Time to touch on the garden. This is a project inspired by reading Gaia’s Garden, A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. I’m moving more towards a permaculture philosophy of gardening all the time.
Anyway, I’m creating a spiral bed. My center is probably not as high as recommended, but I’d already added height to this bed by the way I created it. When I first moved to my house I had a lot of compost mix delivered and this is where it was unloaded. After I had filled my raised beds, I raked the remaining soil across the grass and planted directly into the new layer. I think the neighbors thought I was crazy, but four years later, the soil is in great shape and the sod long decomposed.
I still haven’t planted the spiral completely, but at the moment it contains primroses, lady’s mantle and hardy geraniums. There are a lot of lamb’s ears along the outside as I have huge clumps of it. And of course a few "weeds" I haven’t gotten around to pulling.
I’ve been continuing to add rocks to the structure as I dig them up while planting things elsewhere in the garden. I have very rocky soil so I think I’ll be finding more rocks for awhile. The bricks are from a free pile some of my neighbors put out.
The picture mostly shows the main part of the spiral, but there is a second row of rocks and building debris that shadows the outside of the spiral. I did this to create a path between the outside of the spiral and the fence. I’m really pleased with how it’s turning out.