We are out of weedcloth pins and are now stealing them from areas weighted by mulch, but I have ordered some off the internet—the internet to order stupid weedcloth pins, for gosh sake!
It’s starting to look good out there. Jane is approaching the fracture point, and in a minor heat wave (the temperature ran up to 80) I was dizzier than a hoot owl every time I had to bend over and pin fabric or worse, position and trim it with an increasingly dull knife. I’d work a bit, sit a bit, dip up water from the fountain and pour it on my neck, then pin some more…Jane was in the same condition, but she was working non-stop, shoving a wheelbarrow up our ramp from street level and dumping and raking mulch. It’s that ten years I’ve got on her. On the other hand—we did find the property line marker, so we will know where to put the retaining wall. I had some perfectly wonderful pointed stakes to use to hold a marking line—and now they’ve disappeared. I’m going to be put to using bamboo sticks.
I think you need to turn the garden hose on Jane when she gets to the point that she’s overdone it. There’s wanting to get a job done, and then there’s overdoing it. (Jane, are you listening to your body?)
I hope the job goes smoothly, you get the mulch down, and that maybe she and you will take a break from yard work and relax a little, and get some writing work done.
Joe, I can’t do that: she’s got a garden rake in hand, and those things are murder!
Jane: “I’ve got a rake, and I’m not afraid to use it!” 😀
maybe if you hit her in the hands with a full stream, she’ll drop it.
Jane, you have GOT to take care of yourself. I know how old you are, because I’m 3-1/2 months older……
Give yourself a break, because if you overdo it, then Carolyn has to try to get you into the house, or just let you lie there until the EMTs arrive. That’s very undignified to be flopped out on the front yard, where every neighbor and passerby can see what’s happening. Not to mention, it’d probably drive Carolyn over the edge.
Good on ya! I desperately need to do the same for the ground around my raised beds. It’s a jungle that my cat loves but my itchy grass-sensitive legs do not.
The weather is so nice here (OK nice to me is under 90!), mid-80s, and now I choose to get lazy after working in 100+ heat this summer…
My advice is hire somebody who knows what they’re doing with a sod stripper to do the work: we hired our lawn crew ‘on the cheap’, who rented a machine, and did not know how to run it. By the time we paid them for making a mess we couldn’t afford to hire another crew. You need to cut deep enough to get the grass roots out. We’ve been forced to till the ground until we can rake the roots out, and that has been a brutal job. Of course finding that the root mat is 8″ deep and fetches up on a rock powder/gravel combo that has no life in it is another great find, and a reason why our lawn was a disaster from the get-go. When we plant anything in this mess we are going to have to double-excavate the hole and fill it with compost and good dirt, and keep topdressing it with coffee grounds.
CJ, perhaps if you got some of those plastic tent stakes, you could tie a line to them, pound them in and they’d be your edge line. For curves and such, the garden hose you’re so reluctant to point toward Jane while it’s in a charged condition makes a nice edge line.
Other than being more durable than bamboo or wood, they’re also colored yellow, so they’re easy to spot when walking around the yard. Wal-Mart.