Poison Ivy Jungle

So, when Adamo and I first moved in, there was a fenced-in area with gravel, presumably a dog yard.

With suspiciously verdant grass right in front of the door [poop joke]

It was such an eyesore, but I saw some potential for it. On August 5th, 2013 Adamo and I made a deal: if one year from that day, the chain link fence was still standing there, I would get to convert it from a dog yard to a quail yard. QUAIL. With their funny little faces and delicious little eggs!

For some weird reason, Adamo was not super into the idea of jumpy, stinky little birds so close to our house. One month before Quail Day, a pair of dudes came over to pick up the fence. Adamo got poison ivy. Like everywhere. I shall not comment further on that.

I was a bit disappointed, not going to lie. But the day before the dudes were supposed to come pick up the fence, I really looked at the space, and saw the untapped potential of the area behind the old dog yard (which has now been dubbed The Patio). I had a lace-leaf japanese maple that desperately needed to be shoved into the ground somewhere, and it was decided; this poison ivy jungle would become my meditation garden.

You can totally see it, right?

We put on our gloves and some old clothes and ripped out all of the poison ivy, weird vines, and random shrubbery, except for the one in the back that I thought was cute. We tried to save some of the ferns, but I don't think that worked out so well.

In the back in the middle; it really is quite an adorable shrubbery

You may have noticed the neato lantern sitting on the stump in the foreground. The stump is from Adamo's mom and was supposed to be my mushroom garden, but it turned out to already have non-delicious fungus. T_T The lantern is made of lava rock, and it is pretty sweet; so I combined the two and now I have a focus piece for my meditation garden!

Yeah, I'm just gonna focus on how sweet this looks

It was immediately apparent that just having this area open would lead immediately to invasion by the weeds we just ripped out and to erosion. We did what we could to edge the side of the patio with some cinderblocks that were were already there, supplemented with some random ones that I found under the porch. The plan had been to do the beginning steps of the meditation garden for free, but it was clear that reinforcements were needed. 

I should not have been allowed to also go to the store

At Home Depot we got cinderblocks, garden stakes, and half of the planned reed fencing. And switchgrass because it was 50% off and I walked by it. Somehow it ended up in our cart. >:3

PS I planted the poor japanese maple that has lived in that pot for almost five years!

Based on my completely-not-to-scale doodle of the garden plan, I laid out the plan for the fencing using my ugliest yarn. I hammered in the stakes over a foot deep in hopes that the winter wouldn't screw up the fencing too badly. I mean, it is basically made of grass, so I don't exactly have high hopes for it surviving the winter, but we will see.

Adamo and I then started digging, and leveling, and hauling the stupid cinderblocks into place in hopes of preventing erosion. As we went, I kept getting distracted and went looking for rocks. I don't even remember what I wanted to do with them, but I found a lot of neat rocks. And I somehow didn't get Lyme disease from mucking around by the stone wall where 19,834,268 deer mice live.

TWO TYPES of neat rocks, amiright!?

Then, to finish off the leveling, we hauled over the last of the dirt STILL hanging out under a tarp in our driveway. FINALLY. Really, Pollilio's, I appreciate your generosity of dirt, but I had actually only planned for the amount that we bought.

Eventually, the plan is to have half-height reed fencing along the patio, wrap it around the japanese maple, and cut it at an angle where it makes a sort of shell pattern so that it is not too overwhelming. A fire pit will be going in the middle of patio, and now we have a sweet party space! I just need to find a way to integrate the arbor my mom gave us.

And hope that no one falls down in the corner by the fence; it's a bit of a drop.

And even though we were wearing gloves and immediately washed our clothes, Adamo got poison ivy again. Above the gloves. 

He wouldn't have gotten poison ivy from a quail farm, just sayin'