160 pounds of poo.... and some mulch

sunday was a good and busy garden day. my husband and i spent 9 hours on the garden. but i have never tended a garden before, so it was my first time amending the soil. unfortunately, i only came across good gardening advice (thanks fellow bloggers) after i had already planted my gardens this year!

so anyway, i had gotten much advice from my sister-in-law to enrich the soil with peat and manure so i went out and bought 160 pounds of...well...poo. and the thought of it sitting in the trunk of my car.... on a hot summer day.... well, it was a funny car ride.

so, things we did:
1. poked a bunch of holes in the soil and around the plants of the herb garden and started to work the manure and peat in. all i can say is thank god for lots of earthworms

2. dug up ugly ground cover (see the ground cover here) around delicate japanese maple so we could mulch
3. topsoiled and mulched around the delicate recovering japanese maple
4. cleared groundcover around peonies and hydrangea, amended soil, then mulched
5. weeded all gardens, cut back mint (sigh...yet again), then mulched
6. planted candytuft around the entrance of our "secret garden" (see picture below, its the small bush to the right of the lamp), through the mulch
7. planted baby sweet pea vines to wind up our chain link fence
8. planted dahlia bulbs--however, the ever so elusive "eye" they keep talking about (to plant pointing up) i couldn't find so phooey...they just went in a hole

hmmm... my backyard is looking quite nice now....