Version 2.034

I did not go out today. I stayed mostly in the house gardening and also helped my neighbor with her garden. It was less than three weeks ago that we were sitting in my neighbor's patio, when she professed her hate for her garden. Ever since I learned that her house has a covered patio that I have coveted the space, so I told her that I actually loved her outdoor set up and her garden was a great space. For example, she could do a raised bed along the fence with some rocks, I suggested. But the covered patio was the crown jewel, in my opinion.

The following day, we met I thought to brainstorm the set up of the patio, but she had already started to place rocks for the flowerbed, so I helped her. Then she wondered where she could buy more rocks, so I told her. Within a couple of days, she had the rocks placed in a layout that she found pleasing.

By sheer coincidence, a few days earlier, I had toured the garden of another neighbor who was also doing some landscaping work. That garden had massive hostas, very mature and lush, but they thought that they were not colorful enough, so they were going to dispose of them. I absolutely love hostas; several years ago, in my previous Memphis house, I tried to build a shade garden full of hostas, but I moved too early to see how my plans had turned out. Nevertheless, every once in a while, I still drive by the old house just to see how the hostas in the front flower beds are doing.

Of course I asked the neighbor to give me the hostas, since it caused me pain that they were basically on death row. And that is how I ended up with close to 20 variegated hostas, for which I did not have that many places to put them; but since the other neighbor was needing plants for the raised flowerbed, I set aside four large ones for her garden. What a difference they made and because they were transplanted almost immediately, they did not even wilt; instead they proceeded with their happy lives and started blooming.

The last two to three weeks have been partly consumed with the progress of that garden, with me studying the direction of the sun, the placement of the trees, and giving suggestion of where to move the plants based on the amount of sunlight that they would get.

Today, the sod went down. Originally, the garden had Bermuda, but it was in a bit of bad shape with weeds and drainage issues. A lot of the drainage problems were because the previous owner had placed a tarp around the garden and covered it with pebbles, so any runoff that came from the alley would bypass that area and land on the lawn, hence the issues with the weeds and bare grass areas. By creating the raised bed, those issues were mostly solved, all that was needed was to even out the terrain for the grass.

Since no Bermuda sod was available at the garden store, they went with fescue, which does well in cold weather. This fescue is so fine that it reminds me of the grass in a putting green. I saw it first about a couple of months ago, when another neighbor had put some in his front-garden, which is totally shaded by trees.

I called my ex-father-in-law to give me the scoop on this fescue sod and how to take care of it. I sent him a picture of the yard, that my neighbor had sent me, with the sod in place and he said that fescue was probably a good choice for that space. Tomorrow I will share the information with my neighbor. She jokes that all the work she has done was my fault, since I told her she could use rocks to build a flower bed. She seems happy with how it turned out.