I have never had a yard before or even a space to consider a garden until I moved into my new home here in Castle Rock. The first month I would go outside daily to try to figure out what I wanted to do. How can I make this space beautiful?
Talk about a headache trying to figure out what I wanted. I am such a visual person that I couldn't picture it. Going from no yard to even my small yard was a big difference.
I decided to dig up all the dirt and put in white rocks and later do potted plants. The previous owners had about 3 ½ inches of dirt above ground level, talk about a job for Hercules!
I spent around three afternoons digging up that dirt and dumping it into heavy-duty trash bags and all I got for my efforts was a little sun burnt, extremely sore forearms, and a ton left to do. Luckily I had my husband there to haul all that dirt away or it would of stayed on my porch until the end of time.
The rocks look great and I left some dirt around the existing tree, added a boarder so my two dogs will stop digging up what I just planted, planted a rose bush and tomato plant along with other colorful flowers. It seems like I have been out there every weekend planting something new in the two small patches of dirt that I have left.
Like most women I love flowers. I would rather see them grow then cut and handed to me to have one-day die. A neighbor of mine gave me a pot of flowers a few weeks back for watering her lawn while she was away and they were beautiful.
Two weeks in my yard and they seemed dead! What is going on I thought? I water my flowers daily and do what your supposed to do but for whatever reason that pot of flowers didn't have ANY flowers left on it. It wasn't until a few days ago I mentioned to my neighbor that those flowers didn't seem like they wanted to make it and she told me you had to pluck the dead ones off.
I didn't see how that would make new ones grow but I went ahead and removed all the dead ones. I went outside yesterday to water my plants and there are tons of flowers now on that same pot! How is that even possible?!
Did she swap it out while I wasn't looking or did the removing of the old flowers actually work? My hubby told me that when I removed the old flowers that the plant had enough energy to feed new life instead of wasting it on the dead ones.
Why didn't I know this? Did I miss something in school growing up and everyone was aware of it but me? I was upset that those flowers were dying but I am so glad that I now know what to do.
Life will go on in my little garden and the magic of watching something grow that I have planted is simply amazing to me.