A Landscaping Story

Saturday morning, before I'd had an adequate amount of coffee, Todd and I decided to re-landscape the small bed that surrounds the mailbox. Because of the driveway and the street, the bed is a quarter-circle, with a radius of about 4 feet. No big deal, right?

That would be, in fact, wrong.

For starters, last weekend was the hottest weekend of the summer. Second, the bed was initially dug by morons, who put potato-sized rocks into the red Alabama clay and spread 1" of topsoil over the mess. The bed will not even grow ivy. Come on.

Armed with a pickaxe, a sledgehammer, and a shovel, we tore the bed up. By sundown we had a 6" deep hole. There are no photographs from this period, which we shall heretofore refer to as "the bad time."



(Actually, Todd did most of this work. His pickaxe muscles are still sore.)



Sunday morning was easy, comparatively. We spread out composted leaves, seven bags of topsoil, and planted seven "Stella D'Oro" daylilies. A little weed paper, a little mulch, and we were finished.


And, of course, our little general contractor was on hand to make sure we didn't slack off.