20 Feb: all day cleanup

Saturday, 20 February 2016

morning

Marilyn’s garden

We called in assistance from Sea Star Gardening to make the clean up of Marilyn’s garden a one day job.

Allan and I arrived first and found the garden already inhabited.

Bye bye.

two left

last one out

I feel perfectly friendly toward the deer who dwell in this unfenced garden, as its purpose is to be a deer friendly garden and to show that it is possible to coexist with deer and still have flowers.

Melissa and Dave arrived within minutes and we all dove into a big clean-up.  By the time we were done, the garden looked tidier in every detail than it had since the days of its creation in 2006.

from 2006:

2006 with lawn just seeded

entry garden 2006

today:

before

Allan’s photo, with the big Sea Star Gardening truck

Allan’s photo after clipping the entry garden

It’s particularly great that Dave and Melissa know just what to do, immediately seeing that a viburnum needed some suckers cut, and that some escallonia needed to be clipped back from a path.  So I don’t have to hover and monitor what is going on.

before, looking south

after

back garden, before

after, almost all this part by Dave and Melissa

before, looking north

after

before, looking northwest

after

You’ll be surprised how soon the next door garage is hidden again.  I think it will be an unpleasant surprise for the deer when they return.  They must prefer the garden when it is overgrown with comfy grass bedding places.

I had a brilliant idea on the way home:  It was so hard to cut those big grasses without breaking the narcissi.  Next year, we could bring three folding card tables and set them up in the garden.  The narcissi would be protected underneath, the grass could be laid on top by the grass chopping person and hauled off of the tables by someone on the path side.  Genius!

Phygelius got severely edited back from the edge, and an Ilex moved out from a place where it had gotten overgrown. (Hope it survives.)

We loaded the monster truck with all the debris.

If Allan and I had had to haul this debris with our small trailer, it would have taken us three trips, at least.

all the debris at once! awesome!

final touch up

just a few more weeds

Melissa said she loves to weed driveways and gravel paths, making me even happier that we intend to share this job with them.

The work board is getting whittled down (except for the dreaded beach approach and berms) and if I didn’t have all too many doctor appointments coming up, I’d feel completely confident in the timing of our spring clean up.  An acquaintance once said that the reason for being retired was to have time to go to all her doctor appointments.  If that were true for my mother, she would have found it easy to find the time, since she retired at age 55.  It is harder when one is getting old-ish but still working, and being working class and self-employed makes one tend to put off dealing with one’s health.

Tomorrow: We hope to polish off the Golden Sands spring clean up.

Ginger’s Garden Diaries

from my mom’s garden diaries of two decades ago:

1998 (age 73):

Feb 20:  I spent most of the afternoon mending my work jacket.  I took off the hood and then sewed up the collar w/o hood.  By then it was too late to go out to work.