Planting Wildflowers

Planting Wildflowers, also known as "Project - Break Yourself".

I started out with a good idea and I think it will be nothing short of grand when it's finished, but I'm going to hurt tomorrow and for a few days I may wonder if it was worth it.

It rained decently heavy yesterday. There was also a bit of hail that had me out checking the status of my maters after it all passed. Thankfully they came through just fine.

The hubby and I then went out for lunch and stopped at the hardware store where I found this box of wildflower seed. The packaging boasts "At least 4,500 seeds in 17 varieties, to cover a 100 sq. ft area in a fully organic mix". All for $1.99? Sounds good to me!


Because of where we placed Promise's sunflower house, she now has little strips of lawn on each side that hubby will be unable

to mow. Around here, tall grass is habitat for mosquitos and wood ticks so one way or another it has to go. I've been hoping for just such an excuse to turn this area into some type of flower bed, hummingbird, butterfly, I honestly didn't care what. It's untended, untamed, and unattractive. That's just too many "uns" for my yard and in my minds eye I've always seen this corner filled with flowers. To give you some spatial perspective, this entire corner is more or less the view from my kitchen window. You can just barely make out the railroad tie flower bed lost in the tall grass. The area I want to root up is outlined by the yard tool handles.

The plan was to attack this area today while the ground was still soft from the rain; pull the grass and weeds out, and set down a sprinkling of this wildflower seed mixture on each side of her house area.
I managed to clear away all the grass to the back corner of the RR bed. I still need to weed along the fence line and then expand toward the sunflower house.

On the bright side, the soil here is quite possibly the best I could hope for. I've been dumping leaf piles here for years to improve the soil quality and it has worked! Every turn of the claw tool unearthed a mess of worms. Every. Turn. I don't remember the last time I saw so many worms in one place. This grass nearly had me beat today. I don't know what it is, but the roots are brittle and if you dare to leave the tiniest nub in your bed, it will regrow a whole new grass plant. Picking out these roots took me far longer today than I anticipated. I was not able to finish today. I'll have to continue the project tomorrow. I find myself wishing I had some roof flashing or some type of border material to surround this bed to keep it all from creeping back in. I'll have to see what the hubby can come up with.