1st Year at the New House: Part 5

If you haven’t checked out the first four parts of this 1st Year at the New House series, makes sure to do so now!  This is the final part in this series.

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By June of this year, the little outside turds were pretty comfortable being inside.  I think Zari would never object to being a full-time indoor kitty, but Valiente still likes to go outside and roam – and hopefully hunt mice, moles, and chipmunks.  He’s pretty vocal when he wants to go back outside.

As you can see from the pictures above with the kitties, we finally got furniture 11 months after living in the house!  Sofa, 2 sitting chairs, full bedroom set (for our downstairs guest room), and a dining room table!

At the beginning of June, I also got the large flower bed finished, and with Mom’s help, we got it planted!

This past winter has been one of the wettest, rainiest winters I can recall, and that set me back drastically with the gardening projects I wanted to get done.  I had hoped to get dirt delivered and have the lower garden tier leveled so I could build some raised garden beds for this year, but it was just too wet to do until June.  The previous owner of this house literally moved down the street about 2-3 minutes, and he owns a bobcat.  So he get miscellaneous work when I need something done.  In June, the dirt was delivered and leveled!  I’m not super thrilled how it looks from the yard.  I had hoped the pad would come out to the tree line, but in order to do so, we would need another dump truck of dirt.  And that right side (picture below) would be pretty tall.  I figured I’d do some type of retaining wall system later down the road, and the taller it got, the more I would have to do.  So I let it be for now.  I will just have to figure out how to landscape it to look nice.

I had other help getting the 2nd row of landscape timbers up in between tiers.  Because of Covid (and maybe because it’s Gadsden also), I had a hard time finding enough landscape timbers.  They stayed out of stock at our Lowe’s (while the one in Trussville an hour away, where we used to shop continued to have hundreds in stock).  I got some at our local Marvin’s until they ran out, and then a lumber yard here in Gadsden until they ran out.

The left section of the 2nd tier was done by one set of timbers and the right side by another set.  And they are not the same thickness… I stacked 7 high, and the left side is obviously taller.  I wound up adding another row to the right side, but it can be removed later if the left shrinks over time.

Because of this, I wanted the entire bottom row to be made with timbers from the same lot, so I had help and went to the Trussville Lowe’s to get more than enough for the bottom, which you can see stacked in the picture above.

Also, in case anyone is wondering, I wish I had staggered the first row of timbers at the top.  Also for anyone wondering, we drilled holes through the stack of timbers, using multiple pieces of 1/2″ thick rebar that goes anywhere from 18-30″ into the ground.  I am hoping to post more about this project at a later date on my Southern Gardener blog.

We were still getting more rain than usual in June, so it also delayed getting the bottom section finished, but we did get the pieces cut and stacked at the beginning of July.  It wasn’t until mid-July that we were able to get the holes drilled and the rebar in to complete the wall of timbers.

The last thing I got done before we hit the 1-year mark at this house was getting some shrubs {finally} planted in the ground: my confederate rose, 2 gardenias, and what my Mom & I originally thought was a snowball bush.  The viburnum (far left in the 2nd picture below) has since been replaced with an actual Japanese snowball bush.

And oh my word, this area is nothing but rock and chert it seems like.  I had to cut more than half of the root ball off the confederate rose just to get it planted.  I used my electric tiller (got in on Amazon years ago and it normally works great!), but there was just too much compacted rock in this area.  Even the electric tiller had issues digging big enough holes for the confederate rose and 2 gardenias.  Which has me worrying just how well these plants will do here.  This is where they’re going, so if they don’t survive, they just don’t survive!  I don’t have a lot of areas to plant shrubs or bushes that will get huge.

That concludes our first year here at this house.  I am hoping the 2nd year here is more productive than the first!  I plan to post about individual projects along the way throughout the 2nd year – if I can find the time to blog in between projects, work, and everyday life stuff!