Time to Garden – Part 2

I chatted with a neighbor yesterday morning and by the time I got to the gardening the sun was creeping over to the front side of the house. I don’t do well in the sun. I’m only good for about an hour of work at a time anyway.

I first put more spray paint on the cement deer and one other lawn piece to give them more color. Later I will take other paint and use a paint brush to add other color to detail some of the lawn ornaments and little pole feeders. 

I got out the wheelbarrow, pail, shovel, and small rake. The wheelbarrow takes six or seven bucketfuls of mulch. I pushed it up the incline onto the front lawn. The side of garden I’m now mulching has more plants with less space. I put down a layer of newspaper starting from where I left off the day before working back to front. Then I dumped a few pails full of mulch and raked it out.

A garden looks much better with mulch, plus it protects the plants and helps hold moisture in the ground. This year as we’ve had such little rain that’s important. Some plants, though, don’t like mulch up against their main stock. I have to keep looking up the plants in the manual I’m putting together because I don’t remember which plants need what.

I’ve moved the hose reel twice and I’m still not happy where it is. I have it in the back of the garden because I don’t want it sticking out, but that means I have to walk through the garden to get to it. Then when I drag the hose, I have to be careful not to mess up the mulch or damage the plants. I don’t know if this is going to work.

Hoses give me a hard time. A friend had given me a pair of channel-lock pliers, but my hand isn’t big enough to hold the pliers at the right width to be able to tighten the fittings. I’m also finding I don’t have the hand strength I once I had. No matter what I do, water squirts all over the place when I turn it on. 

I squeezed between plants taking care not to step on any good ones. Some of the mulch I spread with the little rake, but some I had to reach into smaller spots between plants. I found grass clumps I missed the other day when weeding and the roses kept biting me when I tried getting the grass near their roots. Two full wheel barrows full of mulch later and I was feeling slimy from sweat and my back and knees where saying enough.

It will probably take two more ‘barrows full of mulch to finish this section of garden, but that won’t mean I’m done. I plan on moving some plants. The iris and day lilies need to be divided. Most of the iris didn’t even bloom this year. The lilacs are too big for the front garden. I will move those to the sunny side of the house.

I have so much to learn about gardening.