It's Been Awhile, Again

Well, we said posting would be minimal, and we weren't lying! We're a month in to the semester, and things are very busy. Working, reading, trying to keep some level of social life (it would be nice to know some people over the next three years) and sanity, meals...we're making sure it all gets at least sort of done, but our schedules are definitely overfull. We've been taking the bus, which gives us some time in the morning and afternoon to do something non-work related (Lee: or as also happens, more work stuff), and have been getting stuff done around the house when we can. We've had a few things going on at the same time, with some setbacks in each as happens with such things, but have finally finished the front garden!

 Starting point. Some scraggly plants, a lot of weeds, everything patchy and overgrown.

We had hoped to get a lot further with the outside areas by this point, but we've got Virginia Creepers. Some people, myself (Ana) included, react to this plant as if it were poison ivy. We learned this the hard way, and consequently did not have as much gardening (or anything else) done as we originally intended, as I was having severe allergic reactions and Lee was sick. Knowing what we wanted out of the grounds, in general, we asked for some landscaping advice from Lee's professional parents and picked up a (very full) car load of plants when we visited New Hampshire before classes started. We hoped to get things in the ground quickly, but classes started and daylight hours at home with time to spare have been minimal. We started by digging up the big things we didn't want in there and Freecycling the ones that were good but not for us. Then we outlined the desired space with some rope:

After cutting out the edge and tweaking it until we liked it, we sprayed the area with weed killer to get all the grass and other undesirables out. It took roughly two weeks before it killed what it was supposed to kill, so we waited until we had this:

Almost ready. We would need to till in some compost to make the soil better for our plants and break up the existing dead roots, but we also needed to dig up the drainage pipe that was connected to the gutter downspouts. These pipes are fairly common in this area to help rainwater drain away from the house. Ours was buried too close to the the surface (showed through in several places) and had a fairly ugly opening on the end:

For our nice 3-day Labor Day weekend, we planned to dig up the old drainage pipe, bury it deeper, till the front garden area to prepare it for planting, and maybe start putting things into the ground. That did not exactly go as planned.

We did manage to get the pipe out and re-buried. The two days we were working on this, it rained. Poured. It was very, very wet. We played in the mud anyway. The real problem was finding a second pipe system underneath the first one (were we wanted the first one to be), so after determining that the second pipe system served no purpose (Lee: I'm 99% sure it was an improperly installed French drain - tilted uphill, bone-dry on the inside during a rainstorm) we ended up digging out all of one and most of a second, since they were both in the way of planting. The first pipe runs along the entire length of the house, coming from the back gutter drainpipe to the front. Eventually, we got it all out, and back in, and the sun shone all Monday when we were back inside doing the homework we didn't do Saturday and Sunday because we were out in the mud. Of course. At least it was done, and done right, and just about ready to plant.

 Now we just needed to figure out exactly where our plants were supposed to be. We played around with a few configurations, placing the pots here and there, and Skyped home to Lee's parents to get some more input and be sure we were placing each plant in a pleasing place, far enough away from its neighbors that when they start filling in, they won't be overcrowded.

We tilled, planted, re-planted a couple that weren't quite in the right spot, and mulched. Now we just need to keep it all watered and happy, and in a year or two, we should have quite the front display!

Now to make the rest of the property look as good. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.