Earlier in the year, I wrote multiple times about our different strategies for killing grass to build a flower bed. Since then I’ve blogged pictures from the garden, from reading,writing, butterfly-watching, and blogging under our dogwood tree, and photographs of the butterflies and caterpillars who live in the small ecosystem we helped create.
I realized though, that since my April post about building a flower bed, when we were still in the process of killing grass, laying out cardboard, and shoveling mulch, I never brought it back around to show the garden in its full summer glory, with before and after pictures. So here goes (I don’t have before and afters from the same angle, but hopefully you’ll be able to see the difference):
Before:
Building the bed
Now:
Morning flower bed
Monarch on Joe Pye Weed
Basil forest
Flowers in the morning
Monarch caterpillar
Garden in fog
Monarch chrysalis
Caterpillar feet
Monarch on Joe Pye weed
Parsley flowers
Reading under the dogwood
I wanted an herb garden and a butterfly garden, now we have both butterflies and herbs. We’ve made endless batches of pesto and basil gin smashes.
The kids and I check for caterpillars and chrysalises every day. At last count we have about 8 monarch caterpillars and 10 swallowtail caterpillars, and we think we found a monarch chrysalis in progress yesterday in the rue bush. All the work has paid off :-).
I think I may be deriving too much pleasure from finding aphid corpses all over my milkweed plants. But it is so satisfying to squirt them with soapy water, then come back the next day to find desiccated aphid bodies where plump, orange life-suckers once were.
Killing aphids may be the highlight of my mornings now. Today I went out in quite a getup: purple workout clothes, green rubber boots, a flowery coffee cup in one hand, and a plastic spray bottle filled with sudsy water in the other. I giggled as I squirted aphids, thinking of my friend J when she played out a similar attack on hornets. She used RAID and screamed a battle cry, “Die MoFos!* ” as she lunged in with the killing spray. (*cleaned up for public reading). She’s my hero.
The milkweed is for the caterpillars. Aphids beware.
When I left for WordCamp Europe, our garden was pregnant with plump flower buds: echinacea, milkweed, hydrangea. While I walked the streets of Vienna, admiring the red geraniums that spilled from window boxes, I wondered how my flowers at home were doing. We can never get our flower boxes looking as good as the ones I saw in Vienna, but that’s ok. I have my whole life to keep tinkering.
It was dark when I arrived home after 24 hours in trains, airplanes, airports, and cabs, but not so dark I couldn’t see the outline of a new purple coneflower when I dragged my suitcase into the garage.
Every morning since I’ve gotten home, I make a smoothie*, walk downstairs to the garage, slip my feet into green rubber boots, and walk out into the dewy grass. I inspect the milkweed, parsley, rue, and passionflower for caterpillars (none yet) and check out the progress of all the flower buds. I deadhead a few withered blossoms. Sip my smoothie. Listen to birds trill. Nobody in the neighborhood is outside. I have it all to myself.
I keep trying to get a good photo for y’all but I’ve had zero luck. Despite digging close to 200 holes and putting a plant in each one, there are still large open spaces in the beds. I know they’ll eventually fill in, but for now the garden is young and I just have to accept that. My husband said we can take our daughter to pick out some annuals this weekend to plunk them in the open spaces. She will be very excited.
Morning in the garden is my favorite way to start the day: beautiful, serene, full of life.
*For the smoothie-lovers, my smoothie usually has kale, banana, walnuts, flax seeds, frozen pineapple, frozen strawberries (or peaches or mangos), and pineapple juice.
Our grass-killing seems to have worked. After cutting the grass close to the ground, covering it with cardboard, then covering the cardboard with mulch to build up flower beds, we let them sit for a couple of weeks before planting.
On Mother’s Day weekend, we dug more than 150 holes, dropping perennials, annuals, and herbs into our newly formed beds. Now, the garden is growing. Most of the plants are still small, but echincea buds are plumping up, milkweed is blooming, basil is flourishing, and butterflies are finding us.
My skin is pink and warm. I spent all weekend outdoors, in the garden and on the soccer pitch.
The fresh air, dirt, and blue-sky matches were totally worth the sunburn.
Our neighbor has a farm truck and told us these past weeks that he would soon fill it with a (literal) ton of mulch; he wouldn’t need it all, and would we like to split a truck load with him? He dumped the mulch Wednesday, and on Saturday, our daughter and I drove around town collecting cardboard and newspaper: we were going in for round two of killing the lawn so we can put in a flower bed.
Our first attempt at killing grass with garbage bags failed, so we pivoted. We did some research, and I think we have a better chance of succeeding this time with compostable materials that worms can eat instead of ugly black plastic.
In preparation, my husband lowered the mower blade as low as it would go, and cut a curved shape in the lawn where the flower and herb beds would soon go.
Shorn grass for the front flower bed.
Our daughter has been as eager to get out in the garden as I am, and she helped me cover the soon-to-be-dead grass with cardboard and newspaper.
Laying cardboard over close-cut grass to smother it.
We watered the cardboard to soften it, then covered it with mulch. The mulch weighs it down and will also hold moisture, hopefully keeping the thick paperboard damp to help speed up the decomposition process. We covered gaps and filled out the shapes with layers of newspaper 4-6 sheets thick, then watered the mulch and papers again.
Mulching over cardboard and newspaper to kill lawn.
We ate through half the chipped bark and wood before our neighbor even touched the ton pile. Even though I hated to stop, we got through two rows of cardboard and newspaper before I reluctantly quit working so we didn’t use all the mulch.
Weighting down the edges while we wait for more mulch.
Our neighbor has said he will gladly get another truckload to split with us, so I’m excited for next weekend, when I hope to get through another section of the soon-to-be flower bed.
I was so happy to be outside, I barely remembered to eat. I made a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate it on the front steps. I wanted to look out over the yard, what we’ve done, and what we’ve yet to do. Each time we drove up to the house — after soccer, after our daughter’s hair cut — I smiled and did a little dance for our house and garden.
Stopped. For now.
Our daugher and I spent a lot of labor mulching our new plantings, laying biodegradable cardboard and newspaper over unwanted grass, and watering everything in. It’s going to be important that we stay on top of it — keeping everything wet to encourage both growth and decomposition.
I’ve been ignoring those mid-morning calendar reminders to “Water plants” every day for months. We didn’t have anything alive at the time I created the reminders, but I set them knowing this day would come, and I’d need to make sure I made time to nurture plants.
It is spring now, and the weather is beautiful. I’m ready to start taking a break each day to get outside and tend the garden.
Butterfly Mind 