(no subject)
Whew, got away from journaling for a while there, almost two months. What’s happened in that time? Not a whole lot, but a lot. I feel like I’ve been busy with gardening. Finally got a basic plan for the areas I want to focus on, got some major paths laid out in the back yard, and some plants in the ground: three muscadine vines, five blueberry bushes, one persimmon, and two pomegranates. I also bought three raspberry bushes, four blackberry bushes, and a dwarf mulberry tree (which looking up later found out to be an asian variety - oh well, we’ll see how it goes; I would like a native variety somewhere, perhaps in a partially shaded area), which still need to go in. I also received an impromptu load of wood chips, which I spread in the wooded area of the east side of the property.
I bought some chicken wire and u-posts and set up three side-by-side 5’x5’ bins for composting. My initial idea was to set up six of them side-by-side in one long line, three for handling leaf compost and food scraps and three for woodchip compost and urine, but I still have those two 4’x4’ bins that I built from the leftover wood from the raised beds that I think I will use for wood chip composting for now. I’m still not 100% on how I want to compost food scraps. I want a source of compost, but I recently read somewhere that wood chips breakdown faster in a thin layer i.e. as a mulch than in a big pile, because the microbes that break them down like a lot of air, which seems to mesh with what I’ve experience with them, how they tend to disappear after a year or two on the ground.
I spent this past week harvesting leaves and it took like four van fulls of bags to fill up one 5’x5’ bin - actually, it could probably fit more, but I’m done harvesting for the year, and will top it off with any our own leaves I rake up. It wears me out, and the last batch of bags I got yesterday had something in them that bit the hell out of me and left me red with hives over half my body for hours. The bags that caused it were full of willow tree leaves, and as soon as I had piled them in the car a small spider had bit me on the arm. I’m thinking the leaves were full of baby spiders hibernating for winter or something; also had a few ants bite me, though those could have been from our own yard because I’ve had them bite me before. So, now I’m wondering if it’s even worth messing with other people’s leaves and just stick to wood chips to compost food scraps. I could use a bin system, or I could bury them in the ground in trenches covered with wood chips, perhaps in the 6-foot-wide path that leads from the double-gate to the composting area. I want my own source of compost for seed starting, so as not to have to deal with getting some from recycling center and as part of system for dealing with our food scraps.
For nearly two weeks in October I had gotten away from exercising. I wanted to get the first batch of plants in the ground, and the bed I was digging for the blueberry bushes turned into a hell of an ordeal as a small stretch of it was full of rocks. It was a pain in the ass but I finally got it done. I still need to top them with fresh mulch, but I have composted wood chips on them now and will add the mulch once I get the other plants in the ground and will just top everything at once using the mountain of chips I have covering the stumps. I will also need to line the beds with stumps. Then I need to start laying out the paths and main tree locations in the area in front of the fence. Still a lot of work to be done, and still a lot of planning, figuring out where I want understory plants; I also have a bag of sunchoke tubers in the refrigerator for planting that I’m not sure where to place.
Oh, forgot to mention that when I was staking out the pomegranate locations, I found that they seemed awfully close to the Neilan’s driveway, so at that point I had to know for sure how close his driveway was to our property, chopped down some more brush so that I could draw a mason string between the two iron pins on that side of the property, and sure enough the driveway encroaches about 3 inches. I’m still not sure how to go about discussing it with them, because I want to eliminate the entire lawn on that part of the property, but that would mean coming all the way up to his driveway, so I think I should leave him a border of lawn around it, but I don’t want have to mow it.
The other thing that kept from exercise for a week was I actually got a cold (from what I could tell), although it happened concordantly with the blooming the Chinese osmanthus on the NE corner of house, which has a really strong smell that I find offensive like a bad perfume.
Other happenings: HOA sent us a letter about mildew on our siding, which I put off until this month to deal with; finally have a guy coming out on Saturday. Beth interviewed for a supervisor position but didn’t get it, which she expected because there was someone else applying for it who was “next in line” in experience, etc., but she’ll be first in line when the next position becomes available; and with that disappointment she wants to get on seeing how much it will cost to build a screened-in porch on the back of the house, so I’ll have to get on that. Halloween came rather quietly, but I did get the kids out trick-or-treating in Beth’s parents’ neighborhood, and our church did a trunk-or-treat. Boone and Krystina starting going into school Thursday and Friday every week, which has gone well, but also means we’re having them stay home on Tuesdays so that Christian can have Nana-and-Papa time. And my work’s implemented a new processing system that I’ve had to get trained on and just went live for my department today.
What a mind dump. So, where do we go from here, friends? I really hope I get a handle on the yard over the next few months, so that I can at least get my focus on other things, like planing more things with the kids, and maybe music or something that gets me connecting with people again, if that’s even possible. I’m starting to wonder if it’s even possible for me to have friends.