The wall (“we don’t need no education”)

Now that winter’s appeared, there’s a lot of time for things like looking back at summer. It was a long one, it turned out, and busy. It began with overly ambitious notion to turn the whole front yard into a garden, a plan quickly reduced to just one new bed and a “little” retaining wall that took all summer and most of the good fall weather to finish. Not without good reasons.

A week after getting back from the waking dream that was Kenya, I started a new job that consumed many hours during the week as well as at night, in anxiety nightmares. Many a sunny summer weekend was spent on the porch with the laptop, trying to work and not think about planting I was not doing. Can’t say being in the garden is good space for me to be work-productive with so much outdoor work undone.

Bud likes the hammock, too.

There were 5 or 6 weeks of bronchitis in which not much was accomplished, at work or at home, except for coughing. I passed many hours incapacitated in the hammock, hacking.
There was, through everything, the (mostly) Beagle, who changed our lives inconceivably. Walking him (or rather, him learning to walk with us), building him a safe outdoor space (two iterations, soon to be a post of their own), trips to the vet/the trails/Petsmart/dog park, obedience training, invisible fence training, and lots of lolling and playing took the place of country bike rides, non-dog photography, and cultivating much of a garden.

Then there was the wall–dreamed of, thought about, mulled over, rocks hauled and hauled and hauled in compact car trunks, and a structure finally built in the service of the garden but most definitely instead of gardening, itself. Without the wall to keep the slope and new soil from sliding into the ditch, I could not consider the bed done or plant it fully (bulbs!). It took forever.

Kind of like the new job and bringing a Beagle home instead of cats, I had no idea what I was getting into. Here’s the short story in pictures of what is done enough for now, done enough to hold lots of new plants and bulbs and done enough for my honey to suggest I think about a side job in stone masonry (which does sound kind of cool). Click a picture to get the details and a bigger photo (click it again to see even bigger). (I wish WordPress galleries worked as a slideshow. We’re working on our media options over here.)

Special thanks to my honey for good-natured stone-hauling trips, and to neighbor Mike, whose help and trailer on a Sunday afternoon have supplied us with more stone than we hope to ever use.

p.s. I smashed my fingers only twice; just one really bruised.

Phase 1: Kill the grass. Taken Aug 22.

Phase 2. Sept 20. Looks promising! Not even half-way there.

Phase 2: Sept 20. Grass dug. Mostly leveled.

Phase 3: Oct 10. Hmmm.

Phase 4: Foundation stones in the muck.

Phase 4: Oct 12. No idea what I’m doing.

Oct 12. Still a mess. The Beagle is no help at all.

Oct 12. I mean none.

Zero help.

Phase 5. Oct 26. On to something.

Phase 5. Oct 26. Momentum builds!

Phase: Done as it’s gonna get for a while. Oct 26.