Landscaping, One Month Later...

I can't believe it, things are growing in my yard!  All of the new trees and shrubs are alive and thriving.

Of course, so are weeds, but they will be taken care of very shortly when the last step--gravel, grass & sprinklers--goes in.  Meanwhile the freakin' weeds are going bananas, mostly thanks to our daily rainstorms for the last month.  Just pretend you don't see the dumb weeds.

The Lavender Twist Weeping Redbud out front has leafed out nicely!  I wanted a pretty tree I could admire from inside the house and this one fits the bill nicely.  If you GIS it you'll see what I mean!

Big blank space where DeathRose and sprinkler-control-eating lilac bush were, although across from this are a couple of miniature roses, a *tiny* 6 inch high Sergeant crabapple (an Arbor Day Foundation donation freebie), a 'Pink Beauty' potentilla and assorted annuals.

I mean, look at this!  What thinking person does this?!

*Sigh...* Anyway, the stump will be removed once it dies & dries out a bit. I've got an ax and I'm not afraid to use it.

In the corner of the property next to the driveway & street, the broom plant I planted three years ago is blooming like mad, and smells amazing.  The thing honest to God smells like candy.  Also in this corner are a dwarf pink flowering almond, a 'Spanish Sunset' rose and a 'Cutie Pie' potentilla with beautiful coral-pink blooms.  

 And weeds.

I wanted stuff to climb on the fence, so I planted two aromatic varieties of hops--I don't make beer, I just think hops plants are pretty.

Also another Silverlace vine, just like the one climbing the chicken coop.

It already has delicate, pretty, white blossoms on it.

The planter along the front of the house has a bunch of stuff I've been planting over the last three years...roses, wildflowers, herbs, tomatos, ornamental sunflowers...

A Pink Iceberg rose and behind it, hollyhocks grown from seeds from my mom's garden!  One of the first things I did when we moved in here was to plant a handful of hollyhock seeds, knowing it would take a few years before they really got going.

The storms lately have thrashed them a bit, but they're still pretty!

In the back yard near the house, the Showtime crabapple and second Lavender Twist Redbud are leafing out as well.

A Serviceberry plant that I got as a freebie for donating to the Arbor Day Foundation.

It's dutifully making berries!

My other plants came in, a 'Hot Cocoa' floribunda rose and two butterfly bushes--an 'English Peacock' and a 'Black Knight'.  Some of the butterfly bushes were supposed to be 'Royal Red' but were obviously mismarked when they bloomed purple.  Oh, well.

The pond now has a spinning Garden Wheel Of Death as a protector to decapitate anyone nearby.

And YES, the chickens hated it when we first thrust the thing into the ground and walked off, yelling over our shoulder, 'Enjoy!'

"Bawk, bawk, baaaawwwk..."

In the chicken yard, the two 'Bailey' red twig dogwoods have taken off, I've gotta get out there and redo their chicken wire so they can stop being so strangled.  In the middle is one of the new hose bibs! Water in winter, yay!

Close-up of the red twig dogwoods doing their thing and making berries.

The Cockspur Thornless Hawthorne tree doing it's thing and making berries...

In the middle of the chicken yard, the area I hope will one day be a little chicken oasis, with the Curly Willow in the middle, a 'Ruby Spice' Summersweet on the left and a 'Pink Dawn' viburnum on the right.

Beyond the Chicken Oasis, the second little hill has had someone *cough*baby chicks*cough* digging in it, to the extent that I worried the big rock was gonna roll over on them and I'd find a crushed chicken one day.  That's where the Chicken Foiler comes in--the cover to the brooder box getting repurposed.  Not to mention that they are slowly destroying something I paid to put in, damned chickens! Now I have to redo it, little smartasses.  The used-to-be-a-hill has a 'Pink Dawn' viburnum on the right and another 'Ruby Spice' summersweet on the left, the Bartlett pear tree is on the right.

 Waaay back on the right of center is a 'Cherokee Chief' dogwood tree.

It's just soooo nice to be able to stand back here, look back at the house and see growing things!

Plus, Weedcat approves.

