I’ve been sharing with ya’ll the steps we’ve taken to create a picnic area in part of our property we haven’t used for anything before now. This will be the last in this series about “Creating a Picnic Area” until next year when the grass has covered the ground and all the flowers and plants start blooming – hopefully!
Back when we first purchased our property here in Amite it had to be cleared and if we wanted to get to the other side of the ditch, a culvert had to be laid to replace the ditch back there. These first pictures are from way back then. The circled area is what we are now calling our picnic area.
This one is looking back from the new picnic area to where our storage building and house were under construction.
What I liked about this photo was that it shows how small our pine trees were when we first moved here compared to how much they have grown to now!
The pictures I am sharing below aren’t going to WOW anyone. The grass runners and flower/plant clippings don’t look like anything great. A lot of it is covered with pine straw to give the little clippings a better chance of taking root and flowering.
We’ve done a lot of runner transplanting over the years and since moving here. I’ve learned the most successful transplant works when the runners are clipped into small segments and any dead blades removed before planting. It’s so hot outside that I do the cleaning part with a big blanket over my lap, a container with the original runners, a pan to put the new small clean segments in and one for the parts cut off. In the past, we’ve planted the whole runners and they’ve had a difficult time getting established and survived. All of these new clean smaller segments are rooting and surviving! Here’s my setup for cleaning and clipping the runners!
This is one of the bare areas that I planted the small runner pieces.
You can’t really see the little grass pieces in this second bare area but there are at least a hundred of them planted here.
A third small area where grass pieces were planted. We will be planting ryegrass back there to keep the soil in place since there is a slope in all directions. We have to wait until it is 65 degrees during the day and since it’s still in the 90s here right now, it may be a while!
A hundred or so clippings were planted from lilies, lantanas, hostas, red sister (Florica Cordyline Plant), ferns, Gerber daisies, creeping daisies, spider plants, and other types of green ground cover. I purchased the spider plants and some of the hostas but the rest were transplants. Here’s a bucket of a few transplants.
This is where those plants and more were planted. Mostly all you see of those plants is pine straw on top and all around them! Next year I’m hopeful we’ll have a big fern, nice lantana plant, and lilies blooming along with the hostas, spider-like plants and other Lillies!!
.Another area where clippings were planted. This area includes a hydrangea plant, marigold seeds, lilies, spider-like plants, hostas, and creeping daisies.
Next to the plants above is a beautiful shaded pathway into the woods between our home and the neighbors across the pond.
Creeping daisies that I am hopeful will grow up the metal trellis.
We’re hoping by next year the grass will have covered the dirt and the flowers will all be blooming. The two large oak trees back there provide shade there almost all day.
I’ve been working a lot on pulling the pine needles off of all the pine branches Roy cut down. I had some help this weekend from my precious granddaughter Madisyn who is 10. We spent some time sitting back there in the shade, pulling and pulling. Some of the pine needles have turned brown and I’ve been distributing them among the gardens and around the trees.
Needles off of the branches. This is about 1/20th of the needles!
While Madisyn and I were plucking pine needles Roy was busy hanging the new hammock. This one has a pillow and is sooooooo comfortable. Didn’t quite expect this but even though we purchased the hammock on a drastic price cut sale but the chains from the hammock to the pine tree cost twice as much as the hammock!
These five azalea plants came from Chip’s house. They almost died in this heat. Chip and Misty replaced them with some beautiful gardenia plants. We took all the plants they dug up.. We cut them back as much as possible and belive these five have a chance of living. They are planted along the fence line.
In between two of the azaleas, we placed our little swing that used to be white and now is a Saint’s swing! It holds some fun rocks!
We used the area around the two huge oak trees to plant lots of clippings. Around this one, we also placed rocks our grandchildren painted for us. One is a baseball field, one is a dance studio, one is a pumpkin patch and one is Madisyn’s school.
Too many different plants to name again are planted around the other oak tree. A lot of the clippings are covered with pine needles here. I painted three rocks that say Happy Fall Yall to welcome people to the picnic area. Of course, there is an LSU and Saints rock and a Southeastern rock is being painted right now! I found metal flower stakes at Dollar General on sale for 50 cents each so you’ll see them throughout the area.
Roy bought an LSU bucket to haul water from the pond to the plants before he put in the water line. It’s now our official trash container back there!
Fast forward to today and this is what the picnic area looks like from the top of the hill near our house.
Here are some pictures from various angles of the finished area. Like I said originally the plan is for it to be pretty next Spring and I can’t wait to share that with ya’ll.
And now the best part, in my opinion, is the startlingly beautiful view of the pond from the picnic area. If you don’t click on any other photo to enlarge, do it with this one. I remember when we first went over there to work and after working for a while I turned around and saw this view. I immediately thought, Thank You God for this amazing blessing!
I thought I’d end with this picture of Roy sleeping in the hammock nearest our house. We’ve spent a lot of time in that hammock while creating this picnic area. I have a video of him snoring while in the hammock but I like being married to him so I decided against sharing that one! 
Ya’ll have a Blessed Weekend!
BECAUSE HE LIVES 