It was a gardening day today. We started with a trip to the Raleigh Farmer's Market this morning. Hardly any of the plant vendors were set up yet, which surprised me. I guess because it's been cold this weekend. Two of our favorites were there with limited stock: Archer Farms and The Guy Formerly Known as Messenbrink. (By the way, he really needs to give his stand a new name.)
We wanted plants for a new bed we're putting in by the back door. It's on the northern side of the house, gets almost no sun, so we need shade plants. From The Guy Formerly Known as Messenbrink we bought a heuchera, a Chinese foxglove and a shrub called Fatsia japonica. It's pretty, kind of tropical looking, and he said it blooms with white flowers in December. Then we went to Archer Farms and got three low ferns to go underneath the fatsia. He said the ferns will spread slowly, and eventually fill in the whole bed.
We stopped for lunch at Nosh, then it was time to build the bed! It's in a spot which has been unsightly: we kept the trash can there, and the ground was overrun with ivy and volunteer privets. Unfortunately it's right next to the back door, which is the door we always use, and it just didn't look nice. A couple of weeks ago Georg dug up the privets and the ivy. Today we dug nice compost into the soil and planted the new plants. Then I made a stone border for the bed. Finally, a use for some of the stones we've found over the years! There are little piles of stones all over the place, wherever we tossed them while digging a new garden bed. I used two piles of stones, which was almost enough for the border.
At one end of the new bed is a pile of compost. Which was a pile of mulch when we put it there a year ago; now it's compost. Tomorrow we're going to spread it over the rest of the bed, then cover the bed with mulch from the big box store. It looks like 4 bags will do it, which means we'll probably need 6 or 7.
While I was making the stone border, Georg dug up volunteer saplings and cleared the ground behind the back deck. Tomorrow we'll put down landscape fabric and mulch and then keep the trash can there. It will still be easy to get to, but it won't be the first thing you see when you walk up to the door.
Now, we are both wiped out. It's kind of sad how fast yard work tires me out. I used to be less of a wuss. One day a couple of years ago when Georg was out of town, I went to the landfill, bought a truckload of soil, unloaded and spread the entire thing by myself in one day. Or there was the time we removed an old septic tank with no power tools, just a sledgehammer to break up the concrete. I guess I need to build back up to that level of work.
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