plans for spring

I woke up this morning to about 2 inches of snow.  It’s wet and melting but still its snow.  I am so ready to get gardening.  I have a tree company coming next week to chop down the almost dead spruce by my barn and a dead pine in the yard and then I want the garden season to begin.  Looking ahead in the weather forecast I don’t see any major warm ups and more snow coming early next week.  But I am determined to get working outside next week.   At the very least I will clean out the barn so that doesn’t take up nicer weather for gardening.

The front of the house the year the ramp was installed.  The plants in front have grown a bit but  I want to take out all the lawn while still keeping a green and restful look.

I have very ambitious plans for my first year as a retired although somewhat handicapped gardener.  Two major projects, relocating the veggie plot and building more beds and taking out all the lawn in the front yard and replacing it with plants are on the agenda.  There are several smaller projects that go along with those two.

The veggie garden will be relocated to the bare spot that will be left after the big spruce is removed.  I envision a fence in back to hide the chicken coop- compost area and new raised beds in front of it.  Steve has experience building the raised bed frames and that can be done fairly early in the spring.  But then they have to be filled. 

Now we have lots of acreage here where we could get soil, but that isn’t easy and some of our soil is very sandy and not great garden soil.  We also have some compost we can add but that too, is hard for us.  I am considering hiring a teen for a few day’s work- if I can find a willing one- but Steve is resisting that a bit.    He filled the previous raised beds by sitting in his wheelchair and shoveling soil/compost into my wagon and then pulling that with his chair to the bed- where I helped dump it.  But its slow work and we only did 1 new bed each spring previously.  A healthy young back and set of legs would greatly help.

The “small” jobs associated with the new veggie garden will be taming and re-doing the curved flower bed in front of the spruce location.  The garden will need to be fenced because it’s so close to the chicken coop and birds are always getting loose.  And I am planting some perennial fruits in the old beds farther down in the yard and they will need to be cleaned up and prepped for that.  We will also have to re-route a garden hose to the new area but that shouldn’t be hard. 

The propane tank is on the west of this site and I had a small raised bed in front of it where I planted things that grew high enough to hide it.  Since the opening to the new veggie garden will be there that raised bed needs to be moved.  I envision an arbor type entrance that will also hide the tank.  I’d like to put a white picket fence around the whole veggie area but I will see what time and money will stretch to.

The front yard looks like a daunting project but the worst part of it is finalizing a vision of what I want in my brain.   Our yard is close to the road-too close.  The handicap ramp is bright aluminum and the old foundation planting is now behind it, which consists mainly of lilies and ferns with a few hibiscus plants.  The plants die back each winter and the whole thing ramp, foundation and bed look pretty ugly.  And you can see under the ramp in winter when the plants I planted on the outer edge die back.  In the summer when everything is lush and blooming it isn’t too bad.  I have so many decisions to make- evergreens in front of the ramp, fill in under the ramp with wood or fence, even paint the ramp a less jarring color.

I have a narrow bed just in front of the ramp now, planted with heuchera, hosta, and a few other things.  I generally hang baskets of plants from the ramp rail in the summer.  And I have pots of annuals on and in front of the porch where the ramp is the highest.  Then there is a strip of grass used as a path, which gets torn up with Steve’s electric chair when the soil is wet in the spring.   I have 3 “Shepherds” hooks with bird feeders in the yard and a pole with a bird house on it next to the cable dish, which we really need to remove-( the dish) since we aren’t using it now.   Last year I made a small garden around the pole outlined in rocks from the road- I pick them up each spring.  That needs to be re-done, it isn’t visually right.

There is only about 25 feet of space from ramp to the roadside ditch edge.  About 4 feet of that will be a path in front of the ramp.  So I have a space about 20 feet wide by 55-60 feet long that will become garden, not lawn.  The whole area is partly shaded.  I want low maintenance plants.  Part of the space I will have mulched around the bird feeders, I think.  Maybe something that hides spilled birdseed would be better.  I want to centrally locate a birdbath-fountain in the correct proportions to the area.  I want to be able to sit on the ramp top over the old porch and see something restful and pretty.  I want it to look good all year.

Over to the west of the house are some cedars, old and gnarled, where the shade is deeper.  We used to have a sitting area there and there is still some mulch which will need to be renewed.  However I found it was too dry of shade to keep many plants in the ground looking good.  I now put my houseplants there in the summer.  I want to do that again this year, maybe on pillars of different sizes and put a small table and some seating there.

So there are the plans, along with planting all the things I ordered this spring, the things I hope to accomplish.  My time of active, physical gardening is limited; I want to accomplish things that can be sustained with little work in the years to come. I am hoping to get the hardscape, the bones and edges in this year at least.  The path may need to be hard surfaced in years coming but this year will probably be mulched.  We’ll see how the wheelchairs work through that. 

Now you see why I am anxious for spring to get here.  So much to do!