Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Farming at the Aerie

Today was a farming day. I even got Terry out to assist with some of the planting and we both got to bitch about the black flies.

We started with the area next to the main entrance to the house. The tiered beds that I built behind the retaining wall that are next to the driveway. There’s a bit of a challenge with these beds as there’s a wide range of sun light here. The bed next to the door gets very little light while the one at the bottom end gets quite a bit.

Tiered entrance
This photo, taken at 4 o’clock, gives you an idea of the difference. The top is still mostly in shade while the bottom has been in sun all day long. We could have put some shrubs here but this is where snow gets piled during the winter and anything growing too tall would be damaged by the weight of the snow.

Bottom shelf
The sunny bottom shelf got a day lily and several hosta and still there’s room for more.

Middle shelf
The middle shelf, which gets a little shade during the day as the sun moves behind the chimney, got salvia, and mountain pinks in white and blue. The pinks will, hopefully spread to occupy much of this bed.

Top shelf
The top bed, the shadiest plot of all got some bleeding hearts, liriope and some caladium bulbs.

Terry did some of the planting of the pinks and the caladium bulbs (I can never tell which end is the pointy up end) in the three beds here. But she really went to work on the raised bed.

Terry at work
She planted a euymonius (a white and green variegated shrub), a pair of heather, chives, basil, oregano, and thyme. Dill seed too.

There were some strawberry sets too, but I put them in on the other end of the raised bed. There's still room for some lavender or more heather.

Raised bed
The left end of the raised bed has the 10 strawberry sets. The middle and right end have the heather, euymonius and herbs.

Terry also planted two deck boxes with pansies and geraniums. She has a couple of tomatoes to put in to deck pots and a six pack of pachysandra to put under the west end of the deck.

There’s still a sizable pile of soil in the yard that I have to move but after hauling ten or twelve wheelbarrow loads today, my back protested.

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