Finally done moving............

Category: New Gardener | Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:45 pm

And half my plants are dying, gone or MIA. I hate it! I worked so hard on them. And to make matters worse, the ground here is nothing but clay. When it rains theres standing water everywhere. So very few of my plants can go in the ground!!!!!!!!!!

I just found out yesterday that this use to be a crawfish pond!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They filled it in! And not very well! Its fine until it rains. So we didnt know until the day we moved in. It was raining pretty hard as we pulled in to the yard. We stepped out of the trucks into ankle deep water! Im so mad I could spit!

Im going to have to build raised flower beds. I just hope my plants, esp my roses can with stand being in containers for the season.

We have a small pond in the front yard. Well, I had the bright idea to dig about a foot down into the ground up against our house (its a good 30 feet away from the pond.) so I could replace the clay with soil so that maybe it will drain better. It was hot out so I dug the hole (a foot deep and about 5 foot across) and went back inside to cool off for about an hour. I come out and the dang hole is filled with water!!!!! The pond was draining into the hole! So now I have a hold full of water up against my house. We are having fill dirt brought in to fill it.

I have a bunch of seeds that have spouted and not where to plant them now. Im so upset I actually started crying when I saw the hole filled with water. It just hit home the amount of work that is going to have to go into having a garden here.

All this standing water and its not even rainy season yet.

I did plant my elephant ears and violas in the ground. They arent minding the water so much. But there are these huge crawfish holes appearing IN! the plants! They dig down and push the clay up so it looks like little chimmenys (?) coming up out of the ground. Well, they really like it when I dig in the yard because the next day there will be crawfish "houses" in that spot. I have never seen one before (except boiled) and I thought maybe if I can catch them, I can transplant them into the huge fields around us. I did catch one but he got me with his huge pinchers............. I wont be trying that again.

I have even gone as far as to think about offering in the paper for anyone who wants them and can catch them, they can have them for free. But I was told by the post man that even if I did that, there are twice as many waiting to take there place AND that the ppl would have to dig down to get them! So instead of one pond, Id have 30 small ones.....Figures. But one good side of that.... I wouldnt have to drain the pond to fill it in! HA!

Three weeks in and I am hating life. Hopefully it will get better.

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