Garden Construction, Pathways

The past two very warm December days I've spent digging for the new pathways that will come off of the pond area. Pictured above I dug a winding path about 100' from pond area to the garage. The path will be concrete when finished and the design will match everything else.

Close-up in the pathway from pond area to garage. I spent a lot of time contemplating what this will look like in a year . . . and in 5 years. . . before digging the final trench for concrete.

Today I worked at least 3 hours attempting to remove the hill between gazebo and house. The hill consists mainly of clay. It has to be tiered before concrete walks can be created.

I uncovered a number of unexpected obstacles in the hill like this 2" x 12" x 20' board and many, many concrete blocks.

The beginning of tiers. At 2:00 pm the thermometer was reading 86-degrees. That was enough heat and work for me for this weekend.

Below, the beginnings of a spring garden. I'm holding a single mango seed (Mangifera indica L.). In the past I've found these difficult to initiate. Once they sprout they are quite hardy. Mango is one of the sumacs (Anacardiaceae) and in the contiguous USA is found mainly in Florida.