Gardens are not made by singing “Oh how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.
~Rudyard Kipling

What does make a garden is thinking and planning, digging and preparing good soil, marking out paths and providing for water.

You build any needed hardscape in the form of trellises or boxes, retaining walls, patios and paths.

You get some plants and arrange them so that they are in the right relation to the other plants, and to the sunlight. You place them in the ground in such a way that their roots can spread out and take advantage of that good soil.

The paths here are made of three layers: a layer of weed cloth on the leveled soil, an inch or two of base rock on top of that, to be followed by a couple of inches of path mulch. Don’t ask me what that is, because I haven’t seen it yet; I am going on the recommendation of Landscape Lady who has it in her yard. The final layer of path will be the last step in the whole landscaping project.

I haven’t been doing much physical work, but I spend a lot of time sweeping and wiping the floors inside the house after I track in the clay mud. The other day after the paths got their layer of base rock, I realized that I was tracking the mud from the patio that hadn’t been swept in weeks, so I swept it. That was my contribution to progress. After the rock is smoothed out with a rake, it has to be tamped down by someone with muscle equal to all the pounding foot-by-foot until he has flattened all the paths very hard. The playhouse served as a coat rack, and the snowball bush gleamed on the afternoon.Today was the big day when the first of the plants went in, most of the dononea or hop-bushes along the fences. I could have helped with this if I hadn’t been running to the store or in the kitchen for those hours, making a very involved meal for a new mom. I did dash outside a few times to take pictures. Today it was the womenfolk, Landscape Lady herself and her assistant. They lovingly and carefully put the bushes in their new home, and then I sang,
“Oh, how beautiful!”