Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Not doing it.
This is just not a writing week. Not on the blog, not in my journal, not in my morning hours. I am just not doing it. And it’s not that I have nothing to say, either, just lacking the willpower to sit myself down to do it. This, of course, leads to fretting – so it’s a rut I’ve got to get out of. In the meantime, my apologies for the silence here – you can see my latest posts at Among the Weeds if you are inclined towards pictures and garden plans.
Fall Planter Boxes.
Garden Planning.
Mmmm. So many garden things on my mind at the moment, many of which will be posted about this week. But for now, the garden plan!
I started the boxes above last weekend and got those first two finished before Saturday’s downpour. This weekend I completed two more and B. also chipped in and finished the last two last night – so now we have all six of our raised bed boxes built using fencing planks we bought for cheap off Craigslist and galvanized hinges from Lee Valley (which were not cheap). Each of these boxes is four by four feet, 18 inches deep – and yes, I am aware that I don’t *need* 18 inches of depth for the sake of the plants. It’s an aesthetic decision, really, because I like tall garden boxes and I wanted the top of the boxes to be almost level with the garden bench we are planning to install in the center of the whole thing.
In any event, we’ve got six boxes and the next part of this project is to mow the lawn down short on the left half of the backyard, cover it with a couple layers of newspaper and a layer of heavy-duty garden cloth. I’m going to try to salvage as many plants on the fence-line as possible by working around them, but I’m afraid some of the summer flowers will have to go. I did move all my herbs into a planter yesterday in preparation so they won’t end up damaged or overshadowed by the boxes. Atop the fabric will go a mulch layer all the way to the back of the yard and then we will be ready to position and fill the boxes with dirt.
I am quite excited to get some actual landscaping action going on in the back, and having boxes that I can plant as early as the spring will allow which is why I’m working hard to get this done before the rains come. My preference in spring is much more to just get out there with my starts and seeds rather than having to till and turn everything first. Sunday is going to be my lawn covering day, I suspect that I won’t get the dirt into the boxes until the first weekend of October though – I may order it earlier and just try doing an hour in the evenings after work for a couple of weeks. We’ll see how this weekend goes first.
Note to self:
Order minimum of 3 cubic feet of bark mulch for ground layer and 5 cubic feet of vegetable garden blend for boxes. Can also get away with 3 cubic feet of soil and 2 cubic feet of fill if the expense is too much. Calculator is here: http://www.nationalmulch.com/underco.htm
Lovely weekend.
I’m having a hard time getting going this morning – Mondays are sometimes just like that but after a busy weekend – even worse! But at least I had a lovely and productive weekend to show for my exhaustion today. Sometimes I just feel truly blessed for my life – the love of it, the work of it, the friends and good fortune I’ve had over the past little while.
Starting with Thursday, Brian and I went to see Biographies of the Dead and Dying at the Fringe (Havana venue) – a friend’s play that I would definitely recommend about the processes of living, writing, death all told against the backdrop of a supposedly haunted house on Vancouver Island. Although some of the staging choices were questionable in that they overshadowed the acting and dialogue, overall this is a well-scripted and interesting piece of theatre – and a hell of a lot better than a lot of what plays at the Fringe.
Friday night was spent sortof working – demonstration for UNITE Local 40 at the new Coast Hotel on Hastings Street (Coast is closing their Stanley Park location, firing all the workers and opening a new hotel with new workers just down the street) – and then out for dinner with some union folks.
But Saturday! Saturday was a small breakfast, a hike to Dog Mountain (up on Seymour – 6 km, 2 hours rountrip), grocery shopping for an impromptu dinner party, building more raised beds for the back garden and preparing food for the aforementioned dinner affair. The dinner started with drinks and a meteor sighting from the backyard, progressed to a dinner that turned out pretty well (with the exception of the dinner rolls which would have been fabulous if the dog hadn’t eaten them all before people arrived), and ended late in the night with some singing around a small fire in our backyard. The only hitch to the day was a sofa-bed purchase that wouldn’t fit into our house after all and which Brian bruised himself trying to manipulate through the doors for over an hour….. but at least now we’ve got a sofabed for the studio when we finish it next year 🙂
And Sunday was breakfast in bed by the wonderful boyfriend (I was somewhat hungover from the night before), a drive out to Fort Langley for a union function, and then a trip to the nursery to purchase plants for fall planters and landscape fabric for the next iteration of our backyard project which starts next weekend. Had a brief dinner, a bath and climbed into bed early to read one of the last chapters of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, capping off what was an excellent and restorative weekend despite all the running around and work we did on the yard. I’ve several garden blog posts with photos in my mind at the moment, so will try and get some of that up today as well for more reading on the home front. Lovely weekend though, really.
Red Cedar 