we attacked the front planting bed with shovels, a chainsaw, and brooms and all manner of hand trowels. we ripped out some burford hollies from the 80's and did some serious soil amending (central tx sits on a gnarly clay pan).
Ben wheeled and dealed earlier in the week for some heavy guage steel pipe in differing heights to serve as planting "pots". boy were they heavy!
after a round of rolling them to different spots in the planting bed to determine the perfect location...we set them and filled them with soil.
to keep out the weeds and serve as general eye candy we got a yard of small granite gravel (the said yard just barely made it home from the nursery...my f150 was the little truck that could..) we spread that all around (back breaking work) and then started placing the limestone boulders that Ben liberated from a job site earlier in the month...perks of working outside :)
on the final day of working on phase I, and under the supervision of one Wally the airedale, we began installing the plant material consisting of cacti and other drought hearty species of plants.
if you are familiar with the landscape of el paso our planting bed will bring back memories.
i think overall our planting bed is a great success, our neighbors have all come over and given it their stamp of approval. they also want to know if we can do their houses. (wait until they see our fee!!!)
so hope you like the pics, Wally stayed out on his line with us for the whole day, chewing on the planting pots we pulled off (one of his favorite past times) and in general surveying the entire sweaty business of our endeavor.
his comment for the weekend..."I don't do yard work."
WOOF!
the phase 1 is magnificent! very true about the el paso reference. Like it a lot, think of how easy it will be to care for after all the sweating, granite, chainsaw-ing grunt work is done.
ReplyDeleteAudra
grunt work indeed!!
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