Adventures of Country Living: Happy Easter!

What a great weekend we've been having! The weather was absolutely beautiful on Friday, and David and I had a chance to work on some of our gardens.

We decided on the location for our gladiola garden in front of the barn, and our dahlia garden in front of the shed, facing the road. Since we already knew exactly where we wanted the dahlias, we started with that garden. We removed the grass to create the bed, and our next step (once the "sods" dry out some to recover the soil) will be to lay out the garden edging.

I was walking around looking at our hay-covered gardens when I decided to check if the spring bulbs were starting to grow. Sure enough, little bits of green were starting to peek through the hay. I decided to start with our garden closest to the garage (it's filled with orange day lillies and purple irises). Last year it was filled with grasses and some weeds, so I tried to pull some of that up... it was pretty much a lost cause. So instead we went off to our local Canadian tire for some dark cedar chips to cover the old grasses (hoping that not allowing them to photosynthesize may result in their 'untimely' death; the lillies are still pushing through!). David came over and hauled up the stone border that became buried in grass last year, and after putting some cedar chips under their previous homes, we rearranged the rocks a bit. The result: a garden that actually looks planned!

While we were at Canadian tire, I spotted a plant that I've been dying to get for a few years now... a corkscrew hazel! We decided the best home for it is by the large rock we have next to the driveway. The plan is to eventually have a decent-sized part-sun/part-shade garden. First we set out to move half of a wild rosebush from in front of the rock to the back, somewhat behind the rock. We then planted the corkscrew hazel behind the newly relocated roses.