Making Mudpies

Saturday we rented a backhoe to dig a hole for the new shed's gravel pad. Our land is borders an old river bed, so it's mostly hard clay mixed with river rocks -- even if the ground is soft after a rain, your shovel or pickaxe is going to hit a rock. We checked out backhoe rental and decided that it was worth the money. We will still have to fill the hole with gravel and stone dust and tamp it down, but at least the hole for the pad is dug.

While we had the backhoe, I had himself dig a hole for a pad for our rain barrels (the downspout diverter is on backorder, due in June), and clear a corner of the front yard for a new flower bed. I should have had him dig up the dirt a bit while he was at it. The apple tree in the picture is a very old variety called the Lady apple.

Sunday, despite a soft rain, I put topsoil, peat moss and humus in the new bed, dug it in as much as possible (see above re rocks), and got it planted. I bought a few plants: one coral bells, one white bleeding heart, one blue hardy geranium, and two lavender plants. The other plants -- irises, roses, columbines, bletilla, white hardy geranium, white salvia or veronica, and meadowsweet -- were moved from the bed next to the porch, where the korean boxwoods have gotten big enough to start choking off the other plants' water and nutrients. It's a bit risky moving some of these plants this late in spring, but they were already suffering so I didn't have much to lose by moving them.