A slippery slope

A cold snap had us in scarves and warm socks this morning, but Angie and I are set to go garden shopping anyway.  First an early lunch at Prego, then we hit the nurseries, our enthusiasm undimmed by the traitorous wind.  It's too sunny and too full of hopeful yard dreams not to.

Angie will have her list of annuals and perennials to consider for her pretty (and pretty spectacular) garden around her house at the farm; I, on the other hand, have a major landscaping project this year...revamping my long front slope.  Things I've organized across it in the past few years have mostly died or are looking sadly like even a fine spring won't raise their mettle.  So I'm pulling it all out and starting again.

To give you an idea of what's involved, here are some photos I've taken to bring with me to the nurseries, so I can beg for help.  (Technological wizard as I am, I can't get the photos to line up horizontally, but you are looking at Left, Center, Right...what passersby see from the street...if that helps.)

The thing you should know before you send me miraculous solutions that grew in your fertile, aerated garden (or worse, to Pinterest, where really impossible solutions glimmer before me, gloating) is that our soil is hard clay, rocks and tree roots embedded and entangled in it.  Hah. 

In each of the seasons I've lived here, I've put down a few levels of good dirt, leaves and triple-shredded mulch, trying to build up a decent growing layer; that's why the surface looks deceivingly reasonable.  But beneath it is the slippery slope clay brings, and the labyrinth of roots that call a halt to most attempts to dig in.

Hence, I'm going to be bringing in a lot more soil, mixing it with leaf-mulch and a soil aerator our friend and magic gardener Nancy recommended, and some helpers to dig out deep pockets where I can terrace here and there.  Making, I hope, the space more manageable.

Not that I'm discouraging recommendations!  Send any you have. As long as you realize the parameters of earthly possibility, and my own tendency to plant, water, pray and then leave things to their own fates.

Tomorrow, I'll let you know what I learn, find, and/or bring home.  Warm weather had better be ready when I am.