It was waaaaay too much work to just call it a flowerbed. It was an undertaking! On Friday afternoon, I took half a day vacation and stripped off the grass. The crabgrass, quack grass, and clover, all rooted at the core of the earth. No pictures; I was too tired. On Saturday, it was supposed to rain/thunder/crap, but I took a chance anyway and started digging.

I’d got quite a ways along, but I was so tired that P felt sorry for me and pitched in. We finished pretty quickly.

I was a little short on the pond liner because the cable (whatever it’s for) that runs through my milkweed bed also runs through this one, so I had to leave that shallower and go up and over, and back down. No big deal.

We got the dirt back in fairly quickly, and we were so close to done when it started to rain that we just kept going. It didn’t rain hard, and no storms; everything went around us.

Dirt all back in.

This morning, P fixed my tiller, so I put four bags of compost and two big bags of MG soil in. Sounds like overkill, but the soil is not good there, and after that much work, I want my stuff to grow!

I planted joe-pye weed, lobelia cardinalis, great blue lobelia, helenium, the fancy okra and mallow that C got for me, and…I think that’s it. Oh, yeah–Kankakee mallow, too. I bought some black-eyed susan that wants wet soil (forget what it’s called), and have some rosemallow I forgot to put in. I’ll do it when I get the rudbeckia.

I also tilled the cosmos bed. I’ll try to seed and mulch that after work tomorrow.

Random stuff. Canadian columbine is making me wait.

Borage isn’t.

Old lady’s lilac.

Firefly heuchera. Finally.

I’d been cursing the grackles, chasing my little birds out of the feeders. P bought a rather expensive solution in the form of a powerful air rifle. Look out, starlings and grackles!

Attaching the scope. Yes, this thing has a scope. It’s also silenced; still a little loud, but not bad. It’s cool as hell, and I don’t think we’ll need to shoot too many of the miserable bastards before they’ll move along.