The Way It Was…

2018
The Cat Garden Coming soon to this neighborhood.

I started this project in the summer of 2018. We had a good size area of ground just outside the kitchen windows on the north side of the house which did not grow very much except for English Ivy! That stuff took over! Maybe it was because I planted old forlorn wooden window frames along the fence outside, putting in the glass panes, mirrors instead, to help reflect in some of the sun’s rays as it moved across the sky. It must have helped because a few short pink rose bushes proved happy enough to send out pink petals every year since! Removing ivy was no easy job. I sat on a short stool pulling roots and Rick, my husband used hedge shears to help cut it up so that I wasn’t endlessly pulling.

…For the love of warm fur & soft purrs…

As I surveyed all that needed to be done, the Ivy has to come out, the tree is dying, the fence has to be built up higher so the area becomes private, the window sill on the second-floor window would need to be replaced with new wood, cracks between the brick needed to be filled back in, and the wood on the house needed to be painted. And then there is the building of the gardens new look to be done.

This is the Back End of the Garden walking towards the front before fencing is put up.

That Ivy is finally all pulled out but I will let some of the fences survive as long as I can keep it in check!

This is a hose laid out to give me an idea of where my water is going to run. I drove the truck to get some dirt from friends twice, my husband felt I overloaded it! The sidewalk sunk a bit! Rick was good enough to help me get the dirt taken in. I tried to make a slide of sorts to get the dirt off the truck and inside the gate into a wheelbarrow. The small gate into the front end wasn’t wide enough to wheel a wheelbarrow through. So all the dirt came in by sweat, the make-shift slide, and wheelbarrow trips.

A friend offered to do this nasty hole digging for me at the time and he worked extremely hard. There were tree roots that needed to be cut as he dug. The deeper he went he got into nasty red cling to your shoes when it rains, clay. I will never be able to thank Raymond for doing all that nasty work. What I gave him wasn’t really enough! But he constantly reminded me he was doing this for a friend. Again, thank you, Ray! I tried to be his handy slave and fetch him every tool he asked for! These baskets are the water reservoir after I line the hole with the rubber liner stuff these 2 x 4 ft baskets will hold the space open to house the water.

I decided that I really needed two gates, one at the back and the front. This is the front gate. A little like the “narrow road” but I am glad I did it despite the narrowness of it. I am so glad that I did go with putting it in. I also went on facebooks Market Place to search and hunt for FREE rocks. We brought home several truck runs of rocks from a yard rather nearby. Then Rick got sick so one run I did by myself and thankfully the owner guy helped me load them on the truck. Rick always felt I overloaded his truck. I was not going to leave even one rock behind!

This load I drove over an hour to go get. But I like this kind of rock for a certain look I want.

The big garden wall rocks of the truck were very big! Rick helped me unload the truck and one of the heaviest rocks gave us both quite a surprise. It had rained the night before. We both wore gloves, but even gloves cannot do much about wet slippery hidden mud.

I will pick trash so that I can use the money where I must! One day we went to a lumber yard looking for material for a ‘sign’ I wanted to make. In the end, not having what I wanted, they said I could look in their trash bin! My husband thought I would never stop loading his truck up! They threw out these stair step pieces and I thought of a use for them promptly! I could have them screwed into the side of the house brick walk as a staircase, one side open, to the second-floor balcony from the yard. What I chose to make the steps of, were pieces of tongue and groove raw wood that was laying in the trash in about yardstick size pieces, three and four of them nailed together. I have no idea why but I grabbed up all that I could and eventually cut them into 9-inch pieces and put two into each stair-step groove which I drilled and screwed on tight from the other side of the wood. I also put metal brackets on the underside. I am not into needing to fix something like this from the wear and tear of weather or use!

I also shop Home Depot and they have a cart in the lumber section of wood that is very likely not going to get sold because it has split or an end broke off, some imperfection lowers its value and I am happy to take advantage of that, especially at 70% off. I found redwood or cedar which I was told will last better outside. So that is what I made the frame of the balcony with. I covered it which screen which I stapled on with a little reinforcement to make sure they were covered and stayed in place.

My husband doesn’t help in my projects unless I really need his strength! This would never have gone up if it were not for him. I was so scared standing on the ladder so high up and holding things until he drilled and screwed them tight. I prayed a lot!

This is Haley, One of my elder Bengals who I was so happy to see her enjoying the sun.

I did wrap the second set of stairs inside of chickenwire just for safety’s sake.
After all, a young cat might fall, or if two kitties are chasing one another, I didn’t
want anyone knocking the other off or an accidental fall from running too fast.

Let’s see if it works the way I want it to!