Spring Cleaning

Over Easter weekend Johanna came over to clean up our garden for the spring. I'm going to say, right here, right now, how amazing it is to have a sister who wants to do all of my gardening work for me! Up until very recently, I loathed the mere thought of digging in the dirt. Johanna has helped change my mind about that, for which I am grateful, but I still don't want to log the kinds of hours she does.

She worked all afternoon. After the Lianna went down for her nap (around 12:45) Johanna and I trekked out to the back yard to look at what we needed. We decided on a few annuals and some mulch. So we headed off to Home Depot. A short while later we had what we needed to get to work.

For a very brief period of time, say, maybe fifteen minutes, I was able to work unimpeded. But Lianna woke up from her nap early and insisted on spending time with me. So she and I worked on repotting a house plant. She also, very wisely, poured dirt in her hair (all the better to make it grow).

But the rest of the work in the garden was all Johanna's. She weeded. And then she weeded some more. And then she weeded even more. She may have moved a few of the smaller plants around, though not much. See, she gets bored of things being the same all the time, so she is prone to uprooting a plant (or five) and moving it to some other location. Surprisingly, the plants never seem to mind.

Then she took care of our rock wall. Somehow, every year, the wall begins to fall into disrepair. So she unstacks the rocks and restacks them to make them neater. Also, since we have been building up the soil in our beds (through compost and mulch and time and that failed permaculture experiment) our rock wall has gotten lost under the soil. It's actually quite impressive. When we moved in, the back yard was nothing but lawn. The first stones went right on the grass. Now those stones are buried under almost a foot of soil!

After the tinkering with the wall, Jo mulched everything and watered. She also planted the pretty flowers in the pots on the back deck (or maybe I did those?) and on the front steps. She did all the weeding and the mulching and the planting of the flowers in the front as well. Then, around 6:00 pm)  she went home to take a much needed shower and an even more needed rest. Truly, she is a rock star.

Without further ado, here are the before and after pictures:

The pretties

Head Gardener 

Sous Gardener

Sous Gardener-in-training

Front stair before

Front stairs after

Front yard before

Front yard after

Path before

Cherry corner before

Cherry corner after

Gnome before

Gnome after

Spiral before

Spiral after

Reading nook before

Reading nook after

Truth

Deck before

Deck after