A huge truck showed up today and, by invitation, drove over a gooseberry bush to deliver a full load of basalt chips to our driveway. Now the fun begins.
We were smart enough to get a nice little Black & Decker compressor for our wheelbarrow tires: we have 2 wheelbarrows, and if you’ve pushed a wheelbarrow, you know that nice hard tires make a much easier job, particularly over new-laid gravel.
We’re going to deepen the gravel layer throughout the gardens, front and back, improve the graveling of paths that lead to seats on the pondside, we’re preparing for Patty and Mike to deliver us a load of basalt rocks to complete edgings where we’ve had only small round rocks…or no-rock.
Shoveling gravel is hard work. Pushing a gravel-loaded wheelbarrow even with fully inflated tires is a pita, and almost beyond what I can push…I hate this age thing! Raking it is not quite as bad, but we are going to have a fine old time when we get down to converting the stub of that pile to a deepened layer of gravel for the driveway.
I am, I may say, tired. I have machete’d iris clumps into storable and transportable form; I have guided a dump truck; I have shoveled rock; I have trekked into the wilds of the basement to get the compressor and returned it after inflating two tires. (The compressor is neat, and pretty cheap, for what it does.)
We are going to get the garden rockwork done, plant a few trees (Jane’s still plugging away out there) and move a few others. I have to root up a forsythia, which has never thrived, to make way for a tool shed, and whack down the gooseberry—I did invite the driver to make a few more passes over it, but he declined. At least we didn’t knock any more branches off the hemlock (the truck drivers have had a vendetta against that poor tree.)
So…now we just slog along, moving a certain amount of the pile daily and placing it where it needs to go.
Jane’s out there removing the Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick, which has never done well, and moving a Hinoki dwarf pine to the spot, before also removing an Austrian pine we don’t know where to put, and replacing it with a chocolate mimosa. I should never turn Jane loose in Lowe’s nursery department. We have a green laceleaf Japanese Maple coming in to replace the one that died of verticillum wilt (we have liberally treated the ground with broccoli, which horticulturalists swear is the thing to do, and we are hoping for the best. Jane also ordered something else in the way of trees, but cannot remember what she ordered. I fear it is a crabapple, or, worse, a chocolate mimosa. But there is nothing about our landscape that is not moveable…
I would, however, love about a dozen minions, ebul or lawful gud is immaterial…
I empathize with you about the age thing. It seems no matter what I try to do to slow it down, it seems to have the opposite effect. Kind of like how the spider plants thrive in jumpspace…..
I’ve pushed enough wheelbarrows around to know that even with properly inflated tires, it’s hard to maneuver around plants, structures, etc., in your yard, and if you’re going uphill, that adds to the effort. If you’re going downhill, you practically have to have crampons on your feet to slow down.
I have two wheelbarrows. One is metal-panned, in which I once left fertilized rhododendron potting mix overwinter. 🙁 You know, of course, rhodies are acidophiles. 😉 The second is fiber(Oooh, thunder Westside!)glass-panned. But the ones I really like are the two-wheeled moulded fiberglass ones that will lower the fron flat to the ground. No tipping, and easier filling with basalt chips and the like.
If you find a source for minions of any kind please send a few our way.
Well inflated tires are indeed needed for wheelbarrows, carts, hand trucks…it’s hard enough as it is. Those little compressors are worth their weight in gold. I keep mine in my car because I hate having soft tires and most gas stations in this area charge for air.
Like you I am not a fan of this aging business, I’m finding aches in places I didn’t know existed. Thank heaven for Casteva.
I finally found a blue flag to plant by the pond. Next year I’m going to have to thin the yellow flags. It seems criminal but I just throw them out when I thin. Too many people have thrown them into ponds and rivers where they thrive to the point of invasion. The same has happened with purple loosestrife. I have been trying to refrain from buying until I am ready to plant. If it ever stops raining that is.
Sun tomorrow but never sun today.
