Garden & Patio Update

First, the garden...

Here it was on June 1st:


And here it was on June 12th:


I now have tomatoes growing (I've even picked and eaten 2), tiny green beans, tiny cucumbers, budding bell peppers, giant zucchini and squash plants and even the onions, okra and watermelon plants are coming along nicely. The herb section is doing great. I need to remove some zucchini and squash plants before they take over the herb garden....



And then we have the patio (or stone garden as I will call it if it turns out nicely).

This is a before shot (again). I have one paver placed in the bottom right corner:


This shot has the first row, or step, placed and leveled... and my back breaking progress of leveling out the rest of the space:


Here it is, all level and ready to be made into something pretty!


Second row set in! And the rest of the pavers in their places:


And I did set about two more rows of pavers before quitting that day. Then the next day I set a few more stones and shoveled most of the excess dirt to another area of the yard because there was a chance of rain and I didn't want it all back in the paver area....

Today the rain came... Oh did the rain come! It rained and rained and rained. I went out to see my lovely patio area turned into a waterfall! Of course I grabbed the camera and took some shots.... Here is the down pour:


It's like a waterpark!


It was really rushing into the main patio from the paver area and the driveway.... how sad....


Still raining, but not a down pour here... You can see that the water had made more work for me when the time comes to get back to work... BUT the pavers I set in are still there and level. I even went out later and walked on them and they feel very sturdy. I will just have to dig out the back row or so... But over all it wasn't as much destruction as I thought it would be when the water was pouring over the sides.


So hopefully we will have a few dry days in the near future for me to finsih this up and get some things planted between the stones... I have some Corsican Mint waiting for me at the Farmer's Market next Saturday so I hope to plant-ready by then. And I will cross my fingers that planting will stop some of the waterfall affect we saw today....