the reveal

I think I inadvertently revealed the front yard in the last post, when what I meant to do was a Before and After thing. 

It's good to have perspective, and even if I do repeat myself in pictures, here is the process, from the beginning until the end:

Last November, if you recall, I turned the soil to sterilize it. It sat over the winter and turned up come spring very much in the state as it was left.

That's when Ersin came in with his hydraulic trailer and we added fresh topsoil. Remember? Of course you do! It was only a few short weeks ago. (This in itself astonishes me, since last summer we worked on the back wall and that took *forever*).Hitting the greenhouse was such a pleasure. If you garden, you'll understand the absolute joy involved in starting tabula rasa. But I had a plan. Ms. Mel had come by and we discussed what the path would do--that it would serve to carve out three sections in which to plant.The barberry hedge (which smells oddly of semen when in bloom--no lie) helps to divide the busy road from the yard. I planted the false cypress along the vertical path--three in total, with caramel herchera (coral bells) in between. This time I really tried to limit the colour scheme to the rusts and reds and greens. But since I had used some transplants, I ended up with some purples--how could I not plant lavender? How!? And since the path is there, it practically demands that there is a shin-height lavender to brush against your leg. For a week or two, once mostly everything had been planted, the weeds started to rise like the dead--not from the sterilized soil, but from the topsoil. It really doesn't matter how vigilant you are--they bastards will get in and grow. It can't be helped. But it was an agonizing wait for the mulch. I wasn't sure from where we'd get it: a truck load? Bags? Then the serendipitous happened. I worked on a job where there were, no shit, mountains of mulch. Lovely natural cedar mulch, that I could help myself to. You see below two truckloads of thickly laid mulch. That's a full six inches there.The limestone slabs were from a friend--a gift. She had no more use for them. I couldn't believe it!  I covet limestone like a drinker her gin!Already we hang out more in the garden. There's a rock directly under the spruce that we sit on. Min Min lies in and among the plants, which is so bourgeois of him I can hardly stand it.