too happy to play in the dirt most of the weekend, though a trip to Target for a hose found us in the "dollar store" section where we found some ticky tacky melamine plates which brought to mind the ubiquitous lawn flamingo which spurred it's own design trend of which I will tell you in an upcoming entry.