Wildflower Garden Area #1

It became quickly apparent that I couldn't finish the 'creation' of the garden area in this first year. This is a project that will continue - most likely - the rest of my life. As much as I love doing this, that thought is perfectly okay. I scaled down my wild fantasies and decided to focus on one small area, and spread the seeds in Fall. My Mama needs something beautiful and growing - so this shows the work that went into creating Wildflower Garden Area #1.

In my last post (Inspecting The Area) I showed the very first flat spot that my Father created on the land (in about 1980). It was made as a level place to put a grill. I decided that the flat spot would be perfect for a bird bath and possibly a potted plant (something for Butterflies). In front of this area is where I'm building Wildflower Garden #1. It's just a little area but it really needs some color. I started by placing rocks around the area to mark it.

The next step was moving local clay into the first layer of rocks to fill in holes. This would help to keep good dirt in stopping some of the water wash that happens with our torrential rains (when it does rain, it rains hard). This clay will pack in with the next rain.

After the clay had packed in a bit the LONG process of sifting had to start. This took several days of sitting in the dirt and playing with the sifter. Why did I feel I needed to do this? First I wanted to dig down about 1 - 2 feet removing the huge rocks. The area was also full of pine needles, pine cones, and many little rocks. I also found a barrette I lost 30 years ago, ha ha.

Keeping a healthy amount of little rocks is important up here to keep the soil aerated. I also gave many, many worms a good home. Mom loves fishing and she had some worms in a container that she wasn't going to use. Instead of just dumping them out, they went into this area (and I did feed them). After this ground was sifted I mulched in local grasses, plants, and coffee grounds. From there several buckets of dirt were added and on Oct. 20 the wildflower seeds would be planted with a few prayers for Spring germination.

This boo boo was the end result of all that work.

From beginning to end of this little part of the project was July 15 - August 09, 2010.