New Beginnings!

 First of all, the important news: Sean got a job teaching Latin at Fairfield Prep, which he'll start in the fall! After all the toxicity, anxiety, and unhappiness of the last few years at Notre Dame, "relief" doesn't really begin to cover the emotions of the last few weeks. The world at large has never looked darker than it has in recent months, so it feels incredibly fortunate to have this kind of a bright spot appear. 

Ironically, we haven't had any chance to actually celebrate; Sean got sick, which turned into bronchitis, and I once again believed I'd avoided it, only to get sick a week later. Mine wasn't as bad as his, but I still cannot remember the last time a cold kicked my ass quite this hard. My last post was about my lifting progress, which was up to a 24-week stretch since the last time we both got sick. Honestly, considering that we both work in "group" settings, that's not that bad. But it has still sucked this week, even as it's made the unseasonably cold weekend easier to bear being stuck inside. We've tried making dinner reservations twice - cancelled. Tried to have the boys do their first sleepover - cancelled. 

What I have done is a little celebratory purchasing: namely, the Colossal Pollinator Garden Kit from Prairie Meadows - 50 seedlings! This is destined for our new garden bed along the retaining wall by the driveway. (Separately, I will be watching the progress of the native perennials I sowed by the pond in the fall, but those are far enough way, and on a slope, that I don't expect to be able to see much from the house). 

On a warm day back in October, I decided to start ripping out the creeping Charlie and assorted weeds growing along the rock wall, with vague plans of filling this in with native plants and bushes in the spring.

 

In late March, over the weekend in which we were pretty sure Sean was going to get offered the job but hadn't yet entered into the final panic of getting the verbal offer, waiting for the formal offer documents, signing them, etc. etc., we return to tackle bringing up the turf grass in the area. 

This involved removing a lot of dirt, after carefully shaking and removing as much as we could, and taking extra time to spare as many earthworms as possible. Oh, and removing rocks. SO MANY ROCKS. Not small ones, either, more like 5-10-15 pounders, which we tossed onto the existing rock pile at the end of the driveway (rather satisfying to heave a mini-boulder eight feet, I must say). Joe the neighbor came over to bring me a garden stool at one point, and I asked him if he knew where the rock pile even came from. He thought it might have been from when they dredged to make the pond decades ago. The rocks in the pile don't look like the darker rocks that come up in the soil, though - they look more quarried. So who knows.

Now, you'd think I'd make a decorative border for this new bed with free rocks from the rock pile I already have...but in the interest of it looking a bit more uniform, I ordered some concrete pavers and then dug a mini-ditch to bury them.

The current results:

This is awaiting new soil to bring the ground level up (you can't see it from here, but from the driveway the drop from the grass level to the current soil is 4 inches or so, because of all that we removed between dirt and rocks). Then we'll wait for the plant shipment, which they said could be anywhere from mid-April until May. We're going to be doing the biennial mulch refresh this spring, too, so this bed will get black mulch to match the others. 

The trick is going to be figuring out how to adapt the planting plan we're getting to the site we have. Obviously, our patch is an irregular triangle, as opposed to the neat rectangle shown below. Sean had to remind me of the actual formula for the area of a triangle (cough, math skills, cough), and I measured it at 90 sq ft, but part of it is occupied by the remains of that giant stump, which has den holes around it for who knows what critters. I'm also not willing to plant too near the wall, which has an outward bulge in it at the end; I don't want to add any additional weight that would cause that to fail. So that cuts down a bit on available space.

I would have bought the smaller garden kit that Prairie Meadows offers, but it was already sold out when I went to order, so I bought the big one for $200. I'll have to put some of these seedlings elsewhere - in the center circle, or in the side bed with the irises I transplanted in the fall. It needs to be full sun, so it's got to be on that side. Only 5 of these species are native to the Northeast, so I do feel a little bit of guilt about that. But figuring out the calculus of plant height, bloom time, and garden design entirely on my own just felt like too damned much, and after the stress of the previous few weeks, I just wanted to pull the trigger and get started. That's what we'll consider this: a starting point. Let's be real, not all of these plants are going to survive, so I'm sure there will be gaps to plant more natives in the future! In the meantime: forgive me, Doug Tallamy, for I have sinned!