planted more stones

I just want a little brag here. When we moved in we had no soil. We had clay and sand. There was a couple who lived here before us for about a year. The house inspector we hired whispered to me that they were getting a divorce. How did he know? The master bedroom closet had only men's clothes in it. It was true. 

The man was ..... a professional landscaper. 

The backyard was .... a big clay pit. 

To be fair, the system they had to prevent waterfalls over the retaining wall when he lived here wasn't working, there was the threat that the wood retaining wall would be replaced, and there was no soil. Still, the yard was a big clay pit and my house inspector definitely teased him. 

You could not dig in the dirt, it was too hard. The year I tried sod, the supervisor told one of the employees to dig and I watched him slam the shovel into the dirt so it could bounce to demonstrate that the dirt could not be dug. 

Over the twenty years we lived here I've added leaves and kidnapped worms and, whenever I planted something, I added nice dirt, and I am proud to say that we have at least six inches of actual dark soil in the middle part. When planting stones today I got to enjoy the sight of healthy worms (and grabbed them and moved them before digging). 

I have a few stepping stones left to plant. The ones today all had healthy green vinca underneath, so I also have been cutting them up and then re-covering the entire thing with more cardboard. 

Tomorrow our handymen will cut down the little tree in our backyard. It is a guest in the same sense that Fred was a guest, but Fred could leave of his own volition. 

This tree will be replaced, eventually, in a different spot with <I'm so excited> a Butterfly Japanese Maple. No, it isn't the Shirazz, which has the best name ever, it isn't the Geisha Gone Wild, which has the second best Japanese Maple name ever, but it has a perfect size and perfect shape and lovely foliage, and since I expect to live here 23 years I'll get to see it fully grown. 

While I am sharing awesome things about plants - Mitchella Repens, also known as Partridge Berry. It is supposed to help with menstrual cramps and ease labor. It helps nipples sore from breastfeeding. Ok, so none of those impact me, but very cool anyway. It looks like a fantastic ground cover:  very, very low; tolerant of shade; and it produces little white flowers and later little red berries that taste a bit like menthol.