structure

I've been working a lot outside- the cooler weather plus my improving health makes me delighted to be outside for hours getting sweaty and sore muscles. It's great! But not a lot of work to do with plants, although I'm pulling weeds, raking, trimming stuff per usual. Straightening garden bed edges, where some bricks had fallen out of alignment over the past few years. And digging small rocks with flat edges into the ground, to make a "mowing strip" of sorts around the base of the beds.

A few days ago I started this task: putting a flat path in the one garden area the lawn mower won't fit. Between beds four and five (which is the small square one with just rue), straight down between beds three and six (the perennial herbs). It's the annoying area where I always end up pulling tons of weeds by hand, trimming grass with scissors or a knife, and getting struck by rue (from just brushing against it).

So I had all these narrow cinder blocks, the kind with two holes through the center. They're the same dimension as my garden bed edging bricks, but my husband picked them up (free) for me not realizing I couldn't use ones with holes. Various reasons. Had them sitting around for over a year, trying to think how to make them work for the garden edge- fill the holes with cement and make them solid? put in as-is with a flat stone cap? plant stuff in the holes (don't like that look)? never satisfied with any ideas so they'd been on my porch holding up a planks for a makeshift bench. (Useful, but not a nice look either).

Then I asked my husband to cut them all in half lengthwise with his wet saw. And I dug them into the ground with the flat sides up, packing clay and small broken stone under the hollows. One cracked in half because I dropped it, otherwise they feel pretty solid- firm to the ground and not rocking. Mostly. 

Next job -yesterday- was to straighten the bricks on the outside edge of bed 10. Which was the most crooked of them all. Quite a bit of work, but very satisfying. I must be a real garden nerd, I love pulling the edges off and seeing the darkness of the garden soil, from my compost enrichments. Even though in this bed it's kind of shallow (because of the initial stick layer, which has broken down by now).

I laid a string line this time to get the edge straight. 

It was also satisfying to see that, in spite of some wedges I had shoved under the bricks to level them the first time around being wood- which rotted away- the clay soil under them was pretty compact and smooth, flat surface once I brushed away the dirt that had sifted down through cracks. I think it was mostly the pushing of roots, motion of insects and shifting of dirt from gravity, that had caused the bricks to get crooked.

Now fairly straight- not perfect, but good enough for me.

I keep thinking I ought to dig all the edges out, make a narrow shallow trench around the beds, fill with sand or fine gravel, and set the bricks again on that, for a proper base. Just didn't have the energy, time, or want the expense of buying more materials the first time I did all this. Wonder if I even need to. The rest of the garden edges are in good shape still, only a few more I might pull off to straighten- and I am pretty sure they're all ones I had wedged with wood shims. Now I wedge with small flat rocks or just packed clay soil. It stays pretty firm. 

Also satisfied to see they've held up well, where the bricks are under/against the soil. The sealant and paint layers have not worn off (in four years). 

After all that, I went back to finishing the path. I'm really pleased with it- so I took a lot of pictures, from all angles! It's nice to walk on.

After walking on it for a day I realize I'm probably going to take the trouble to lift half the path again and re-dig so they sit deeper. It slopes down and then goes up again towards the outer edge of the garden- following the land- but is too shallow between the rue and bed four. Bed five with the rue needed almost all the bricks pulled off and re-set. They were very wonky. I had to chop a lot of roots- I think their pushing is what made the edge go crooked. 

Trimmed the rue back quite a bit before starting work, and even then I brushed against it too many times, so went inside and washed my hands, arms and face with rubbing alcohol and then soap and lots of water, hoping to stave off a skin reaction. Interesting to see when I exposed the soil in the rue bed, it was paler than in the other beds- not so black, but still darker than the plain red clay soil. Because this bed I don't feed compost, it just gets some grass trimmings and leaf litter mulch in fall.

Looking straight down it. See how tall the dill umbrels (green)! This is after I cut it back twice earlier in the season. It's really growing crazy in the cooler weather now.

From above. I spy another brick on the short edge of bed three, that needs straightening . . .

While doing all that digging, I pulled three large dandelions. Nice straight roots the width of my finger, so I cleaned, scraped and roasted them for tea. Hadn't done that in a long time.