A Horseshoe Shaped Vegetable Garden

Last summer's vegetable garden didn't turn out so well.  My poor veggie plants were sad, spindly things thanks to not enough sun and sub-par dirt.   This year I was determined to change that by building a new garden for my veggies.  The best available sunny location was in my side yard, on the south side of my house.

The 'Before' Picture

I didn't have much space for it (it is a side yard, after all!), so I decided to make a horseshoe or U-shaped bed, inspired by the keyhole garden design.   Since the rocky clay is so difficult to dig in, I also decided to make it into a low, raised bed.

First step - clearing away all that grass!  That was supposed to be a mulched area.  Isn't it amazing how grass grows so well wherever you don't want it to?

I used rocks as walls, lined the edges with landscaping fabric so the dirt wouldn't fall through the cracks, and then filled it with dirt - nice, composty-rich dirt.

I left room by the downspout for a rain barrel which is going in as soon as I get it painted.  

The 'After' Picture - all done and planted

Green beans and cucumbers are in the back on the trellis, then I have tomatoes, peppers, okra, basil, carrots, cilantro, and nasturtiums on the ends.  I have high hopes - already the plants are looking better than last year's!

Nasturtiums 'Empress of India' - pretty and edible!

A Seat for a Shade Garden

It's been a busy couple of months here at the Red House Garden, trying to get plants and seedlings in the ground between heat waves.  Between making a new veggie garden, building pathways, building up beds, and deciding I wanted to move half of the plants I already have, I am almost glad for this current heat wave - it gives me an excuse to sit indoors and rest!

One project involved redoing the shade garden.  I've previously posted about the progression of my shade garden.  Last year I had a lot of annual impatiens in it, along with hostas, ferns, bleeding hearts, foxglove, and, of course, my little moss garden.

Last year's shade garden

This year I was eager to see how the garden would look when everything came back up, bare of the colorful annuals.

This year's shade garden

It's so great to see perennials filling in, and I was thrilled that one of my foxgloves overwintered and is now happily blooming again.  I am also excited to see several foxglove seedlings which will hopefully live to give me blooms next year - happy success for a garden that sits on pure, thick red clay.

Foxgloves blooming a second year

What was that you said?  This post is supposed to be about a seat for a shade garden?  Well then, on to rambling about that for awhile..

We've been on a mission for several months to find a proper seat for the shade garden, which would enable us to actually be able to sit out in the garden during the hot summer!  It was Mr. Red House who found it when we were out at the Stone Center over in Durham.

Bench made out of Tennessee sandstone

Their stonemason makes gorgeous benches of out of random 'scrap' stone.  Mr. Red House loved it, and since I've put the kibosh on some of his other garden requests (a Weeping Willow tree and a giant Redwood tree, neither of which we have suitable room for!), I let him have it.  
(Okay, I do have to admit I loved the bench too..)

Of course that meant digging up the garden to make room for it.

The painful part - digging up all the plants

storing all the plants on a tarp

At least it's a great chance to mix in some more compost with that clay!

Add bench and stepping stone, then add back in all the plants

Viola!  The new and improved shade garden:

I feel like I crowded the plants a little to fit them back in.  We'll see what happens next year - I might be moving plants around yet again..

hostas, bleeding hearts, and moss

I also removed the cement planter with the moss garden in it, as it didn't really go.  But the Red House Garden can't be without one for long - I now have a new little moss garden.  I have also placed moss throughout this corner in the hopes that I will eventually end up with one large shady moss garden.

new little moss garden

I only find one thing lacking, and that is some height.  Down the road I will have some more foxglove interspersed throughout the garden, but I think I need something tall in the corner behind the bench.  It has to be able to fit behind the bench, and it needs to tolerate medium shade and not-so-great drainage. 

Any suggestions from you fabulous gardeners out there?

Wrong Shade of Green

When I said I wanted a garden that was green and growing, 

this was not what I meant...

