My Fall Folly

On some of these lovely sunny autumn afternoons, I’ve begun slowly getting my newbie garden ready for winter. All my herbs pretty much went to seed while I was away and the people who installed my eavestroughing stomped all over all my tomato plants so there really wasn’t much garden left. And with temperatures starting to dip below freezing at night my herb containers were starting to look a bit peaky.

Eavestrough drain: a necessary evil.

I’ve always wanted to take those stones left over from moving the hostas and build a folly in the backyard. A folly, if you didn’t know, is more or less a purely-for-decoration construction, usually made of rocks. Rich people used to build ruined castles and things on their estates just for fun and they cost a lot of money and were useless – hence, the builder’s folly. My “folly” has a bit of a function as a rock garden for my hardier herbs. These I pulled out of my containers and I hope they’ll last through the winter.

The now-blank space where all my herb containers lived this summer.

I built a raised bed here because the back part of the yard gets really soggy when it rains. This means the weeds here are very happy and because of the dip in the landscape, it’s really hard to mow them down. I hope that a raised bed will prevent all of that and save me some time with the weedwhacker in future.

As you can see, it’s been some time since we have mowed our lawn …

Mint and lemon balm are pretty much weeds, anyway, so I know they’ll stick around.

I already have rogue mint growing amongst my decorative stones (though I *may* have planted it there).

Did you know that parsley is a biennial? It flowers every TWO years. I’m keeping it around just for that.

So there was no real science behind this folly, and I’m pretty sure it might fall down at some point, but that’s kind of what I’m going for. It’s just rocks piled on top of each other with dirt in the middle.

And then plants.

But it doesn’t interfere with the gate needed for the right-of-way in the backyard, so that’s nice.

And it contributes to the general plan I have for this garden in year two, now that I’ve figured out all the kinks. Stay tuned!