It's a Horvath's Life: Garden Update: Green Beans, Sunflowers, and Steps!

Mother Nature has been hard at work in the garden this month… I have been in the garden, but not really working all that hard. :) Mama Guthrie has also been there, and she works a lot harder than me!

We put in a row of forsythia bushes and lilies on the left, added some perennials on the right and weeded all about. Plus we started working on the steps leading down through the wooded path from the English Garden to the gate. Here’s a look at what’s been going on:

The pathway down from the English Garden is steep and uneven, so we thought putting in a few steps would make the journey easier and more picturesque. :)

Basically, we started at the bottom and dug a level place for the first step. Then we lowered it in place and checked it for levelness before filling in behind it. We aren’t being super picky about spacing because these steps will just follow the terrain of the ground. So some may be deeper than others if the hill will accommodate that. But because we are using 6x6’s for the actual steps, they will all be the same height.

We had these timbers left over from when we dismantled the swing in the English Garden. John cut them in half so we could reuse them as steps.

Mama has always claimed that she can level by eye, whether she is laying rocks or pavers or timber steps, apparently. This is what we got after she eye-balled this step:

Looks good to me! :)

We ran out of timbers after five, so we’ll have to get some more of those to finish the rest of the hill. And these are just sitting on the dirt, with no reinforcement to keep them from moving, so we still have to hammer rebar in to hold them in place. We’ll be back to share the rest of the steps at some point!

Now onto the garden!

While Mama was weeding the creek bank and picking up rocks (a million of them at least!) she built this little dam in the creek. Now the water trickles through the rocks and makes a lovely sound. :) And it’s cute!

While she did that, I planted some more lilies and the forsythia on the left side of the garden. It’s lovely, yes? Just wait until next year and everything will look nicer! Some mulch would certainly help!