Once the walkway and step were finished, I wanted to get the long flower bed on the visible side done so I could dig up, separate, and plant my yellow daylilies I had gotten from my parents 3 years ago.
First, I used my handy tiller to flatten the area. The left side seemed to have a little mound of really black dirt.
The day after doing this, Alex mentioned something about how I’d leveled the pile of chimney soot. Our house used to have a chimney MANY years ago before we ever owned it, and I guess this is where they piled the soot from it. Remember the bricks I got rid of when clearing the area? From the chimney. I am pretty sure having that much soot in the flower bed would not be good, so I spent some time digging it back out. I know there’s some in there, but it’s nowhere near as much now.
Once I had it somewhat level, it was time to figure out the brick layout. I tried so hard to come up with a combination that would be exactly the length of the 4×4 frame piece without having to cut any bricks. I mean, I tried hard, using the measurements of various bricks on a big box store’s website.
I finally accepted defeat, and so for the first time ever, I used my miter saw to cut one of the bricks, after acquiring the correct blade. These are 7 1/2″ x 11 1/2″ by 3 1/2″ thick, so my blade would not cut all the way through on one side. I had to turn the block 4 different ways to finish it.
It was slow cutting also. I hated it. I would prefer to never have to do this again, but in the end, it fit perfectly into it’s little cubby hole.
I’m glad I decided to go ahead and just cut one. It looks much better this way.
Have I mentioned that I absolutely hate leveling things? Leveling the bricks wasn’t nearly as time-involved as the bricks for the walkway, but I wish there was a way to make that part easier and faster.
The daylilies were starting to come up, so I was trying to finish the flower bed as soon as I could. However, I got a little sidetracked with another area for a while, and I was about to go out of town for a week and didn’t want to transplant them right before leaving. That meant I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on them.
While I was out of town, fire ants thought they would take up residence in the flower bed. 😡 They are everywhere in the yard right now. I am still trying to get rid of them in this flower bed. They moved to the corner of the bed, and I will write more on this later.
I started the flower bed on February 10th and didn’t get my daylilies transplanted until April 2nd (about a week after getting back from vacation).
They were looking pretty sad for a few weeks before I finally cut them down so they would be about 6″ tall. I found this advice online somewhere, and they have since flourished and will actually bloom this year after separating them!
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