When we aren't travelling......

When we aren't on the road we work in the gardens all around the house. Originally 11 years ago, we'd planned on a few perennial gardens since the house was so sunny. To say they have grown in both size and number over the years would be a vast understatement.  The original day lily purchase was a 100 bare bulb assortment from White Flower Farm in CT. The colors were mixed, didn't know what you were getting but the following year they were twice as good as we'd hoped for. Over the years these have been split, moved, given away, put in new gardens. Then there was the year that a local day lily farm was going out of business and we must have bought dozens of exotic colors and then went back for more when they got down to $1 a bag, all you could stuff in. The mixed color leaf hosta hav been split numerous times and gifted back and forth with gardening friends.

Time again to split, give away or -   aaaacccckkkkk put in a couple of new areas. Where the driveway meets the town road has always been a pain as the angle next to a large, steep ditch was dangerous to mow. Off we go to the vacant land across the road to find wall rocks. Most of the good rocks have already been moved throughout the neighborhood. Most of what is left is round rock but a lot of those are large and easily trigged to form a wall. We'd moved over enough for two areas - we thought - plus what we were taking from already built walls on our land.

Hot for Maine at 85F, high humidity but we soldiered on and started the walls over a couple of days. Four yards of screened loam was delivered this morning and it was a gorgeous 72F with low sweat percent.

Dig out the grass, set the rocks, trig and rocks, move the rocks, drop rock on hand (ouch), sweat, drink about a gallon of water. Stand back and look and say not bad! Fill with five full wheelbarrows of loam, tamp down, add another two loads. It doesn't look large or much work in the photo below but it will give us a great space for perennnials.

We've now used almost all of the rock brought over for both sides with only this remaining for the left side of the drive. There is a much steeper drop off there so will have to build a wall face before we can dig out the area. Another search and find mission looms.

We sure could use a long gentle rain but for the most part the gardens look great this year. We do take time to enjoy them and take walks around the property - and don't weed!