Deconstruction Weekend: One Day Later

And in the morning light...the orchard garden still looks a mess. But it's a mess that is infinitely moved forward after a single day of intense labor.  Progress is being made.



The last thing that we did last evening was set the post for the new north gate to the garden. I was relieved to see that we had set it relatively perpendicular and it had stayed upright throughout the night.  Hmm...actually, I think that the post itself has a bit of a curve to it.  We shall say that this gives the area even more character than it already had.  Also note that the other post is made from a  railroad tie that we decided to use rather than try to dig out.  Even more character.  I suppose that the whole thing looks a little odd...but I love it anyway (Bruce, are you reading this????)   :)

Down the path from the new north gate things still looked a little rough. This stretch still needs landscape cloth tacked down and then several loads of shredded cedar bark (called "Gorilla Fur" around here -- it's great stuff for keeping in the water and keeping out the weeds). A job for tomorrow. Or the day after that.

And here is the planting bed that traveled three places in the garden before it was firmly settled in the right one. What a relief to see it in full sunlight and realize that it was indeed finally in the best location.

Here is the bed from another angle. This is standing in the drive, looking in through the hole in the fence that will soon (please, God, please) be spanned by the second new gate. I think that this is going to work. This angle also shows the challenges of working with a long, thin garden on a slope.

If I had pots of money, I'd order pallets of beautiful green-grey local serpentine rock and hire strong workmen to build sturdy two-foot terraces at 20 foot intervals across the slopes. Then I'd fill it in with rich black loam. But the pots of money must still be in the mail; so I must do with garden beds built from old railroad ties and table legs on the downward side of the hill propped higher with rocks. But I do enjoy this rag-tag little Eden that I get to play in.

One of my favorite garden writers, Beverley Nichols, said it best:

"To dig one's own spade into one's own earth!  Has life anything better to offer than this?"

                                                                                                      -Down the Garden Path