Week 33 - Yard Work

This week was spent outdoors because of a window of dry days. Earlier, I had sent pictures to the local extension agent of some shrubs/trees in my yard that I needed to either move or remove and could not identify. One of the unfortunate side effects of gathering the seeds of anything I like the look of in the fall and simply scattering them around the yard.

One large plant was something called a Devil's Walking Stick, a weed species that was very pretty when it was small but is unmanageable now. That will come out. The other, turned out to be an Amur Maple tree. This one I dug out and heeled in temporarily in the back. I will eventually plant it in my parking strip as a street tree, since it is on the list the City gave me as acceptable and it meets the size requirement.

At the beginning of the week I took out one of two vine maple trees that I had planted the first or second year I was here. At the time I thought that both they and the dogwood would stay much smaller than any of them are turning out to be. I had hoped to save the three trunked maple and move it over to the former driveway area. But after a full day of digging around it I realized that too many of the major roots ween too deep for this to be practical. Once I realized that I couldn't save it, the process became much easier.

Instead I went to a neighbor who I talked to much earlier in the year. He had several small japanese maple tree starts around his own large tree and was willing to let me take some. In the end I took three small ones (less than two feet) and will put them in as a group in the spring.

Once the vine maple was out, I had a large hole, into which I decided to move a large rhododendron that was unhappily crammed back into the corner of the yard by my compost pile. It opened up that whole area of the yard very nicely.

Then I moved over to the big hole by the carport. I began by moving all the remaining chunks of concrete over to the area behind the garage.

I raised the area under the rain barrel. A process which involved emptying the rain barrel and moving it out of the way so that I could use some of the larger pieces to create a stable base for it.

Then I started filling in the rest of the space, about 8" wider than the base I'd created before. I used the width of the portion under the barrel to decide. In the end, I raised most of the area about 6" inches, and I'll probably raise it another 6" before all the concrete has been taken up.

Finally, I began shovelling and sifting dirt from the big pile in the back yard. Depressingly, even after sitting here all summer, the pile seems to have no crawlies in it, indicating that there is little or no organic content. It's going to take some work to make this dirt into soil.

My process for sifting the dirt is similar, but less intense than the gravel sifting system I've developed (see gravel). It involves putting the two screens together over one of my recycling tubs and rubbing the dirt through them. Anything that wouldn't go through got separated into rocks or trash. As I sifted, I began filling in the hole, one tubful at a time.

By the time the rain started up again, I had made a sizeable dent in the dirt pile and filled in a little more that a third of the hole. Of course, I will still need to add compost and other amendments before it is useful garden soil. And I expect it will compact some once the rain starts. The last thing was to throw some of my buckwheat onto the filled area.

Week 34 - Doors