CJ, I forgot to ask if you still needed the landscape cloth anchor pins from before? I know that A.M. Leonard has a pack of 500 for $34.99, but of course, the shipping costs would outweigh any benefits, unless a friendly elf happened to be swinging by the store and picked them up, and then sent them in a flat-rate priority mail box from the Post Office…….
Of course, 500 anchors might be overkill, now.
Oh, we’ve got a boxful, still. We GOT the 500 box! But we’re definitely good. Also if we toss rock on it, it doesn’t even need the pins.
Tonight is definitely an Aleve night…
After removing the fence post, we now have a hole in the yard suitable for roasting a peeg, or maybe a pit trap for one. There were 4x4s (wood beams, not trucks!) and a pickaxe involved. Advil/Aleve/Extra Strength Tylenol is definitely our friend!
How are you getting rid of your grubbings from when you clean out yard rubbish? In our area, we have a 3-can plan, where one bin is for compostables and green waste, one is for recyclables, and one is for true rubbish. The green waste bin only gets picked up every other week, and if I go on a gardening binge, I can easily fill it several times over with things too big to easily compost. This means the back yard looks like a slash heap for months.
Yes—the Green Monster. Ours gets picked up every week, thank goodness, until around November, starting again in April. On the other hand, right where we’re going to put in a second waterfall and stream, we’ve got a several year old compost pile. I need to put on a mask and get out there with the mattock and turn that sucker, but it’s at least shrinking, which indicates something’s going on at the bottom of it.
To get rid of grass, we learned a trick of making a pile, then really thick newspaper, then weedcloth, then mulch. It’s let us turn berms into flowerbeds.
it’s at least shrinking, which indicates something’s going on at the bottom of it.
Not only there, but all through it. All the little animalcules in it are (can I call it exhaling if they don’t have lungs?) respiring CO2 from everywhere in the pile, whether it’s from their own consumption of the raw materials, or of the breakdown products of fungal decomposition. In an unusual but very real sense the pile is oxidizing away
We’re having two days of cooler weather in the 80’s today and tomorrow as a cool front comes through (then Sunday it’s back up into the 90’s), but I’m planning to make hay while the sun isn’t shining so much. A yard work bender. I’ve got to do something to the climbing roses, thin them, trim them, retie them. Because I neglected to do this earlier, the long canes whipping about during the storm we had a week ago plus the wind that was whipping them pulled the fence apart at the corner. I’ve got beds to clean out, trash to haul off, and mulch to lay. At some point, I need to dig up all my little white rocks in the runoff pit that I’ve put under the eaves along my front walk, and clean them out. They’re so full of dirt and leaf stuff that things are beginning to sprout. This is about a foot wide, 10 foot long trough that parallels the edge of the walk. Water coming off the eaves would wash out anything I tried to plant there, but with rocks to break the force of the water and a row of bricks (arranged with the holes in the bricks facing the walk)between the rocks and the dirt, the water can seep into the soil of the flower bed just beyond it. This is my solution to the solution of what ever idiot it was who got tired of cleaning leaves out of gutters and pulled them down. I was using leaves from the surrounding trees to mulch with but the numbskulls the landlady hires to do the yard were blowing them out with the leaf blower because “nobody wants leaves in their flower beds.” *(&^%$# So because of those idiots, instead of using the free mulch that’s just lying around waiting to be used, I have to go out and BUY mulch. I can use leaves for mulch in the back yard, though as they don’t blow those beds because they’re in the back and “nobody sees them.” I’ll work until the battery runs down on my MP3 player or until dark, whichever comes first. I hope to get the front yard in shape tomorrow (It’s only about 12×15 feet), and start in on the back yard Saturday. I didn’t have to buy the little white rocks. I spent years sifting them out of the front yard — someone decided to put in a “hard scape” without putting down weed tarp first.
Fine pecan hulls are good if you don’t get torrential rain. They acidify the soil.
Without putting down weedcloth. Shooting is too kind. Whoever succeeds us in this house, however, will have to like our paths or hire a ‘dozer. Ten tons of basalt chips.
We have this wonderful pair of ‘loppers’, with big curved blades like rose shears, but handles about two feet long. These will, especially if you grip and rotate, cut through anything you don’t really obviously need a pruning saw for. Thick as your index finger, no sweat. I treasure these things.
