We got about 3 inches of snow yesterday morning, unexpected. It was forecast to be "wintry mix." It stuck around for most of the morning, then turned to "wintry mix" and most of it is gone this morning. It was nice to see snow again!
The soil is still not frozen so I've been doing what I can. I tidied up another portion of the border in front of the veg. It just looked so beaten and draggled I couldn't let it go any longer. Dug out a couple of patches of couch grass, which I know will come back but at least it's been set back on its heels a bit.
Gathered and carried some more stones and pebbles up to the Virtual Koi Pond. I think I'll try pouring a couple more concrete edging pavers in the basement. I'm going to need a whole lot more if I want to go the whole way round the virtual pond.
Marked off a long narrow bed in the Asian garden and started digging out all the roots and grass. The snowfall chased me in. The bed backs onto a natural rock wall formed by a long, low outcrop of limestone, only about 20 inches high. The path forms the other side. I've "enhanced" one end the rock wall a bit by fitting a couple of very large rocks to fill in some gaps. I want this bed in front of it to be planted with something low-growing, I'm thinking possibly lily of the valley, a nice big bed of it. I've got lily-of-the-valley down in the Woodland but it's starting to fail there because of heavy shade. It makes a very nice groundcover once it gets established and I think it would do well along this path which leads from the Asian garden into the Fairy Glen.
I didn't get very far with this clearing project, but every little bit of progress helps. I have to take one of the cats for routine vet visit this morning, but if the afternoon shapes up I might get back to digging over that bed. It is surprising how that area is evolving, even with very little input from me.
It started out as the far corner of the commercial apple orchard that was here when we bought the place. Big old trees in bad shape, tall grass and thistles. Then, the trees died off and it was a sheep pasture for a while. Then we gave up sheep and it became utterly impenetrable with brambles, poison ivy, honeysuckle, and wild roses. There was an outbreak of rose rosette virus that began killing off the roses. The honeysuckle went rampant, smothered the sick rose bushes and out competed the poison ivy. So then it was this impenetrable mass of huge dead thorny bushes covered in a tough network of vines, with brambles whipping around. Then the dead bushes started to fall apart and that's when I stepped in and started slowly clearing out the mess. Some sort of "tipping point" was reached a couple years ago. Without much input from me, and with some heavy browsing by deer, the honeysuckle suddenly decreased and some young wild trees really took off. Areas of grass appeared, and now with the last of the dead apple trees down (I cut it down a couple weeks ago), the whole area has a different character, more of a young, open woodland with grassy glades and these wonderful ridges and outcroppings of rock. As I said in another post, I'm going very gently here, I've put in more trees and a few shrubs, laid down some logs to mark out paths, added in native ferns in one area. It's a garden area that's finding its own beauty. I'm just there to guide it.
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| Wild Honeysuckle Vine by slowcala | Jan 26, 2023 8:52 AM | 1 |
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