The Garden (to be)

As I mentioned in the last post, I stumbled upon this area behind the shed that is just desperate for love. This house had been empty for a while and all manner of unseemly characters seem to have hung out in the backyard area. We found tons of garbage in the garden-to-be. We threw out/recycled everything but came upon some treasures:

• rolls of wire fencing, which might later become a container for a big circular bed of dead leaves to be composted,
• planks of wood, maybe for edging or a raised garden bed.
• a huge mound of wood chips that I'll use for mulch
• a big metal barrel. I wanted it to hold rainwater but was something wrong with it that i can't recall. Either it has a big whole or was filled with grossness.
• a piece of metal painted white, at one time maybe a gate or something. I'll string some viney plant around it or something.
• Tons of large rocks and broken cinder blocks and bricks. I'll probably use this as edging or stepping stones or something.
• A large cement cylinder thing. Maybe a planter?
• Oooh, the best part was if you go deeper into the overgrown backyard you'll find this sort of metal archway area. Either I'll put a seat here and string flowering vines around it leave it as a future resting spot for the wildlife that likes to hang out there.

So yeah, the planning is nice, but raking what must be 2-3 years of dead leaves is not. Especially while pregnant. I enlisted mynieces to help out. But it was late fall and cold and no one in my family seems to share my zeal for yard work, including the hubby. So the project has been on hold.

After the baby is born, and I heal, I'll get back to work. First, enough of this raking. I'll borrow my brother's leaf blower and get the biggest job out of the way. Then I have to solve the vine problem.

We have vines everywhere. When we first moved in, I killed all the poison oak around the property (before I had discovered the garden). During raking, we found the biggest ugliest vine root I've ever seen. It was a sickly yellow and covered in huge spikes. And wherever we raked, we inevitably got caught on vines right under the soil. So I'd appreciate any ideas on vine killer that won't poison the environment too much.

So let's take a tour of the garden.

Here's the barn type thing. In the center are those rolls of chicken wire or whatever they are. We keep branches for kindling and stuff in the section that's behind the tree. Now go to right, under the lean-to where I found a little black snake under some rocks.
Okay you've just passed through the lean-to and turned to the left. You're looking at the back of the barn. There's the barrel and the cement cylinder. The tree further from you was totally hollow and being held up by a miracle of some sort. It has since fallen after a big storm. My friend, the tree man, Clay cut it up for me but i'm still left with a big log and exposed roots. Maybe I can shake out the dirt, hose it off and make it some sort of garden art piece. And I could plant something in the gaping hole in the ground. You're basically looking at basically the same thing now but if you turned your head to the right a little. You'll see the corpse of my fallen friend. Isn't the snow pretty? That was last Sunday. This Sunday it will be 70 degrees. Atlanta weather is nuts.

I'm taking this from inside the lean-to, immortalizing my free child labor:Boy I have my work cut out for me. I think I'm going to have to hire these kids.

This one below is purely for the look on her face.

So that's it for my very own Secret Garden. We'll see you in the summer! Oh by the way, wild onion grows back there! We haven't eaten it yet, but I think we'll try some soon.

Blessed be!

Dani