a not very ecological morning

Leave the soil alone, disturb it as little as possible, since you are not the only one living there. That’s the basic idea, which I completely ignored yesterday. Starting at 7:00 am I got out my gardening gear and re-organized the meditation garden. That’s a nice re-design for us, but a major disturbance for the insects, not to mention the various plants I dug up and moved! The meditation garden is a small squarish patch tucked against the Southeast corner of the house and the woodshed. Here is a “before” picture:

looking at the garden from the west

At first I thought I’d remove the lower path:But that made an awkward sharp turn just as you enter the garden. I explained to David that this would be good fengshui since bad spirits and too-fast (dangerous) qi would be slowed down by the curve. He didn’t go for it, and I didn’t really like it either. So on to plan B. First I re-established the lower path, then I removed those nice cinderblocks on the upper path. Once the cinderblocks were out I added three wheelbarrow-loads of composted horse manure/hay. I didn’t like the rock wall on the lower path and removed them. Later I ended up putting a row of bricks there, and built a somewhat higher rock wall to gently terrace the garden, which still slopes. I dragged a long rotten branch to add some interest. The cinderblocks were useful to stabilize the bottom of the bed.   

here it is from the eastern end, looking southwest.

This morning I took a photograph, which includes the blue gazing globe I put in for more decoration.

In the front yard, I’ve been a lot more ecological. Other than removing stalks I haven’t done much to it. Daffodils, pulmonaria, phlox, centaura montana, cimicifuga and other plants are pushing up through the thick layer of maple leaves. I took these pictures of the front yard this morning:

leafy front yard

In this picture I’m showing the row of ten American Highbush Cranberry shrubs we planted last week along the side of the front yard along the driveway. We planted them for bird cover and bird food.

Last week we planted a lot of trees. Ten white oaks and ten red oaks went out at the side of a hay field. Ten highbush cranberries along the driveway, and ten elderberries in our fruit orchard near the veggie garden. We also planted ten hardy plum trees and ten crabapple trees throughout the yard. Why so many, you ask? Because we ordered them from the Cooperative Extension and ten is the smallest quantity allowed! These should eventually make our yard very bird-friendly! And speaking of that, I received my official certificate in the mail from the National Wildlife Federation!

How coo, is that! I hope the spiders, insects, and other critters I disturbed in my renovation of the meditation garden (where we never meditate, by the way!) will not tell on me!

I’m planning for my annual Mother’s Day potluck garden party. It’s May 14 at 3:00 pm. So far it has been a very good year for daffodils: not too hot, plenty of rain.