I don't know what they're smoking at Environment Canada, but at least I got my garden time today after all. Recording results in pictures for future comparison.



The patio, pathways, and beginning of (creeping) thyme:


The newly dignified west bed, with ferns - magnolia in a bucket is waiting for Corey to help me plant it, since I don't feel like screwing up my back any further than I already have:


The beginnings of the sunny bed, with cleome, cosmos, and very small pampas grass, shasta daisy, and mimulus seedlings:


The east bed, somewhat less junglelike - indeed, rather bare - with some of the ferns moved elsewhere. Canterbury bells and hardy geraniums are a start on repopulating it, at least:


Ferns replacing some of the bigger revenant hydrangeas, which got dug up and foisted on a neighbour:


Lilac in bloom! Wish I'd gotten a picture of the neighbour's apple trees in bloom, too - they droop floriferous branches over the east fence; so gorgeous!


It's totally a spirea, and it's starting to bloom too:

I found some cleome at Canadian Tire!! An annual, alas, but so gorgeous!



They also had my creeping thyme. Only in biggish pots, alas, but the internets tell me I can chop these larger plants up into smaller pieces and they will be undaunted. Hopefully tomorrow's promised miserable weather will yield an hour somewhere between showers for me to mess with them.

Is it completely weird for me to want a statue of St. Francis of Assisi in my garden? I have only the very remotest and embattled connection to catholicism. Once upon a time I was baptized because it was important to my father's parents, but when my sister's turn came, an idiot priest angered my dad into digging in his heels and walking away from it. Once upon a time my mother's parents got so much flak for their catholic/protestant "interfaith" marriage that it drove them almost completely away from either church - my impression is that although they continued to attend a protestant church of some kind (in that time and place, socially you had no choice but to go to church) the suspicion and cynicism generated by that experience has basically formed the family stance on organized religion ever since, even unto my generation.

Still, I find those garden statues of him more evocative of peace and harmony than the currently trendy buddha-heads. Some nice things I read about him on an online catholic encyclopedia:

There was about Francis, moreover, a chivalry and a poetry which gave to his other-worldliness a quite romantic charm and beauty. Other saints have seemed entirely dead to the world around them, but Francis was ever thoroughly in touch with the spirit of the age. He delighted in the songs of Provence, rejoiced in the new-born freedom of his native city, and cherished what Dante calls the pleasant sound of his dear land. And this exquisite human element in Francis's character was the key to that far-reaching, all-embracing sympathy, which may be almost called his characteristic gift. In his heart, as an old chronicler puts it, the whole world found refuge, the poor, the sick and the fallen being the objects of his solicitude in a more special manner...

The very animals found in Francis a tender friend and protector; thus we find him pleading with the people of Gubbio to feed the fierce wolf that had ravished their flocks, because through hunger "Brother Wolf" had done this wrong. And the early legends have left us many an idyllic picture of how beasts and birds alike susceptible to the charm of Francis's gentle ways, entered into loving companionship with him; how the hunted leveret sought to attract his notice; how the half-frozen bees crawled towards him in the winter to be fed; how the wild falcon fluttered around him; how the nightingale sang with him in sweetest content in the ilex grove at the Carceri, and how his "little brethren the birds" listened so devoutly to his sermon by the roadside near Bevagna that Francis chided himself for not having thought of preaching to them before. Francis's love of nature also stands out in bold relief in the world he moved in. He delighted to commune with the wild flowers, the crystal spring, and the friendly fire, and to greet the sun as it rose upon the fair Umbrian vale. In this respect, indeed, St. Francis's "gift of sympathy" seems to have been wider even than St. Paul's, for we find no evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or for animals.

I'm trying to remember what novel it was that (very engagingly) described Francis' preaching to the birds as an ironic, political act. Does anyone else remember this?

Plant spoils du jour: a Leonard Messel magnolia and a Bourbon clematis. They were out of creeping thyme, so I will have to go on a mission to another garden centre or two.

They did, however, have these stunningly beautiful weeping japanese maple trees. AUGH. Loblaws, why must you tempt me with gorgeous trees I have no space for! They're quite short, actually; if it weren't for the fact that they get to be horizontally massive, one of these would be perfect for the back of the sunny bed, with the nice height and the stunning foliage and the unusual colour. Although my google search tells me they're slow growers...augh. AUGH.

Was very productive today. Dug up the rest of the stoopid pavers - hurting my back in the process, I think; stoopid goddamn pavers - and got rid of all the saplings and celandine in the west bed, although I left most of the daylilies alone. Also dug celandine out of the east bed, thereby discovering that the liatris I planted there are coming up after all, albeit a little anemically due to lack of sun. Dug up several ferns and moved them around the yard; they are very stylish in the west bed, I must say, and add some nice height to the shady back corner. We'll see how well they take the transplanting, but my theory is that with all the rain they won't even so much as wilt. There's still quite the mob of them to dig up, and even then I'll be leaving a whole chunk of the east bed chock-full of them. (Anybody want some gigantor ferns?? I got plenty!) I figure the rest of the ones that are currently in the way can go in front of the spirea and hydrangeas, where they'll make a nice transition between the gigantor shrubby stuff and shorter perennials. Although that will make for quite a chilly green palette in that bed; I'll have to come up with something tall and colourful to put in there to break things up a bit. Astilbe maybe? I have to get rid of all the freaking lily of the valley first, in any case.

