46 years and still counting

Yesterday was another landmark date in our family.  Alpine Queen and Doc Leo have achieved another year of dealing with each other as a family unit.  While neither of us knew it at the time, we got married on the 25th anniversary of D-Day, so whenever that celebrates a major milestone, we are celebrating one ourselves.  This year was just average.

So what did we do?  Any normal and sane couple would have gone out to dinner or something similar.  As we are not normal or sane, we pressure cleaned a few rock walls in the middle of a heat wave!

New pretty garden, ugly dirty wall

I have been wanting to prettify these walls ever since I fixed up the areas around them.  Thanks to surrounding trees, they don't get enough sun to bleach them out regularly, and they've turned so dark.  As the surround was just as ugly, there was no point in making much cleaning effort.  But ever since last fall, I have been trying to create wonders, and now the darkness was distressing.  I thought cleaning them would make a great anniversary project, something to actually enjoy doing.

The Doc setting up the pressure cleaner

We happen to own a very nice pressure cleaner, with a very nice super duper wand, so of course that wand didn't want to work after too many years of inactivity.  I had to settle for the less efficient one.  Which might have been okay if I had tried this activity under circumstances more geared to success.

Which would have involved choosing a cloudy day after a number of rainy days, which hopefully would have softened up the unwanted crud.  I also thought I needed to protect the plants, so I spread out a tarp.  As I discovered it didn't make much difference, I didn't continue with it.

The not so shiny end result

But did I wait?  It has definitely rained at this date in the past in this area, but that was not the weather pattern this year.  Instead, we've had hot heat wave days with no rain in sight, totally baking everything exterior (and somewhat interior).  Not exactly ideal for intensive cleaning. 

I was set on this job, and I was going to do it!  Perhaps the better wand would have been a bit more successful, but I was really disappointed in how little blackness wanted to come off my walls!  In the end, this one did turn out a bit brighter, but nothing like I was expecting.  Perhaps another session after some softening will help.

Before

After

The area I was really anticipating tackling was the little support wall on the street.  That never gets direct sun, and all the trees allow a lot of mold to develop.  The rocks have been as black as the asphalt!  Because the sun didn't bake on all the gunk, it all actually cleaned off fairly well.  It smelled like an aquarium as it all came off, and I had a lot of moss to sweep up later, meaning I actually was accomplishing something.  Best of all, it actually looks like I ended up accomplishing something!

Early planting condition

I am really super pleased with this area.  It's been so ugly ever since we moved in, and we ended up making it worse, not better, over the years.  Finally, I spent a whole month totally reworking the whole area.  It's really been exciting watching it develop into something of beauty rather than the eyesore it's been for so long.

Three months later

Above is how it ended up when I finished developing it, then I just had to wait for everything to grow. 

And then how it looks now, including with the cleaned rock wall, finally setting it off properly!

The brand new Street View garden

I thought you might like to see how it looks from inside the fencing. 

As this is our lower parking and car maneuvering area, I have to keep that in mind when trying to eliminate as much bare ground as possible.  Mostly it isn't possible, but I try.

In this case, I made as much garden where cars couldn't turn any more sharply in coming through the gate, but then I had to bring it back in fairly quickly to allow a parking space when we have company.  While it's all been just bare ground in the past, I've covered that bare ground with the smaller rocks we've dug up as we worked the area, adding to them as we continued.  Above is how it looked when I finished in March.

The filled in and nicely growing Street View garden

And this is how it looks today!

I've had the central tree in a pot for ten years, which it didn't like but did grow substantial roots.  My red climbing roses come from our house in Paris. 

While we have bought a few things in the past now transplanted into here, most everything is either inherited and dug up from somewhere else on the property or something I've cloned myself.  I'm really pleased with the creeping thyme growing around the stepping stones to the mailbox (what a dumb design, not making a solid pathway in the first place), something I scrounged from mountain roads in Italy a few years ago.  It gives a softer look than just more rocks.

A pretty entrance

Here is another view, showing the now cleaned wall nearby.  Such a change from the beginning of the year!

As I shared last year, I've been working on the big front hillside as part of this whole beautification project.  I wasn't able to get much planted before winter, and I ended up working on the parking area in the spring, so most of the hill just has to wait until next fall.  I did manage to get the driveway strip planted with little baby lavenders I was in the process of cloning.  But the bed wasn't properly prepared and has turned hard as a rock, not letting water penetrate. 

So I've been really digging it all up and then planting more pretty stuff all around the bushes.  I've added a ton of homemade compost, dug up little plants from all over, and mulched it all finally with homemade tree chippings.  Hopefully my little lavenders will look like substantial bushes by the end of the summer, although they are actually blooming at the moment.  I've also been doing the same kind of treatment to the level below it, with ideas of plant groupings I'll be installing this week (except for a couple of plants in the process of being cloned).

Six months ago

The current status

Here is a before photo from last fall and a current one of the moment.

I'm sure there must be much more exciting things to do with my time, but this is what life is dealing me at the moment.

A little visitor

After I finished pressure cleaning, a little butterfly came by for a visit, I suppose grabbing a little drink from miniscule puddles.  What a nice little reward!

The Queen with the Doc

Today we celebrated with a little more class. I wore a new dress I just made out of fabric the Doc picked out, and we made a fairly striking couple at church.  Don't you agree? 

And now, only four years left until the really big one!