First Day of Spring

After a stormy night last night, the first morning of spring started off a little gray and overcast but became a truly gorgeous day! What a wonderful excuse to just relax and enjoy the garden awakening from it's winter slumber. Who could stay indoors on a day like today?! 


Garden update:
Hubby and I worked on the backyard a little bit over the last few weeks: adding additional chipped limestone to the path, carting in a ton (literally) of planting soil to plant up the garden bed by the back fence and behind the clubhouse, adding additional garden bed space by the deck steps (why is he always surprised when I bring out the spade and start digging out lawn?), and of course, squeezing in a few extra perennials and annuals where I could. 

We also moved the firepit area from under the oak trees to the end of the gravel path. I like that there is a focal point for your eye now as you look down the path. And luckily for me, that's opened up a whole new garden area to plant up! My kiddo would like to plant it with heat tolerant, desert-looking plants so I will have him work on the design and help me choose the plants! 

At the end of February, we went to Pedernales Falls for a family camping trip. The wind really picked up and was gusting our little tent with 30-40mph blasts. We decided to cut the trip short and come home... 
only to find our fences on both sides of the yard had blown down.

The fence posts were pretty rotten and well overdue to being replaced. We had just discussed replacing the fence with one of our neighbors three days before it blew down. Timing is everything! 

You can see our gorgeous new fence in this picture:

Well, after the fences were replaced, it sure gave us the drive to clean up the back yard... hence all of the garden and gravel work! 


You can see the new garden bed by the back gate in this shot taken from the back deck:

Notice a few things in this over view shot: I had to reserve a doggie "pathway" through the garden bed so they could get to the back gate. They were used to plowing through that area to go bark at people walking on the greenbelt trail.  I had originally placed pavers down on the dirt, then watched as they ran any which way but ON the pavers. I quickly realized that if I edged with rocks it would guide them to run on the soft dirt...
and it works! Always plan your garden with your frisky doggies in mind!  

And speaking of that... notice how they don't want to use the gravel path I built specifically for them last year and would rather wear down their own path on the lawn? 
sheesh... never mind the plan, they'll do what they want to anyway! 

See that bright blue chair at the end of the path? I'm going to be sitting in that in about 5 minutes, enjoying a cold drink, the last bit of sunshine and the absolutely gorgeous weather of this first day of Spring - 2013 here in Austin, TX... hope y'all have a great evening!

Party lights are hung... where's the party?

My son and I purchased some party lights and  solar japanese lanterns from my all-time funnest and favorite-ist store ever (bulls eye logo) yesterday. Got them hung and they are shimmering beautifully tonight. Couldn't resist sharing. But where's the party? Y'all are welcome anytime!

My Louisiana iris is blooming... so pretty! Can you see the adorable solar dragonfly planted in the iris' pot? It cycles through different colors. In the pic below it is red.

One project down...

Yesterday was a big day for me as I finished my garden path!!

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were spent installing metal edging to define the path. By the way, I do not recommend trying to hold, shape, and hammer metal edging by yourself. It's quite difficult but isn't impossible. Just don't get your finger between the metal stake and the sledge hammer... it hurts and there will be blood.

 

Thursday I loaded up the kid and the dogs in the pickup and headed over to the rock/gravel yard. Driving over I was still wishy washy as to what material I wanted to use for the path. Hubby liked the decomposed granite (DG), I liked the pea gravel. 

Both materials had issues that I had read about online. The DG could get mushy and muddy when it rained, and could also wash away. We do have a slight slope to our backyard and I worried that it would end up washed down by the back gate if we had a good downpour. Also, I had read it tends to get tracked around as it sticks to shoes. No problem there as we remove our shoes to come into the house. It was pretty though, and looks very natural. I was leaning towards the gravel, but had read that it's difficult to walk on if installed too deep, and because it is round it cannot lock together and compact. Gravel also tends to get kicked onto lawns and into flower beds and it's difficult to push a wheelbarrow across. However, it would drain well and wouldn't wash away as easily.

OK... I made a decision. I would go with the decomposed granite. I needed one yard, but since the truck can only hold a half-ton, I decided to get a half yard and drive back the next day for the other half. 

Back home, I loaded up my first wheelbarrow full and noticed it was rather difficult to push across the lawn. Hmmm... suspicion confirmed, the tire needed air! Should've done that before I started. Push, push, push across the lawn. Dump load. Fill tire with air. Second load and whoosh, out went all the air again. Push, push, push across the lawn. Dump load. What the *#@%!!  Apparently, the tire was so badly dried and cracked, it just couldn't hold any air. Off to the big box store for a new wheel. 
Thanks to my handy son for replacing it for me! 

Alright, things are really starting to happen now. Since rain was forecast I wanted to get that first half yard spread out by the end of the day. Here it is:

I was starting to rethink the choice of  DG. I hadn't gotten to the compacting part yet, but the dogs were walking around with dirty orange feet. Not good. Overnight we had a good rain shower, and it made for muddy orange doggy feet. UGH.  Fortunately, I had to go back to the gravel yard anyway. Tried a different gravel yard and found a nice chipped limestone gravel. Perfect, as it will compact nicely because of the uneven edges. 

 

Two truckloads of gravel later and voila!

 

So that's one backyard project down...