Gardening Adventures - A Spring Start

 In the old house, I had this flower painting that I did on some reclaimed lumber (leftover from a different project) which I had hung on the tall patio fence. However, in the new house, there wasn't a clear place to put it.

 

 

 

Still, I couldn't bring myself to part with it. So, I turned it into a bench!

 

 

In planning out what I wanted for a garden space, I spent lots and lots of time online doing image searches and seeing what would inspire me. One of the things I fell in love with was the idea of a spiral planter. Not only would a spiral look cool, they have some pretty cool symbolism as well. They can represent growth and the journey of life; the search toward inner peace; personal development and the idea that everything is interconnected. 

I love the look of old bricks and really wanted to make my spiral with some, so I searched around and found a bunch at a local reclaim shop. I was so excited! But, man.. 100 bricks is a heavy load! 

Still, I managed to get them home and I set them out to see get a better idea of the spacing for such a thing.

 In hopes of making the planter last longer, I got some heavy duty glue to use to try to give it more staying power. Turns out it takes a bunch of glue to assemble 100 bricks! During this whole process, I ended up going back to the hardware store a few times to get more, but eventually it was done. 

 While the glue was setting, I started thinking about how to protect my little planter from all the bunnies we have around here. I mean, they're cute and all, but they are merciless and voracious! Now, I do have a dog.. and maybe she helps chase them off with her scent markers... but there were some specific plants that I really wanted to grow so I figured if I was proactive with keeping bunnies out, I would have a better chance of actually getting the plants that I wanted. So, back to the internet I went to research about keeping out bunnies.

The internet said to first put in a layer of gravel to make tunneling up annoying:

 Then, add a layer of tight metal mesh they can't chew through. This is called hardware cloth, which I think is silly, but hey, I'm not the namer of things. So, down went the mesh, and we were ready for dirt!

 The dirt was another thing that had me trekking back and forth to the hardware store. I got to be on pretty friendly terms with them during this project. But, eventually the spiral was full. 

Finally, to keep out those bunnies, I put a fence up around the whole spiral. This, of course, took some doing because I mistakenly bought the wrong sized hooks initially and had to improvise with some heavy wire to secure the fencing around the planter.

  

 This building of the spiral took some weeks. While all that researching and collecting of materials and building was going on, I also had some seeds going in a little grow-house, in preparation for when the weather would eventually get warm. These are the special plants I'm specifically hoping to keep the bunnies away from. I wanted zinnias because they're beautiful. As well as calendula, yarrow and broad-leaf plantain. My grand plan is that I am hoping to make some ointment my sister gave me a recipe for and these last three have medicinal qualities that are useful. 

So, the little guy helped me build the grow-house and we planted seeds, crossed our fingers and watched to see what would happen.

   

Happily, most of the seeds sprouted and grew. I actually remembered to keep them watered and, finally, the weather was warm enough and the spiral was ready, so we put our seedlings in dirt!

 

 It's been about a week and, so far, I've remembered to keep them watered and, so far, they seem to be thriving!