Over against the fence, lining the driveway, are two lonely little 'Cameo' flowering quince plants.  This is where my budget gave out, I wanted to line this entire fence with plants because the dogs next door tend to charge at the chickens.  Turns out the plants were too expensive, so where I'd planned 10-12 plants...I got two.

Oh, well, they'll grow!

On the other side of the coop, the Satsuma plum is growing, despite Zip *leaping* for leaves off it every morning.  It's her first-thing routine to stand under the thing and jump up and down for leaves like they're morning coffee.  She has the bottom branches nicely trimmed by now.

And another Arbor Day Foundation freebie, the world's *tiniest*, cutest little Northern Red Oak tree.  It's about 6 inches high and is a perfect little oak tree, it cracks me up.  Needless to say it gets Fort Knox Against Chickens around it or they'd kill it inside 3 hours.

It'll grow...

The Silverlace vine against the coop is already reaching for it.  I have an old curved metal headboard off a double bed that I'm going to attach to the coop for it to grow up on, I think it'll look cool.

At the very back of the property is the area for my future vegetable garden & compost heap.  I haven't gotten around to getting the old pallets I plan on using to build the compost heap yet, that'll be this week.  We have a local salvage yard that gives them away.

Two more butterfly bushes, a 'Royal Knight' and an 'English Peacock'...

The other Thornless Cockspur Hawthorne tree...

...and it's little buddy sidekick, the tumbleweed.

Somewhere in this nightmare of weeds is the Sugar Tyme crabapple tree and two 'Profusion' beautyberries. This week they'll get weeded and mulched.

But at least the beautyberries are happy and doing their thing!

The chicks inspect the other hose bib for the garden.

...and we're done.  We'll end by leaving Cluckadorkle pining for the snowball viburnum plant she cannot eat.

Poor sad chicken.

Landscaping Time! Day 1 & 2, Grading & Planting!

This week was the big kahuna as far as the landscaping!  When you live in an area where everything lies under snow or is frozen solid for months at a time, you have loads of time in winter to grab some coffee and curl up in front of the fireplace with gardening catalogs...and spend hours on the Internet planning your garden.

Consequently you have tons of time to plan and dream.  By the time warm weather rolled around, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  I wanted trees and shrubs that were drought-tolerant, would survive our pretty harsh climate, provide flowers and fruit safe for animals and people, and be interesting.  I plan on planting flowering shrubs to attract pollinators to the vegetable garden and fruit trees, and placing plants in groups in the chicken yard to provide cover and shade for the chickens.  I drew up a plan for each part of the property:  front yard, back yard near the house, chicken yard and future vegetable garden area.

This was a big job that had to be done in stages, and my husband and I had already agreed that we sure as Hell were not going to attempt to dig any more planting holes, it was 'professional with heavy equipment' time.  So we hired Heart's Desire Landscaping, a local company I found after interviewing several landscapers.

So our plan was this:

• Grade and de-rock the back yards as much as possible--I was sick to death of tripping over the approximately nine billion rocks out there.
• Create some interest and break up the flat, boring drearyness of the back yards by adding some small hills that would be planted with shrubs.
• Dig planting holes for trees and shrubs.
• Dig out a hole for the small pond I have.
• Trench for two new hose bibs, one in the chicken yard and one in the future vegetable garden area.
• Trench to run electrical to the chicken coop so we can have a damned light out there and an outlet for the heater.
• Plant trees & shrubs, adding in actual soil and compost because we have no dirt in our dirt. Place stakes around plants so they survive our ridiculous winds, also chicken wire so they don't get nibbled to death.
• Run drip irrigation to all of the new plants. 

After all of this is done, eventually, in the future have a *small* amount of lawn (and, I'm sure, dirt) placed with a large gravel area surrounding it--I envision a grass area with an irregular, curved border.  Landscape fabric will go under the gravel to foil the superweeds we grow around here, and a new sprinkler system will be laid for the grass area.  But the grass/gravel will be a project for another day.

*Whew* So today was the start, and I was delighted to see Aaron and his crew arrive with a backhoe and begin de-rocking and grading the chicken yard and vegetable garden area.  The chickens, needless to say, were locked in while the big yellow autochicken did it's thing and dug.  They were NOT happy.

