Alex's weekend garden transformation

While most sane New Yorkers got outta Dodge over the Memorial Day holiday, I saw the three-day break as a perfect opportunity to finally dig into my garden and turn that sort-of-sad lot into a flowery and peaceful oasis. Blowing a load of cash on soil, edging, pebbles, and plants I basically created what you see above (please excuse the bad Frankenstein photo). It doesn't look like much of a transformation, but trust me when I say the blisters I ripped into my hands and my inability to stand up straight attest to the incredible amount of work it took.

This is what the place looked like last year just before I moved in:

The previous tenant, according to the landlord, threw down some gravel over the dirt because "it reminded her of the Hamptons." I'm not getting it, but whatever. Those pebbles created a some issues when it came time to do my own landscaping, not the least of which were the ton or so of them that had embedded themselves in the dirt.

But I solved that problem, and good! The full process after the jump.

This year's garden started off a bit like this:

I planted some containers, but the bulbs weren't such a big success and the bad green plastic edging in the arc shape was quite amatuerish.

I decide to create wavy beds, plus put down some new pebbles, which required a quite strenuous trip to Home Depot. Lift the bags onto the cart, then into my car, then onto the dolly, then out to the garden. Enough for one day.

Sunday I dug the beds and edged them with steel…

…then replaced the rocky soil with some new Miracle-Gro garden soil.

I started to clear away the pebbles in anticipation of Monday's tasks, but that was about all I could do for the day.

Monday's agenda was to push aside the stones, dig down a couple of inches, tamp the soil hard so it wouldn't heave in the winter so much, and put down a base of landscaping fabric under a new bed of pebbles.

Let me tell you something about hand-tamping 150 square feet of dirt: Ouch. I couldn't even hold a piece of paper when I was done, I was shaking so much. And the blisters are raw down three layers! But somehow I managed to do it all, get the fabric down (to keep weeds from growing up through the rocks) and put down new gravel. It still wasn't enough—I'll have to add more this weekend.

I also found time (and energy) to plant lots of annuals and perennials, but I could use more of those too.

Next up: new chair cushions from Patio Culture. And somehow I have to load all this excavated, pebbley soil into my car and get it to my mom. She has a ditch to fill, she tells me. First I need to regain the use of my hands.

After it was all over, I said to my friend Francesco (he of the dry-gin wit), "This is one of those times I sure miss having the constant presence of a man around to do the heavy lifting." His reply: "Yes, but where are you going to find someone as strong as you?"