Along the Porch

I have made some progress on the front of the house, and we made a few discoveries along the way.

1. There are entirely too many rocks in the soil here.

2. The clay content is much higher than what I’m used to dealing with.

3. The previous owners had some special ideas when it came to landscaping.

I spent an hour Thursday night pulling weeds, removing rocks and generally aerating the soil.  In that time, I cleared an area 18″ out from the porch and 28″ long.

My 18" by 28" patch

Then Southern Honey came out to see my progress.  He looked down and said, “What’s this?  It looks like plastic.”  In point of fact, it was plastic, separating about two inches of topsoil from the rest of the dirt beneath it, all along the front of the porch, except for a couple of cutouts where something aside from weeds must once have grown.  In ten minutes, he cleared the rest of the area, and it looked like this:

Once Southern Honey showed that dirt who was boss...

Yep, he cleared almost all of the remaining six feet in ten minutes.

No progress was made on Friday, but Saturday dawned chilly, overcast but not rainy.  I dragged my butt out of bed at 8 am and tackled the rest of the weeds.

By 10:30, I had pulled the weeds, aerated more soil, accidentally chopped a couple of earthworms in two (sorry, guys!), laid down gardening soil and planted my pansies and thyme.  The two feet closest to the driveway have thyme planted there to provide nice greenery.  Then we have the pansies, white and purple.  I left enough space to go back and plant the light purple ones I’m planning on buying this afternoon in town.  The last foot is also planted with thyme, and I’ll eventually expand it out another foot and follow the edge of the porch and house.

Now the front of the house looks like this:

Pansies and thyme!

And yes, those ARE giant piles of rocks on the edge of the porch.  Every last one of them came out of that eight-foot section of dirt that now has pretty flowers in it.

Here we have it, complete with white, lavender and deep purple pansies:

All the pansies planted at last and soaking up the rain