my secret garden

Six-ish years ago, I decided I was going to revamp a little piece of the yard, where (who knows how long ago) my mom had planted mints and lemon balm, and various other herbs. This garden is next to a little building that was a chicken coop turned playhouse turned horse shed turned abandoned shack that you couldn't pay me to go in. Anyway, when I first got this idea, there was nothing there but a square of overgrown mint and lemon balm. (See picture above.) My mom also had a collection of sandstone; I think she was wanting to make a patio, but didn't have enough. So I liberated them and used them to outline the space. We also had a large pile of bricks in the back (in the space that is the intermediary between the backyard and the woods), so I liberated some of those, too, to make a little square in the middle.

Unfortunately, this first summer of working on the garden, I came down with mono... And couldn't do nearly as much work as I wanted... You know, because heavy lifting with mono can make your spleen explode. So it went back to the weeds.

And the next summer, I was pregnant. Who wants to do yard work when they're pregnant?

And then for several years, I wasn't living there, so why bother? My visits were only for a few days, and I didn't really want to spend those days working.

This last weekend, though... Something changed. Maybe it's just that I was tired of seeing my garden overgrown and weedy. Or that I've been craving working in the dirt with plants. So with Camden's help, I pulled out the weeds. This took forever. They were everywhere. Most annoying were the weeds that had sprouted between the bricks, because they, more than any of the others, gave the garden such an air of neglect.



My next course of action was scouring the woods for moss. I love the look of brick pathways with moss set between the bricks. I scoured the woods and spent a ridiculous amount of time tearing the moss into little strips and shoving it into the cracks.



I also found some wild flowers. Two spiderwort plants and my dad dug up a big clump of daisies for me. And on Monday, my mom and I stopped by some nurseries and bought some plants. I can't remember what all I bought (bad me!) though I did buy quite a few creeper/crawling/ground cover plants that I'm hoping will grow and shade the ground to keep the weeds down. Yay for living mulch.



I also attempted a faerie house. I am soo not crafty at all (as much as I try and want to be). Guess I'll have to keep practicing and hopefully one of these days build a nice-looking faerie house, as opposed to this one, which while not bad, is nowhere near as nice as some that I've seen.