Confession time

My Secret Garden

So this past weekend was supposed to be a big gardening weekend. I really wanted to act on my plans after all my gardening classes (ok, it was just two classes). I envisioned working really hard through the weekend, moving rock, digging holes, getting my hands dirty with soil. All of that hard work and then...(insert twinkling music)...I would awake on Monday morning to a complete garden - lush and green, flowers blooming and hummingbirds a-humming! And then I dreamt on to a year or two from now when I could finally have 'my secret garden'.

The Weekend Get-away

So on Saturday morning I skipped dog training class and ventured to one of my favorite weekend get aways...the nursery. Any of my green thumb friends will understand the joy of the nursery. Oh how I love to walk through the carefully placed pathways that allow generous views of the magnificantly manicured flowers, trees, veggie plants and bushes. The scent of the petunias made my heart sing and to my delight the little pond was about to give birth to several purple lotus flowers. Gorgeous! I had a budget set out and decided to buy 5-6 bushes. I ended up with Honeysuckle, Texas Sage (a variety of it), Yellow Bells, Bouganveilla (non-thorny version) and an Emu plant. All will blossom at various times of the year except the Bouganveilla and Honeysuckle which will constantly bloom! I'm not used to this particular variety of Bouganvillia but Rich begged for non-thorny bushes so I relented. Rich is afraid that the dogs will hurt themselves on the thorns. :) It's cute, I know.

Walter

I came home and realized that the first thing I had to do was relocate Walter. Remember him? Yup, he was still around. His web took quite a hit recently but he was still there, weaving away, recreating his master-piece over and over and over again. I have to admit that I was too scared to get close to him. I had an elobrate plan to move him. The plan included a clay pot, a big lid and running shoes. Unfortunately I couldn't do it. So what did scaredy cat do? Yup, I took the entire iron plant protector/shield thing where he lives (it folds out and can be manouevered around a plant to prevent the dog's from digging or peeing on the plants) and pulled it up over the barricading wall. Next to us is a huge dirt field (yey Phoenix) and so I hurled this thing over the wall, I violently shook the plant protector until Walter couldn't hold on any longer.

Yeah I know. Kinda wierd.

Fear makes you do wierd things.

I love River Rock

Next I set about clearing away rock and pulling back the ground cover. That was hard work! I mean really....it was hard work. Back in January, Rich and I replaced the existing piddly rock with nice large river rock. I fell in love with the river rock as soon as I saw it at the rock place. (Wow, I never thought I would say that out loud). We discovered after the fact that that particular rock is used for creating rain pathways, not covering an entire rock garden! Oh well, I still love the rock. Reminds me of the river. Hence...river...rock.

"Where's me bloomers?"

So after clearing the rock about a foot and a half away from the retaining wall, I started to figure out where the plants would go. I alternated the summer bloomers with the winter/spring bloomers so that the blooms wouldn't be concentrated in one area. And then ladies and gentlemen (wait, do I have any male readers??) I began to dig hole number one.

Hole Numero Uno

The dirt was solid, I mean so-lid. It was awful. I had to use a mini raker just to free up the dirt to shovel it out. Urgh. Then I hit part of the retaining wall. Damn wall. Given my dilemma, I moved the hole away from the wall, filling in part of the hole closest to the wall and digging the other side of it to make it bigger. And then suddenly, the ground became very hard. Now I was raking with both hands trying to free up the dirt. I continued like this (probably a good half hour) and had dug about 3 inches down (insert eye roll) to find that I had hit some wierd pipes. Sigh. It was exhausting and I began to feel like this was a daunting task. And the whole time I had no idea where I should be digging this dang hole. I kept asking myself if the plant would die being so close to the wall. And my dear Rich joined in at some point too. We were tired. We didn't feel like we were getting anywhere and we were only on hole number one. We had five more to go once we finish the first.

Defeat

Have you heard about Craigslist? There's a section on there called 'General Labor'. Guess what landscaping falls in to? Yup...general labor. Ring, ring...

Jeremy

He planted 6 plants in a matter of an hour and a half. It happened today. As the sun was going down Jeremy was moving rock (ps - all the rock I had raked away, he put back in it's original place...sigh), digging 6 holes, filling each with native soil, gardening soil and some other kind of soil. He shimmied the plants out of their homey pots, plopped them in to their new wombs. Mulch and rock, water and some lovin' and he was all done. An hour and a half. Can you believe it?? He even found the old drip system and put the drippers in place. An hour and a half. And unbelievably cheap.

He's now programmed in to my cell phone.

Pictures tomorrow folks. It's too dark right now.
And ps - Walter! If you're out there, your new home is ready for ya!!