Gardens - My Herb Garden

I finally finished my herb garden this morning. And yes it is all weed barrier and bark mulch so I don't have to try and find the energy to weed.
The box up next to the house doesn't get rain at all because of the overhang so has to be hand watered. The big diamond shape gets rain when we get rain but since we don't get rain from June through mid September (the growing season) that doesn't really count. And the sprinkler system doesn't catch this part of the garden anymore, I get to hand water. In theory, IF I remember to water, this will be perfect for the herbs because they like it hot and dry. Unfortunately for me, I have thousands of weeds that loved it hot and dry also.
I spent a lot of time deciding which herbs I wanted (all of them) and which ones I was actually going to plant (only so much room). The garden along the house will be for annual herbs and the perennials will be in the diamond shaped garden.
The cats had used the garden along the wall for cat stuff and three feet from either end wouldn't grow anything. And the lemon balm had taken over the rest of the space. Both gardens are 13 feet long. And the wall garden is two feet wide with the diamond 6 feet at its widest. So I dug the wall garden out down to 18". Totally removed all of the plants that were surviving in the center few feet and all of the dirt. Fred was a sweetheart and hauled the dirt away for me and used it to fill in the holes in the driveway.
Then I mixed dirt from the diamond 50/50 with peat and refilled the garden. Then I finished digging out the diamond down to 18" and mixed half of that dirt 50/50 with peat and refilled the diamond. And Fred hauled the excess dirt away for me.
And it was during the days (and days) that I was doing that (along with mom's gardens) that Teresa was calling me and getting worried. I still don't have any energy in the afternoon, so I would work as hard as I could in the morning, for as long as I could and then just crash. I would get up long enough to spent 10 minutes making supper and then crash some more. Sorry to worry you Ritza.
Since I wanted to be able to both have mulch and to replant the annuals, I made buckets without bottoms and stuck them through the weed barrier and mulched right up to them. Then I planted the seeds for the annuals. I was kinda zonked when I planted or I wouldn't have put in quite so much basil and would have planted some of the annuals I had to leave out. Each pot is a foot across so I have thirteen pots. I planted three types of basil in 5 pots (I said I wouldn't have planted quite so much but I was zonked.) I planted salad mix in 3 pots so it is real close to the kitchen. I also planted chervil, caraway, cilantro, parsley and summer savory. The 2 genovese basil and the dwarf purple basil are big enough to think about grabbing a leaf from, the lettuce are teeny tiny little green smudges and everything else is nothing yet. Shows how long it took me to finish tho.
In the big diamond I was only putting perennials so I probably didn't have to put them in pots but I did anyway because some / much of the stuff isn't always hardy here and it will be easier to replant. I put in four rosemary, a bbq that mom gave me, 2 arp and a tuscan blue. I would love to replace one of the arp with a spice island if anyone wanted to send me one. I love spice island for cooking but it really isn't at all hardy enough for here. But I am willing to try again and again.
I put in 3 different thyme, sweet fennel, chives, oregano (both italian and hot & spicy), sweet marjoram, french tarragon, sage, feverfew and winter savory. And yes I know that for cooking summer savory and winter savory are similar enough to be interchangeable but they are different and I like them both.
Hopefully now that the herb garden is done, the hard hard work is done. The other vegetable gardens will need to be weeded but that isn't as physically challenging as digging. The woodland garden will be a slow work in progress so that will be easier on me also. Although some of the trees are arriving in a few hours and those two dozen or so plants will need to be planted.
Anyway, here's hoping that those who want to talk to me can and those that don't can't.
And yes, in the last photo it looks like the dog in the blue shirt is about to run right through my garden to get to me; that is exactly what he did. And not on the mulch but on the plants. (okay so half of them are seeds that were planted this morning but still, they don't like doggies running over them.