I also chopped down most of the rhubarb, which was creating a lot of shade with its massive leaves, so now I am making rhubarb crisp. Mmmmmmm, rhubarb crisp. It's been years since I've had this. I ♥ my garden.

I got the stones laid for all the pathways, except for the one on the east side of the yard that I will have to carve out once I've redistributed the giant pile of dirt that's in the way. I wish I could have planted the creeping thyme today, since it's going to rain for the rest of the week and it would have gotten a nice watering in, but I couldn't find it at Loblaws and I wouldn't have had time anyway, so alas. The outlines of the stones are rather smudgy at the moment because of the topsoil I swept over everything to get it in between the cracks; I am looking forward to seeing it after the rain, which should wash things clean and settle the contours a bit.

Overall, I am very pleased with the outcome of this project so far. Some of the stones are still not perfectly settled, but that will come with time/rain/ground cover, I think, and after all there's a limit to the perfection one can expect from dry-laid fieldstones (vs, say, perfectly flat flagstones laid in mortar). I have a good deal of rock left over, which I figure I will put down in the garden beds as needed for access purposes, and - more problematically - also a good deal of sand and topsoil. The topsoil I can use, but I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do with the sand...I'd make a sandbox for Rose, since God knows my sisters and I enjoyed the sandbox we had in Calgary, but she'd be too little for it until next year, and since it's building sand I don't know if it would be any good for that purpose anyway. I guess I'll throw an ad on craigslist/usedottawa and see if anyone wants free sand to schlep away.

So with THAT craziness mostly out of the way, I need to turn my attention back to the plants. I have seedlings that need to get in the ground and also seeds that need planting...damn, should have done that today, too. Well, if the rain lets up one of these evenings I will scoot out for project time; the ground will be wet, after all. Shasta daisies and pampas grass can go in the brand new sunny bed - pampas grass at the back, since if it survives it will make some nice height back there. Seedwise I have some little poppies that will be nice in the front, along with some wildflowers (scarlet flax, purple coneflowers). I have some annual seeds I may try, too; temporary solutions are better than nothing. And I may move some things (rose, peony) that are getting too much shade where they are...although maybe that should wait until the fall. We'll see how hacking out ferns and rhubarb stalks improves the light conditions. Meanwhile canterbury bells can go in the new part-shade bed, along with the lovely fuschia hardy geraniums that I haven't gotten around to planting, and some forget-me-nots.

I REALLY need to move some of those damn ferns; they are waist-high and thus would be good for height in the shade next to the west fence. Also I need to finish digging up the back of the west bed. I think I will buy one of the magnolia shrubs Loblaws is selling for $60 and put that in the sun bed, and then I need to find that flowering tree I've been speculating about for the back corner. I believe I will make a mid or late June nursery field trip.

Excavation complete:


Starting to lay stones over rock and sand (wish I'd gotten a picture of Corey steering the plate tamper, but alas):


Aaaaaaand nearly done! Just need to get more dirt into the cracks, settle a couple stones a bit more firmly, and plant ground cover - then I start on the pathways:


More views:

Landscaping weekend of doom complete! Crushed rock got compacted, pathways got at least roughly dug out (stoopid tree roots :P), turf, paper and topsoil got distributed over most of two garden beds, and sand got almost all filled in and leveled - I have the last little crescent to fill in by myself tomorrow, and then I will start hauling rocks. I was going to get Corey to help me place the heaviest ones tonight, but those are going right in the middle, and in order to get to the middle at the moment one would have to stomp through all our soft, squishy, beautifully leveled sand. So I'll start at the edge and work my way across. We spread a tarp over it for the night to prevent neighbourhood cats from using it as a luxury-sized litterbox; hopefully they (and any other suburban critters) will be disinclined to walk on that.

All this accomplishment is thanks to the yeoman service of my darling husband, who has been a baby-minding, sand-schlepping, rock-compacting SUPERSTAR for the last couple days. It's also thanks to my mom, who took over the baby-minding for the later half of today, and who used her mad productivity mojo to ALSO get groceries, make dinner, and clean the fridge (!!!) I think I may sneak out to her house during the day and leave her some flowers or something.

Looking back over previous pictures of the yard, I have to say that I am THRILLED TO PIECES with the effect of all this renovation, which you can totally see taking shape at this point. The whole yard will have so much more...more...I don't even quite know how to put it. Structure? Definition? Pizzazz? This setup actually puts all the space in the yard to work in a dynamic way, whereas before the space was just sitting there empty and useless (except for attempting to grow straggly lawn). Tomorrow I will take some progress pictures.

The remaining problem, of course, is filling the gardening spaces, because they're HUGE. Even doing one per year is going to be a significant challenge. As I said to Corey this afternoon while throwing turf and topsoil around, "holy CRAP, this is going to be a big fucking garden bed. What have I gotten myself into?" His response: "oh, you know, the usual." Heh. Touche.