Our Garden (The Mudpit)

Many of you have been hearing us talk about working on our yard and garden. We thought it was time to update you with some photos.

When we first arrived in Tbilisi

in August 2007, the summer season was in full swing, the roses were still blooming (and would continue to do so through Christmas) and the pomegranate tree was just beginning to show fruit. The branches on the fig tree were heavy with fruit and we had a lone apple holding on for life. Seth deduced that the monstrous tree in the corner of the back yard was, in fact, a bay tree and the hazelnuts were almost ready for harvest.

It sounds like a lot doesn't it? But there were still more trees and plants we couldn't identify as their season had already come and gone. We have just experienced our first spring in Tbilisi and it was full of surprises. For weeks we would wake up and look out the window in the kitchen to see something else had opened up over night. We realized that, what was a row of nasty, drooping, green stalks in the backyard during the fall and winter, became yellow irises in the spring. Three cherry trees are now as heavy with fruit as the fig was last fall. We have a bed of tiger lilies and the hyacinths have come and gone.

Our major project, however, is the yard itself. We inherited a yard that had not been cared for in years. In Georgia the belief is that "green is good" meaning, if it's green, they don't touch it. Our "yard" was a blanket of weeds. What makes the situation even more challenging is that the previous owner had laid a network of stone paths without any boundaries. As a result the stones migrated throughout the yard over the years, leaving us with a rocky weedy mess.

Seth has spent hours with a shovel tilling the soil by hand to prepare it for grass seed. At first we would sit in the piles of dirt, picking out rocks and stones (and glass, cigarette butts, chip bags and other oddities) by hand. It took an hour to fill 1 bucket and we were looking at a minimum of 40 buckets worth of debris.

One day I mused that "This would be so much easier if we could get one of those box sieves that gold prospectors used when panning the river." Seth suggested I draw up the schematics and he would see if he could get the carpenters at the embassy to build it. They were able to build it (for 40 Lari/$30) and we have been making quick work of the yard ever since. We are almost ready to put down some grass seed. The added bonus of filling in all the potholes in our alley with the stones from our garden is also nice.

As you can see from the photos, the roses are in full bloom and it's time to weed whack the irises as they have finished their cycle. The containers of cherries came from our own trees, which we take no credit for because they just appear and we eat them. Neither of us has ever had our own yard to care for and develop before and we are having a great time with this!