Getting herb garden into shape

We have a 20′ by 20′ herb garden which has been more or less an on going project for the past 2 years.
The basic layout is a 20′ square, with four 8′ square gardens, one in each corner and a walk way path, 4′ wide and in the shape of a cross or I guess its more a plus sign. Thus goes getting the herb garden into shape.

This setup gives us 4 separate gardens in one and we are developing each one in an individual theme. The theme we are working on now is the terra cotta container garden.

We started by removing any sod and raked the bed level. Then we put landscape fabric down and covered the whole deal in pine bark nuggets. The pine bark nuggets differ from pine bark mulch in that there is pine bark in the pine bark nuggets. I have never ever found so much as one piece of pine bark in pine bark mulch. For all I can see its ground wood with some color added. That’s not to say it’s not handy.
But we wanted the look of the bark and it worked fine. It took us five of the 2 cubic foot bags to cover the area in a layer about 3 inches thick.

The this particular garden in made up of potted herbs. We try to use a variety of pots and herbs. We clear a spot in the mulch the size of the pot so the pot is sitting on the landscape fabric then we just fill in around it with the bark. This part of the garden is working out fine. We will be posting photos of the completed garden when it is finished.

The snakes really like the sun shine and I caught 3 of them fooling around on top of a water barrel. The barrel is in the sun and makes a nice flat area for them. I’m not sure but they could have been making whoopee as this is the time of year they mate. There were 3 small ones and one larger. I believe the larger one is the female and the others are males.

When I startled them the female dropped to the floor but the other 2 hung around. I put them over by the full water barrel and they both took long drinks. One of them had his head completely submerged. He could have been looking to see if there was anything to eat in there. They really like leaches, I am told. We fed one a worm the other day as that is also a favorite food for small garter snakes.

And it was another day gathering rocks for the well. There is a waterline going in from the Alex Bay to Redwood and they are unearthing lots of stone which we glean from the piles in the right of way. We would not go onto private property to get them but we figure anything on the right of way is fair game. By the way the right of way is 66 feet wide or 33 feet from the center of the road.

This reminds me of a story about a book, a school house, a key and a Thousand dollars but that’s a story for another time.