Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Doh!

This morning as I was trying to head out the door, I couldn't find my keys. This is a pretty common occurrence for me, but after looking for several minutes, they didn't turn up. Finally, I found them still in the front door. So basically, last night I turned the security system on and went to bed with the keys right there in the door. Genius, pure genius. Maybe I should just get a dog.

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When I finally got home today, there was a package on my doorstep from "The Phoenix". She sent me the new Live album and some sahuaro seeds, which made me just a little homesick.

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The landscaping at my house is crappy. So, today after work, I went to a local nursery and picked out two different colors of clematis, as I thought it would look nice climbing along the rail next to my front door. When I went to plant it, I discovered that my trowel was hitting something very firm, so I pulled an old, rusty shovel out of the garage (another gift from the sellers). I hit concrete. Apparently the "flower bed" in the front yard is approximately 3 inches of dirt slapped on top of a big pile of pavement! I guess that explains the crappy landscaping. There is a small tree at one end of the flower bed, so maybe the concrete doesn't extend along the whole length of the house? If it does, I suppose my options are to either find plants that don't require much soil, or dig it all up and see what exactly I'm dealing with and build up the soil level before planting anything.

Anyone know of any hardy perennials (I'm too cheap to replace plants every year) that don't require much dirt?

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After that, I went to a nearby fabric store, and picked out several patterns for curtains and blinds. They are going out of business, so everything's 80% off. Unfortunately, I didn't find any fabric that I liked.

3 comments:

Chris said...

Alex suggested lavendar, which tolerates lots of sun.

But a more flexible idea is to create a tiered look by using a low border grass on the front edge of the beds and then behind them, plant perennials in terracota flower boxes filled with soil.

Feel free to email her directly for other ideas. I'll do another comment with her email. Just delete that one once you write it down.

Thanks for your comment today.

Chris

~~Silk said...

You could add another 3 inches or so of dirt.

Try day lilies. The simpler "wild-like" ones are hardy, will spread to crowd out weeds, and don't need a lot of care. I plan to plant them on my unmowable banks. If you don't have a lot of sun there (but if you were planning clemantis, I guess there is sun), periwinkles would work, too.

I wonder why the cement is there? Old sidewalk? Water runoff problems?

Anonymous said...

Damn!