My next favorite tool of destruction is the mattock—we have two, one with a pick end, one with a claw end, and both with meaningful mattock blades, which are sort of like a transverse axehead. A good swing, and you can literally cut into a bush’s root if you also have a grinding wheel to sharpen it. The 3″ blade cuts a great trench for irrigation line,it also peels turf, and if you’re clever, you can roll up the turf it peels up and roll it right back down again to seal the trench. I’m a real artist with a mattock.
Our gravel paths mean that weeding consists of the loop-hoe or hula-hoe, passed under the plant, and just rake it away into a pile. Jane doubted that hoe until she tried it on the gravel paths. It doesn’t get the really established dandelions, but given time, it discourages them mightily.
I’ve discovered my old chef knife, the one Jane hates because it’s ugly, the one I paid more for than I paid for my cookware total, is a really good machete, when applied to iris leaves. I can make a spread of leaves in a plant into a regulation 6″ V-shaped fan, suitable for transplant, in two whacks of that implement. The iris chore is a non chore, with that knife.
[I still use that knife in the kitchen, as well. I have good Henckel knives, but this one beats them all hollow. I don’t know its brand, but I got it in a hoity-toity shop, and it’s brown and looks rusted, but man! Cut? The thing would take a hand off if you were an idiot with it.]
My goodness, you’re ready for the zombie apocalypse with those kind of tools it sounds like! Home invaders also beware 😛
I have had to admit it, I’m really not much of a gardener. I like the THOUGHT of it. But I really never get out there and do any of it. By the time the growing season is here, it’s already too hot for me.
As for aging, it must be frustrating indeed to not be able to do things quite the same way – at the same time I know people decades younger than you who can do less (I’m thinking of my brother, a decade younger than ME and with worse joint problems).
So it’s great that you CAN do as much as you do! Count our blessings, right?
You gave me a big scare – we have gravel – for someone who has passed kidney stones the headline is quite ominous.
Have fun shoveling stones but don’t over do it – go slow – how many years have they been terraforming Cyteen.
When using a wheeled vehicle on gravel with another person, a pair of 2by4s are your friend. A folding pruning saw, the kind that looks like a pocket knife, is great for deeper roots. A bastard file will put a good edge on an axe while you sit and rest a while. I put a couple of tons of rock around the base of my house using a wheelbarrow, a shovel and a bucket. What’s weed cloth?
Weed cloth, a finely composed (you can’t really say woven) and usually black fabric that you put down on the ground to prevent weeds from growing. It’s supposed to cut out light and prevent seeds from getting into the dirt.
But if you really want it to work, a quarter inch coating of wet newspaper and THEN the weedcloth, and then 3″ of fine mulch, and you will not get weeds. I swear, if you want an area cleared for planting, I think that coating would kill bermuda grass. Certainly we just incorporated rolls of sod into our berms with this coating and we have had no grass reassert itself. If you want to plant into this mound, then brush back the mulch and with a carpet knife, cut an X in the weedcloth and newspaper sufficient for your plant, then fold the edges of the X back around the plant and restore the mulch. It retains water, prevents weeds, and protects the roots of delicate plants against overmuch sun.
Spider plants, airplane plants, monkey grass, a couple of kinds of shrubs — I think could survive dang near anything, jump space included.
Once had an althea that sprang up near the concrete slab for our patio, at the home where I grew up. That althea was cut down at least twice, maybe three times. Dad couldn’t get all the root, he said, as some was under the slab or deep. That althea came back strong each time, was a very pretty bush, flowered nicely, thrived. It was still there when we moved away. We all admired its tenacity and beauty. I guess even flowers can be tough.
Aloe vera, I’ve discovered, is also practically unkillable. (Yes, my browser’s spellchecker just swore at me about that word.) I will leave some here when I move, and take some with me. Good for the occasional kitchen burn.
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About that pit for peegs? Applauds. I picked up some prepared BBQ pork ribs the other day at the store. Most indifferent ribs I think I’ve ever had. So I’m still craving BBQ. May make a special trip. 🙂 Hmm, and some pineapple….
