Frances and Al arrived around 1pm yesterday. They unloaded their stuff while waiting on me to get home from the historical museum around 1:50. Al brought up his little tiller and started tilling up the grass along the front side of the sidewalk. He created about a two foot wide strip. I used the wheel barrow to haul the grass and dirt to cover the bare spot in the back from the septic excavation. I will sew seed as soon as rain is in the forecast.
Once he had the bed dug out we filled it with the mulch. By the time we finished that bed and freshened the bed along the right side of the porch it was time to clean up and go to dinner at Mt. Surf. This morning we started again about 9. Al moved and dumped mulch in the wheel barrow while I spread. We did the bed on the left side of the porch and started on the beds along the driveway. Other than a short break we finished one side and most the other when we took another break to head into town to go to the garden shops. I picked up bedding flowers for the new bed and potted plant for a new planter they gave me last week. I also moved a couple of the smaller plants from the butterfly garden to the new bed that were being taken over by the black-eyed Susan and Queen Anne’s Lace. I had the mulch pile dumped on the left side of the driveway. While Al moved mulch to the far ends of the bed on that side I shoveled it directly from the pile to the bed. We had three wheel barrow loads left that I had dump around the big stump in the back corner of the yard.
We finished up around 2:45 after moving a total of 1 ton of mulch in two days. While I took a shower Frances did the prep for our early dinner of grilled chicken sandwiches, sweet potato fries, and Cole slaw. Bob had grilled beef ribs and fries. They headed on back home shortly after we ate.