April 19, 2009

• PhotoPost: Garden Projects

  

  I haven’t really been on any photo expeditions since late last year. Perhaps I might be able to sneak one major trip into the mix before I have my operation on June 3rd. I don’t know. However, when I posted the last entry detailing my planned garden projects around the house, I was asked for pictures, so I snapped some photos this past weekend detailing my progress in pics.

  

  First I’ll post a “before” photo of the front of the mobile home taken before I moved in back in mid February during the home inspection. You can see the four wildly overgrown arborvitae bushes fronting the property. I wanted to cut these back so that you can see the “shelf” which covers the trailer hitches.

  

  I cut back the hedges a couple of weeks ago. This photo was taken on Saturday. I cut back into the dead plant material, and the center hedges especially don’t look too good on the tops where I cut down into hard branches. I’m waiting to see what kind of regrowth I get before I go any farther. I might eventually just cut down the two center bushes, and leave the ones on the ends. There’s a lot of work still to be done in the planter area. I’ve started to remove the concrete edging, which for the most part has to be either repositioned or replaced along the whole property.

  

  A shot of the hibiscus on the southeast corner of the property. The bush is forever in bloom, and I did prune it pretty heavily two weekends ago. A lot of new buds appeared where I pruned back, mainly to get rid of the deadwood. There are bugs on the hibiscus too which I’ll have to take care of.

  

  Here is the view from the top of the wheelchair ramp leading into the living room. The DirecTV dish is in the yard because DirecTV said these new dishes are too heavy to mount on the roofs of mobile homes. Undoubtedly one crashed through the roof of a manufactured home. It’s sitting next to a planter, on the grass. The lawn is pretty nice on this side of the house. I’ve been watering and mowing, and spraying for broadleaf weeds. The planter against the house needs a lot of work, and I haven’t even started. See the pile of rocks at the foot of the steps. The planters used to be filled with white limestone rocks but someone began to remove them long ago and stopped mid process.

  

  This is the planter at the southeast corner of the property, behind the hibiscus and this rather unwieldy bird of paradise plant. You can see that I have lots of weeding to do in this planter. The rocks have to be removed, the soil tilled, and plastic sheeting installed. Also nobody has trimmed the weeds up against any of the edging for at least over a year. The red bark is the property east of mine.

  

  I shot this photo during th home inspection in February. My first major project, of which I am about 3/4 finished, was to add plastic sheeting, paving stones leading to the shed, and restore the white rock to the beds. Eventually, I’ll add planters. The bed was filled with rocks, and infested with weeds. I raked up the rocks, tilled the soil, broke up the hard adobe, and bought some 16″ paving stones for a walkway up to the shed, and leading to the yard. The nice gravel bed to the left is my neighbor’s yard.

  

  This is the “after” view of the same area taken at about 5:30pm yesterday (Sunday). I’ve been on this project for three weeks, working mainly on weekends. It’s been incredibly windy for two of those weekends, and we were hit with weather in the mid 90s yesterday, so it’s been slow going. I can only work for about an hour or so, and then I have to rest. I planned the look of the bed on my CAD program, so I knew exactly how much sheeting and stepping stones to buy, and where to place them. In this photo, I’ve begun to cover the west side with washed limestone rocks, and I have the path leading to the shed laid down.

  

  Another view of the walkway. I still have to finesse the placement of the stones, and I have to build up the soil under the stones next to the driveway, so they’re even. The stones rise at a slight angle, to bring them even with the concrete slab under the shed, and also for draining purposes. There were a lot of rocks in the soil, and I had to break up a lot of the hard clay, which took a lot of time. (I should have had a rototiller, but I did everything with long handled rakes and shovels, and small hand trowels.

  

  I shot the area from the beginning of the yard. The bouganvillea vine was trimmed about three weeks ago, and a lot of new growth has sprouted since. To the left of the drawing you can see the beginning of the “pile of rocks”. I kept sweeping up the rocks from the bed (with rakes, not brooms) into the pile. The larger rocks would be raked to the top. Then I’d sweep the dirt back into the bed. I couldn’t get all the rocks unearthed, but I’m not planting anything here, so it doesn’t matter. I had to buy almost all new garden equipment.

  

  This is the view of the partially finished rock bed from the driveway. There will be another set of dual paving stones running along the edge of the concrete slab on which the shed sits, leading to the yard, which you can see on the left.

  

  This is the “pile of rocks” and my home made sifting tray, which is about 5 foot by 2 foot. I raked the rocks into the pile in the rear, then wash them off, but can’t get all the dirt off. So I made the sifting tray from 1/4″ garden screening nailed to a 1/2 pine frame. The tray takes about three-four shovel fulls. After sifting all the weed material, I blast the rocks with water and wash them off. Then I dump the tray of rocks on top of the plastic. It’s slow going, but I’m able to re-use all the rocks I removed from the bed.

   

  

  Just thought this was a neat photograph. I’m shooting the back wall of the mobile home through the bouganvillea vine.

  

  This is back on the east side of the house. I’ve been told that the ugly looking catcus has a nice bloom. The plant looks pretty bad. Those are agapanthus above the dish. I’ll either thin those out of remove them altogether. I probably won’t be able to get around to actually planting anything till after I heal from the operation, but I’m planning already. My mother used to have such colorful planters, and I worked in the nursery business for years, back in my 30s. I have a “history” of gardening, but this is the first place in which I’ve lived where I can work in the garden.

  

  The last shot is of the corner of the lawn which looks incredibly good. Except for the small brown patch on the bottom left of this photo, the lawn is full and lush in the back corner. There are lots of weeds in the area next to the rock bed, and I’ll be working on either plugging or reseeding this area sometime in the future. I’d be getting my plugs from this area at the top, next to the trees. At one time this was a planter too, but the grass has filled in. I like the fact there is a fence at the back of the property, on which there are some vines.

   

  • 8:52 pm
  • 16 Comments