Well, the weather was SUPPOSED to be nice until this evening, but in fact it poured down rain beginning at dawn this morning. Mark and Jerry began putting up a temporary fence dividing the pasture in half so that Mark can cut back all the weeds, spray the place with weed killer, then grade that half to level out the hoof holes from wet weather. Once that's done, he's going to re-plant grass on that side. We'll keep the horses over on the other side for however long it takes for the new grass to get established. It's not like they HAVE to have all that much grass . . . if they're hungry they have loads of hay in each of their stalls all the time. I think what will make them less happy than less grass is the inability to race each other around and around the storage shed back there. They DO love that.
At any rate, they got the t-posts hammered in and those top protector things put on there on Saturday, but obviously they couldn't put the electric cords on today in the rain!
But yesterday, since Jerry had filled the raised beds with dirt on Friday afternoon, I DID go get plants and actually got them planted in those raised beds that David built months ago around the front of the barn and on the side of the front porch. I'm hoping the stuff I put in there will all be happy with the amount of sun and shade each one has! But who knows. We'll just have to wait and see. Right now, they all get morning sun but afternoon shade which should make them all very happy. But that's because we just finished cutting off a huge branch on the barn side of the live oak over there, so eventually I'm sure it will spread back out again and make those beds even shadier than they are now. Oh, well -- I guess I can add something "shadier" at that point. Whatever. Right now they all look really pretty.
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The plants are just sitting on top of the soil here, but at least you can see where the beds are built.
I didn't take any pictures from that far away after I got them planted!
Obviously they're going to look a lot better when I get around to painting them dark teal to match the trim on there. But that's going to have to wait until high summer when we go for a week or more with absolutely NO rain.
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So here's the planted bed on the far side of the barn front. There are two miniature gardenias with tiny little leaves, one on each end there -- I had never seen those before -- then two knock-out roses that are supposed to require NO extra effort compared to "real" roses, then one Camellia there in the middle.
Hmmm. I just realized that those beds over around the barn are about 2/3 underneath the roof overhang. Hope they get enough rain. It looks like water running off that roof may well spill out BEYOND those beds. Oh, well -- I guess if that's the case I can water them when I water the horses. ;-D
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We weren't sure just how large to make this triangular bed in order to hide that ramp eventually -- it probably could have been just a BIT bigger -- but at least it will be easy to deal with weeds and things in there with it that size anyway.
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That big bush in the back left corner is a crape myrtle! . . . not "tree" size, but rather a 3 or 4-foot high bush. That should do a fine job of hiding the high end of the ramp eventually. Then the other two smaller bushes in there are miniature gardenias. Since those get fairly good sized as well, I just filled in for now with double Impatiens that look like tiny roses. I love those things. And down here, they're actually NOT just annuals. They came back every year for 3 or 4 years the last time we had some planted. In fact, they spread and came up thicker each year than they were originally! Hope that's true of these, too! (They did die the year it got really really cold here, but that doesn't happen all THAT often so they should last a while anyway.)
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Oh, that's a mint there in the center front. I love that stuff in my tea. The dogs got rid of the ones I had planted off the back patio, but these should be safe! I planted one here and one over by the barn.
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There are still a number of much larger camellias in the bed in front of the porch that I want to get dug up and put over in the raised bed in front of the barn -- there's still room for them over there. Since it's going to rain off and on all week, by next weekend when Jerry comes back, it should be fairly easy for him to dig them up with that ground good and wet.
Well, time to go back to work in the kitchen, getting ready for the counter top guys on Wednesday. Can't wait!
1 comment:
Great blog !!
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