Material Monday: Terra Tiller

I've spent some quality time over the last several days with a tool that looks a lot like this. I'm using it to break up the clods in the dirt I'm moving to make my flower border. And it's also very handy, if you put in on its side, for pulling the dirt around to level the surface.

The border is going to be slightly raised - maybe 3 inches. The area I've marked out measures 4 feet wide and 50 feet long and is just a simple rectangle. It should get sun most of the day and seems to be relatively dry, though it lies not far from patches of ground that are quite spongy.

I've moved a lot of dirt onto the bed in the last couple days. When the tree spade man was here, we had him pile most of the plugs on the south edge of our lot. I didn't have anything in particular in mind at the time, but knew we'd want the fill for one project or another. The idea of sorting the black dirt out of the plugs to make a long border seemed to come from nowhere one day and picked up momentum when I visited the Bluestone Perennials web site and saw they were nearing the end of their spring clearance sale. That was just the motivation I needed to get serious about planning the border.

I wanted something to anchor the bed at each end and had a $25 credit from White Flower Farm burning a hole in my pocket, so we ordered 2 Little King Fox Valley river birches, a dwarf form of the tree that should only get around 10 feet high and form a clump 12 feet wide.

With all the rain over the past several weeks, it's been hard to get out in the yard, but the last two days have been perfect gardening weather, except for the small storm that passed through last night and dumped some more rain down.

I haven't spent a ton of time on the border but I'm pleased with the way it's turning out and figure on another hour or two until it will be ready for planting. I'm aiming for Wednesday evening to start but may get a head start tomorrow night with a couple things. Like the Pink Peace rose Carol gave me for my birthday. That was before I knew where I was going to plant anything besides the trees, so I stuck the rose in a deep pot and it's been happy there. It's wearing a single bud as a topknot. I've been a little leery of hybrid tea roses in the past but by all accounts this variety is healthy and hardy and may grow 6' tall. Wouldn't that be stunning?