The O-Zone

The concrete paver walkway in the center of the garden is completed, except for cleaning off the pavers and brushing in the paver sand which fills the joints and locks everything in place.  Maybe today while the contractor is here I’ll go do that.

Walking into the garden through the rose arbor-to-be. The rose plants range in size from two inches tall to almost six inches tall. It will be many years before they cover the arbor with sweet smelling flowers of pink and red.

Looking back the other way from a seat in the grape arbor, the overall slope of the garden is obvious. The grape plants are also years away from covering the arbor.

This is actually a good thing, to have this slope running from east to west and the garden also rises up from south to north.   The neighbor who put in the pavers said it was like working in a house of mirrors, trying to get things level.

The raised beds will be able to take full advantage of the sun as it moves across the sky.  We have a bunch of flower pots to put on the walkway, for herbs and flowers of the annual sort.  Perennial flowers and herbs will go into one of the raised beds.

This gooseberry plant is the only one showing much in the way of leaves. Lots of other plants have buds showing but they haven't actually leafed out yet. We left plenty of room around this gooseberry so it can grow as large as it pleases.

This coming Tuesday the last of the bark mulch is being delivered, and the kids will be back to finish filling the raised beds with dirt.  That will take all week, most likely.  Then in a couple of weeks we can do more planting.  It was 27F this morning, well below what almost every seed we have will tolerate for planting purposes.

Today we get to have fun with a septic tank contractor.  Yesterday we narrowly averted a disaster of biblical proportions with our septic tank deciding to stop accepting water from the drains.  Fortunately I was only washing dishes at the time (had been planning on running the washing machine – ye gads).  We did a lot of manual digging, saving a couple of hundred dollars by locating the tank and uncovering the lids.  All the contractor has to do is to pump the tank, hopefully solving the problem in its entirety.  It isn’t the way we planned on spending the day – intending to go bird watching instead.  Oh well.