 Grading is done, little hills are made and I run around with a can of marking paint, spraying where the trees and shrubs will go, then we drag the plants into place.

The surprise big rock that was unearthed by the backhoe was left as an accent. The shrub is a 'Pink Dawn' viburnum, the tree a Bartlett pear.

A Satsuma plum tree, a Silverlace vine on the right alongside the coop to grow up and over the shed and an Eastern Snowball viburnum on the back left.

I'm hoping these plants, an American cranberry flanked on either side by 'Autumn Magic' chokeberries, will grow big enough to hide the neighbor's not-so-attractive woodpile and cool, but neglected Airstream trailer.

Planting holes are dug with a huge auger.  Nothing else was gonna get through our terrain.

One of the planting holes dug by the auger.  They all looked like this, loaded with rocks.

 
On this side of the fence, left to right, a dwarf pink Flowering Almond, an 'Austrian Copper' rose and another Eastern Snowball viburnum. 

A tiny Ivory Halo dogwood in the foreground, a thornless Cockspur Hawthorne tree and beyond it, two red twig dogwoods flank either side of the walk gate.

The next day is planting day.  The pear tree and pink viburnum go in and the viburnum is staked and wrapped with chicken wire.  The random found rock actually looks pretty spiffy there!

 Weedcat watches to provide the ever-vital proper chicken supervision.

The dead-looking plant on the right is the only survivor from the old house--a Curly Willow plant.  We lost part of it in the windstorm a few months ago, but the rest is doing great. It will be part of another plant grouping with the little hill.

Eastern Snowball viburnum on the right, Satsuma plum tree and silverlace vine to grow onto the coop.

The part of the back yard nearest the house, 'Before'.  Ugh.

The black thing on the right is my little pond shell.

They dug a rock bigger than my head out from right next to the house.  When it comes to rocks, like my sister says, 'Find the queen and kill it!'  I couldn't agree more.

Digging the hole for the pond liner.

Two trees going into the yard near the house, a Lavender Twist redbud on the right and a Showtime crabapple on the left. I'm hoping the redbud will overhang the deck a bit.

Planted, yay!

Some of my plants hadn't arrived yet, so since we already had the auger here we decided to go ahead and dig the planting holes for them now so we wouldn't have to bring the thing back.

Somewhat hidden in the weeds are an Arrowood viburnum and a 'Brandywine' viburnum.

 The pond liner goes in and some of the existing huge rocks are gathered from where they sit on the property and grouped around it.

Pink dwarf flowering almond on the right, three Alpine currants line the fence behind and to the left of the pond.  Another Curly Willow grows in the back left corner next to more huge rocks.

The pond has two more small cascades we'll add in along with more rocks. 

Next we moved back into the future vegetable garden area, which will have raised beds, a compost heap bin in one corner and a bench in the middle under a tree. In the far back right corner is a Thornless Cockspur hawthorne tree.

In the middle of the garden area, a Sugar Tyme crabapple flanked by two 'Profusion' beautyberries, with space for a garden bench between them.

Only one problem cropped up...now I had called the 'Call Before You Dig' folks out not once, but TWICE--the first time when we had the chain link fence put in, the second time to re-mark for the landscaping.  Despite this, they somehow managed both times to miss the neighbor's phone line buried four feet on our side of the fence and mismarked the location of this communications cable.  Needless to say, the auger found them both.  Luckily for us, since we had done what we were supposed to do and called, the repair was all on the utility companies.  Always use 'Call Before You Dig', kids, it can save you a ton of money and headaches!

The little orange flag on the right is where this orange cable was supposed to be.  The auger took out our Internet.

In the front yard, the landscaper's removed two really, really poorly placed plants that were here when we moved in--a lilac planted right over the sprinkler controls, so that whenever you wanted to turn on the sprinklers you had to dive headfirst into the thing, and a rose bush next to the walkgate that would reach out and seize anyone foolish enough to try to come in.  We got tired of giving blood to the thing on an almost daily basis, so out they both went.  Sadly neither was able to be transplanted somewhere else on the property.

But by the end of the day, all of the plants we had were in the ground!
We let the chickens out, it made them happy and they threw dignity to the winds and ran around.

...and stood around worshipping the plants.

 Next up will be the trenching!