I'm taking delivery of my second (for the season) pallet of bags of mulch.
This will help me to fill in the unused areas between all the perennial plantings.
I sometimes have to scratch my head and I wonder how these perennials are doing so well. The fill back junk in which most of the plants are living is just the worst, rocky, clay bound garbage that the cheapest construction company could find, yet these plants have survived and are doing well twenty years later, living in junk dirt.
Nope, I won't even use the term "soil" to describe my garden beds. I have work to do, attracting beneficials to live here.
Clay here, my dad was laid off because of his heart surgery 40 years back when my mom started the gardens, they didn't get topsoil trucked in because of that. Perennials never cared...I couldn't get mulch for a few years either, no truck, or no spare cash. Just crowded a few more in from the hill to fill in some of the bare...they still do not care, and have multiplied to fill in the spots I couldn't fill myself.
I've let the steep hillside above grow up the last few years, neither of us can really manage it too well anymore. Now I've got more deer, turkeys, foxes, squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, ravens, birds and bees a plenty, and rabbits playing in the yard than I've ever seen before (I have yet to see the bear that a few people have spotted close by.)...not as many weeds as I thought, a few of the red bud trees self seeded, and I have a ton of raspberry and blackberry vines that shot up.
It's no longer neat and tidy like mom always tried to keep it...but we are the only ones who really have a view of it anyways..and we've sat and watched a few very fat squirrels and a ton of goldfinch devour the seed pods on the red bud the last few weeks. Mother nature is amazing when you leave her alone some times.