Landscape Hell

Anyone who knows my general gardening strategy knows that I detest suburban landscaping. Don't get me wrong I really like large-scale estate or park-type landscape designs having been on estate grounds crews in college. But when it comes to small lots I really prefer to put my valuable time into vegetable and edible/functional landscapes. But there have been projects around the house that I've been putting off now for over fifteen years! And since we will be having to replace our basement doors and ultimately our air conditioner units in the near future, I thought it was about time to take care of some erosion issues. So for the past three weekends, I've been busy working up new planting beds and redirecting downspout pipes. Our soil is pure clay and full of rocks. But luckily the parts up by the house were fill from when they graded the lot. The only substantial rocks were the two down in the lower left hand corner of this first photo. The largest must weigh at least 500 lbs and took an entire afternoon to extract!

I also decided to finally take care of the side edges of the back patio. Over the years, various varmints (mice, rabbits and ground hogs) have insisted on digging out under the slab. It took several hours to back-fill the voids. But this time I covered the areas with rat wire before tamping in the final fill. Hopefully this will make it a bit harder for anything new to try and dig it out again.

 

 And next summer if we get a dry spell I'll finally wash down the footers and put on a new coat of foundation paint. This is another thing that really drives me crazy. Foundations really should not be painted. But the previous owners did it and they didn't do a very good job especially on the back wall that remains incomplete. All that's left now is to put in some plants next spring.