Prairie Garden: Disaster in Year 4?

The promise

Three years ago I surprised myself with an eclectic butterfly and bird friendly display of flowers in what I called my "prairie garden". I thought that I might have something of a green thumb after all, but it's fairly evident that my knowledge and skills are, at best, limited. Still, the results were fine in 2015 and 2016,  and I felt reasonably confident inaugurating another season.

We got off to a rough start with planting after the weather turned cold a few weeks ago, and record May rain wasn't helpful. Bob was happy to postpone most planting until after Memorial Day, but I, never one to procrastinate, was eager to get the soil tilled and ready before our holiday weekend out-of-town junket.

After two seasons of using a spade to loosen the rocky ground, last year Bob rented a gas tiller and prepared the soil for me. This is not something I can do on my own, as the machine is very heavy and somewhat temperamental. I can pull the cord to start it, but it has to be primed and perfect for it to work. Definitely beyond me.

Anyway, yesterday was the day. The machine was even heavier than I remembered and, once started, it tended to run away with the operator. Bob gave himself a break and off I went through the garden. The tiller pulled me forward: I thought I would fall head first into the rocky, churned up earth until I was relieved of my duties and relegated to the sidelines.

The job got done. Time to plant. A few weeks ago, I was seduced by one of those flyers in the weekend newspaper, showing a happy gardener unrolling a carpet of beautiful pollinator friendly summer flowers. I was hooked: I imagined a Jack-in-the-Beanstalk magic transformation into a farmers' market harvest of beauty. Within a few days, my online order arrived:  five large plastic envelopes of seeds embedded in 8 sq. ft. sheets of heavy biodegradable, compostable paper.

My border looks like toilet paper

As promised, it was easy to cut the sheets into the "desired size and shape". I made strips of paper for a sunflower seed border along the east side of the garage. By then, it was mid-afternoon and a wind had come up, so I needed to anchor down the paper, first with some of the rocks still in the soil and then with the "1/8 " of topsoil recommended by the directions. My carpet of flowers looked like old toilet paper.

Then I tackled the bird and butterfly friendly planting. I wanted to leave myself a little path for weeding, so I divided the plot into triangles, and placed half a sheet in each triangle. By the time I finished, the rectangles looked like a random landing of old white towels, covered with black dirt -- not the topsoil layer, since it had settled in clumps at various spots on the paper. Nevertheless, I watered the mess, as directed.

The reality ... for now

"What the hell kind of pattern is that?", asked Bob. Dismayed and discouraged, I scrambled to straighten the rectangles. They were soaking wet and ripped a little under the weight of the topsoil layer. By the time I finished, pressing shredded paper into the earth so it wouldn't blow away, I was sweating. Since coverage is obviously insufficient, I will be supplementing my carpeted mess with the same seed I've used in the past.

My workfree artistic venture has evolved into a secondary salvage project. There will be no miraculous carpet of flowers anytime soon.