The Parking Strip

I took advantage of the intermittently clear spring weather. Even though the ground is really too wet for digging, I went to work again on the next segment of my parking strip. I want to plant the tree I have for this space as soon as possible.

This part of the parking strip got the most damage during construction because this is where they dug the sewer and the water line. And this where many of the sub-contractors seem to have either swept or dumped their refuse. Partly, I deduced this from finding layers if sawdust, mud, cement puddles, nails and metal strapping, and crushed rock. Most of it was relatively easy to scrape off, but many of the pavers turned out to have either been broken or removed. Not by me.

The first area to be cleared was around the water meter.

Once that was done it revealed that the cement meter box, which has never been level, was even more off than it had been before the project began. In fact, on the sidewalk side, it was more than 3" below the sidewalk in it's lowest corner. So I decided to level it, especially since I discovered that it was not attached to anything.

The first step was to remove the cover and then dig a space around it. When it was loose, I pried the low side up and shovelled a mixture of gravel and sand under it. With all the mud it may settle some, but it should be easier to adjust now.

Once the meter box was level, the cover went back on and I relaid the pavers and stones around it.

And then the next section, which is where the tree goes. It's an OK time of year to replant the dormant tree, which I really wanted to get securely in the ground, but it's a bad time of year to be digging in clay or laying the pavers because I was basically working in mud. I'm sure that this section won't stay level and in the spring I'll need to pull the pavers up one last time to put a layer of sand under them. Now that the tree is in, I will undoubtedly leave the last 4' section until the weather truly dries out. Or longer. Oregon grape is not all that much fun to work in, much like holly, and the fallen leaves retain their spines for a long time.

Less than two weeks after the tree was planted and had been showing really good growth, I came out to discover that someone had run over it with a car, along with about 6' of my carefully relaid paving. The paving was annoying, but the tree was missing almost two thirds of it's bark girdle a few inches up from the ground. The torn bark was not even completely dry when I found it. So I took as many of the torn off pieces of bark as were useful, and a big handfull of aloe vera gel, and taped the whole thing back together. I also trimmed the top back. We will see whether it will survive or not.

I also created somewhat of a guard for the tree out of some stones I already had. They aren't tall enough to affect a truck, which is what I suspect did the original damage, but a car bumper should hit the stones first.