Yawn

This post is about my lawn. And it's boring. Hence the title. My back garden has always been a bit patchy and weedy and uneven. Now that I'm retired I decided to take it on. I had roughly 1,700 pounds of soil delivered (750 kilograms). Then I carried it, one bucket at a time, from the front to the back garden (I'd already taken at least a dozen buckets before I took this photo).

To prep the back garden, I shoved a pitchfork all the way into the ground then wiggled it forward and back, side to side, creating four holes, which I carefully filled with sand. There were hundreds of sand holes by the time I finished. I also dug the pitchfork halfway into the soil over and over again to loosen the remaining ground. And I removed a lot of roots using an axe. Here's one.

The roots were right at the surface and I think they are part of the reason for patchy grass. They belong to trees that are no longer in the garden. Here's another one.

I filled holes in the lawn with the soil and tried to even it up. A greenskeeper from the golf course loaned me this tool/torture instrument:

It's very heavy. I pushed my foot on it over and over to press it into the ground and create rows of furrows. Then I put down seed, then soil, then fertiliser. Then put up tin foil to discourage birds.

The stepping stones used to be in a row parallel to and very near the back porch to create a little garden. I dug them out and reset them in the lawn. I also dug a huge hole to transplant an acer from a large pot into the ground. I also dug four holes for two daphne bushes and two viburnum--I'm trying to improve the border gardens.

I was so exhausted by a month of digging and hauling that I went to Donegal for three nights – a future post.

For Easter, I had some friends round for brunch. One friend, Thea, brought these flowers from her garden. The tall white stems are from a bush called bridal veil – I have one in my garden cleaved from the plant that produced these stems.

And Miss Daphne got a new jacket to match her older brother.

I was in Donegal 8-11 April. When I came back, I carried lots of buckets of soil to the back half of the back garden, trying to level it up. Then spread seed and fertiliser, while also doing a second application of seed, soil, fertiliser in the section I did pre-Donegal. I am now watering it every day and hoping all this bloody hard work pays off.

April