Those minions? Gosh, I need me some minions. But then, I need a date, too….
Ah well, it’s hard to get good minions these days. Wouldn’t you think it’d have a certain appeal?
Though I think my idea of minions and how to treat them is a little nicer than most overlords.
Hahahaha!! Oh, I can just see the want ad now! 😀
(Hey, that could be a great idea for an insert in a con schedule.) :snerk:
Let me know when you make it to Hawaii, and we’ll see about a real luau. How hot do you like your peeg? Sweet and smoky, slightly spicy, or OMGfireball??
Saw a three second clip of two men riding bicycles down a brick road in Bangladesh. In herringbone pattern!!!
Yes, of course! 🙂
What am I missing, that makes a herringbone patterned brick bikepath a matter of !!!? Or were they biking in a herringbone pattern? I can’t quite visualise that.
I thought herringbone patterns are considered a fairly stable paving pattern; maybe not the best suitable for heavy traffic, but not really unreasonable for bikepaths, pedestrian traffic, old city alleys and suchlike?
Whether the road is smooth or bumpy would depend on the bricks used, the skill of the people who put in the pavement, how stable and well-prepared the underlayers are, and the age of the road (since it was last relaid, at least); and not so much on the pattern, I’d think?
Old city streets (at least in Europe) can have different old styles of paving, and herringbone-patterned brick wouldn’t be the worst by a long shot. Rounded cobbles (medieval or more recent) are just about the worst surface for biking as far as pavement goes; only ornamental patterns of big rounded pebbles in concrete are worse, but at least those are never used in whole streets at a time.
Am I being dense, or is it a matter of different frames of reference?
With a “running bond” pattern and the necessity to use precession, by sometimes turning the front wheel slightly, to stay upright, or one isn’t right in the center of the bricks, the edges of the bricks will try to “grab” the front tire. With a “herringbone” pattern one will always be crossing the edges at nearly a 45-degree angle, which will have lesser effect. It’s one of those little things that is very intelligently done for very good reason, that is so “small” that it might well go unnoticed. Love to catch those.
(There was recently “An Original Duckumentary” on PBS in which they attempted to show the effect of the seasonal change to spring greening the hills across a lake. PHBBBTTT! Look at the pattern of the clouds reflected on the lake surface! They’re not changing!)
But back to bicycling… There’s been a British TV series on PBS called “Call the Midwife”. In one of the “behind the scenes” segments the leading actress mentioned how hard it was to ride a bicycle on cobblestoned streets. In the scenes we see they are NOT herringboned.
Sorry Paul, I misunderstood – I thought the !!! meant something like ‘how awful’ and the ‘Yes of course’ was ironic; instead I now understand you intended it straightforwardly as ‘how wonderful, to see the very good-for-biking herringbone pattern used for a street that bikes use’. An oldfashioned herringbone pattern like this is seen regularly in old city streets or squares. For heavier traffic the people at work who know about paving say that a shorter concrete brick is better, and the bricks are laid at right angles to the edges of the street, so the herringbone pattern runs diagonally. Almost all residential streets in Holland are paved this way, which negates the 45 degree angle advantage but is easier to lay mechanically with less waste; while the thoroughfares are paved in asphalt.
And you’re quite right, I’ve never seen cobbles laid in a herringbone pattern, those are usually either a straightforward bricks-in-a-wall kind of pattern (each row moving half a stone’s length: I think it’s called running bond, if I googled it correctly?) or they’re laid as interlocking fans.
I have a slight touch of ASD, formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome. It influences me to be very straight-forward, not that I can’t engage in irony.
If they have progeny after that, I’ll be surprised.
If the road gets too rough, they can always pedal standing up for a bit, like a kid on a bike that’s too big for her.
I will certainly give it to you on the rounded cobbles…those are killer if you’re wearing spike heels. I wish we *saw* more cobbled streets, but I fear most American cities are wall to wall concrete and asphalt. Some cities have paved over cobbles, and have peeled off the asphalt to restore the area.