Lots of green aphids on a now almost dead plant in container

Tools of Inspiration

In my quest of understanding the natural world around me and using that to create a garden haven, there are two main tools that I use.  Sometimes they answer questions I have, and they usually inspire me to learn more.  Means of revelations and insight, they have become the tools of inspiration for how I garden and how I see the world around me.

The first main tool of inspiration for me is my camera.

Carolina anole lizard

The camera lets me see details that I would not normally pick up.  It is a window to a world I don't normally see.

It lets me see and document the small stories that are going on around me, and thus I have become so much more aware of nature and the small lives that are around me.  I now feel party responsible for these wild creatures in my garden - how I garden can directly affect their lives.

They also provide good fodder for the blog.

Don't mind me, I'm just hanging around...

I have a terrible memory, and the camera lets me document things to remember later.   Through pictures I have a record of when plants flower, what my garden looks like throughout the seasons, and plants and combinations that I like in other gardens.  These pictures provide me inspiration for shaping my own garden haven.

Love this plant combination of my neighbor's - Loropetalum chinensis, Clematis armandii 'Snowdrift', and an old urn

Mr. Red House, who love all things technology, had to talk me into letting him buy a fancy camera.  Now he laughs, since I have pretty much claimed the camera, and he can barely get the chance to use it!  At least it gets used, right?

The second tool that provide me so much inspiration is...

the computer.

I have a love/hate relationship with the computer.  Mr. Red House says that there isn't a computer I can't break, and that I should work for a computer company doing testing.   Back in college, I actually took several computer programming classes.  For one assignment, I accidentally managed to write a compiler virus instead of whatever it was that I was supposed to make the program do.  You would think I would get extra credit for creating a homework assignment that could eat itself, but no...

Uh oh.. I broke the computer yet again..

(On that note, I have been having several issues with Blogger, the site that runs my blog, specifically with some of its widgets.  So if you tried to follow my site by e-mail, sorry if that didn't really work so well...)

But the computer is a wonderful tool as well.  I love living in the information age, where I can find answers to my questions at the click of a button.  

Why are my rose leaves crinkling up and turning white, and what can I do to stop that?  Well, let me just google that...

Hardly a day goes by where I am not researching what conditions a plant likes, what a particular critter is, or how to fix some sort of garden issue.  It inevitably inspires me to ask even more questions and delve further into learning about the world we live in.

Random factoid:  fossils show that the largest flying insect species are related to and looked like present-day dragonflies - they had wingspans of over 2 feet.

I can read about how the plants and animals in my own backyard are connected with the ecosystem as a whole.  Gardeners around the world inspire me with their own stories and garden havens.  The computer has been such a wonderful tool for inspiration in so many ways and continues to be so.   As long as I don't break it, anyway...

For more on what inspires gardeners around the world, visit Garden Walk, Garden Talk.

And thank you so much to Holley of Roses and Other Gardening Joys and Jane of Tidy Gardens by Jane for deeming me worthy of the Sunshine Award!  I am glad to bring a little sunshine to some other fellow gardeners - these two ladies and their garden blogs are a source of cheer and inspiration to me as well!

In winning this award, I am supposed to answer some very random questions about myself:

1.  What is your favorite color?      Blue

2.  What is your favorite animal?      Cats - I have two, one of which is usually 'helping' me blog.

3.  What is your favorite number?      3.14159... We'll just go with pi.   It was a toss up between that and i, but I went with the real answer..

4.   What is your favorite non-alcoholic drink?   Hot chocolate

5.   Which is your favorite - Facebook or Twitter?   Pinterest!

6.    What is your passion?  You can probably guess..

7.    Do you prefer giving or receiving presents?  Both

8.    What is your favorite pattern?   Plaid.  All kinds of plaid.  Grunge plaids, country plaids, Scottish plaids, they're all pretty awesome, especially in flannel.

9.    What is your favorite day of the week?     Friday or Saturday, both good!

10.   What is your favorite flower?     Clematis and daisies

I am also supposed to pick other blogs that deserve this award, but for that I defer to my list of blogs that I read.  They all have their own unique brand of sunshine.

Happy Gardening!