The Shade Palace

It's hazy, hot, and humid all over again.  For a few weeks, we did have a reprieve and the weather was beautiful.  My go-to project guy, Sam, built the lean-to off the back of the barn.  It was a little narrower and a helluva lot taller than I'd pictured, but it's great.  As he said, it's tall enough that I could park my truck under it with a full load of hay on it.

Here's the area before the build. It's the only place that has any shade during the hottest part of the day, except for inside the barn.  I wanted the boys to have a fresh air option.

 

 

The first order of business was digging some holes for post supports.  Sam learned exactly why this is called Stoneridge Farm.

 

 

Look at that piss-poor soil loaded with rocks.  This is why we can't dig into the ground around here by hand.  But don't you worry, I put that junky dirt to excellent use.

 

 

That's right, it was perfect for the alpine garden!  Sam bucketed over what he could and I only have some minimal filling to do at this point.  I was hoping to finish filling it this weekend, but the weather has gone back to unbearably hot and humid, so I'm pumping the brakes on outdoor chores for now. (That Sphinx statue just keeps moving around, but eventually will end up IN the garden, not perched above it.)

Back to the lean-to.   

Once the supports were in, Sam lost no time in getting the frame whipped up there.

 

 He had some gently used tin roofing that he recycled for this project, and close off the ends with some scrap T1-11 that between the two of us we managed to scrape up.

 He trimmed the roof edges and added some finishing touches, then snagged me a load of stone dust to use for the inside of it.

And thus my next focused task was born.  I needed to pull the vegetation and scrape the ground clean under the part of the lean-to that had been outside the fence originally, smooth it all out, dump the stone dust in there and level it.  Li'l Red was a huge help bucketing in the material, and then I would rake it by hand with a landscape rake.  

 

 After that was done, all that was left was to secure some pipe panels to the uprights, adjust the fence a little, and add one large helping of mule.

 

And there you have it, The Shade Palace.  I need to get my ten foot gate out of the pasture and put that on there, but for now a spare twelve foot panel will suffice.  This simple chore took me all day and I was dead exhausted by dinner time.  Fargo was so excited about his new digs at first, but once he realized there were no fans going, he went back into the barn...so I'm not sure if this was money well spent yet.
 

The Return of the Friday Chore Day

I'm not complaining about hot, humid weather now, am I?  Glorious crisp, cool autumn weather is upon us, and I'm trying to knock out as many chores as I can before snow flies.  Thank goodness for my every other Friday off!

I haven't worked on the alpine garden because I really wanted to get the manure pile moved before winter.  You can see how much the pile had grown over the last year - in the background to the right of the barn.  That's just a fraction of it.

I picked away at the pile a few weeks ago and moved it over to where the forest garden will be.  Today I snipped some wayward saplings and then spent two and a half hours bucketing manure across the yard.  That old tractor of mine sure does a number on a body!  I feel like I've been beaten half to death, but the pile is moved.  What little I couldn't manage to scrape up I hand raked and spread it around.  It will compost nicely over the winter and add to the soil back there.  

 

The stall mats are out because the rat plague has reached a zenith of infuriating activity.  From what I understand, they are awful everywhere this year.  I don't really feed grain to the mules, so I'm not sure what they're after, but they break through every barrier I put up.  I'll be working on a solution to that - they're too smart to get trapped, but I've found a second one dead in the water bucket.  A sinister plan is hatching!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the driveway...

 Manure has been dumped, then hand raked to get the worst of the lumps out.  The tractor can't get any further up the bank than what's there now, it's steeper than it looks.  Once we have snow I'll haul my daily manure up to the wall area via my manure sled and dump it.  I still have to cut some more saplings and brush toward the end of the driveway area, but that will open up easily accessible areas to dump the manure from now until snow flies.  I still have some 50/50 mix that I'll start spreading over the manure, and next year hopefully I can add either some more of that or topsoil.  I should be able to start planting in here next summer, so long as we get a good winter to rot that manure down.  I'm excited to create this garden, especially in among the mossy rocks and tree roots.  I love the ferns that are already there, and will be adding more.

Between this project and the backyard gardens, I have enough going on to keep me busy for the next few years.  Boy, those garden centers love to see me coming!

 

June-ish things

 Summer is nearly upon us - where has the time gone?  I will say, this has been one of the most enjoyable springs as far as weather goes that we've had in a long time.  Only a few days have brought that late summer type heat, the rain hasn't been a constant deluge, and no surprise frosts have hit us.  

I've had to come to terms with my age and physical abilities, which is a nice way of saying I'm too old and fat to accomplish much these days.  My list has been pared down to a few key projects that are hopefully achievable.  Li'l Red tractor is finally fixed, and Reputa tractor's steering is holding up so far.  I thought this would be a great opportunity to move the manure, which has been piling up behind the barn for the last year while equipment was broke down.  My back has been acting up lately, so I decided to go easy and only do manageable loads of manure, which meant loading it into my little tow behind trailer; the new one I bought to replace the rusted out one last summer.  It's easier to unload than a pickup truck load of heavy, wet, manure and shavings.  I loaded it using Li'l Red, and hauled it out to the back of the property with Reputa.  Things were going great...until they weren't.

Around the fourth trip out Reputa started jerking and sputtering, so I shut her down and only then did I notice the trailer was tipped at an angle.  A quick review of the scene revealed a tire had completely come off the axle.  I unloaded the manure and set about reattaching the wheel, discovering the cotter pin that held it in place was missing.  I left the tire on and went around the other side to check the cotter pin on the other wheel...also missing.  What the heck?  Apparently they either spontaneously and simultaneously disintegrated, or there's a cotter pin thief about.  Or...they never had cotter pins.  I shudder at that thought.  At any rate,  I had some pins that served as replacements for the time being and decided to do one last trip before calling it a night.  I loaded the trailer, headed away from the manure pile, and suddenly Reputa started jerking and sputtering again.  This time, one of the tires had split wide open, so that was the end of that.  I noted the size of the tires and ordered some solid replacement wheels from Amazon.  There was some issue changing out the bearings, but thankfully my neighbor is a mechanic with all of the tools, so he was able to replace the bearings with the correct sized ones (the wheels come with 2 sizes), and I was back in business.  I've only hauled one load with the solid tires, but I am happy with them.  I replaced the bicycle tires on my manure cart with solid ones, and I don't know how I lived without them.  No more flats!

While I was waiting on tires, I had a look at my cottage gardens.  Last year I planted perennials into the grassy areas in front of the hillside garden.  I love seeing grasses in with plants, so I thought this would be a picturesque little garden.  Boy, was I wrong.  The grass, which was mostly crabgrass, quickly overtook the beds and was pretty much smothering the plants.

I pulled up some of the edging from around the wildflower garden out back; because it's over the leach field, it doesn't really freeze in the winter and warm/cold cycles keep pushing plants and landscape pins out of the ground.  I'm tired of having to re-pound the pins each spring, so away it goes.

Once I had the edges marked, I started pulling what weeds I could, and cutting back seed heads.  I laid newspaper over the grass areas and mulched heavily with bark mulch. 

It took me about a day to do each bed, carefully winding newspaper around the plants and making sure I was pulling as many weeds away from them as possible.

Now I have places to plant my other perennials, and the plants I grew from seed this winter.  After this, I need to do the same to the hot borders in front of the barn.

No rest for the wicked, I guess.