The Dread Reverend cleared a path through the garage yesterday.
It was much worse than this, in that the garage was pretty much full from side to side and front to back - you could barely get through it for anything. Once the path was cleared, everything that had come out to make the path, had to be put away somewhere - the goal was for it not to go back in the garage. So I got a lot of that done, though not quite all yet. There are several boxes and a pile of clothes in the spare room that need to be packaged up to donate.
Speaking of recycling, I had this cooler with a broken lid, and I was going to throw it away. But just as I was getting ready to toss it in the dumpster at work, I realized ... hey, this thing has wheels, and a handle, and a drain, and it's deep ... it would make a great gardening tote.
Our front yard accumulates tons of little branches out of the trees, that I've been tossing around the base of the trees to get them out of my way when I mow. But that's going to have to stop, because (a) it's starting to look kind of crappy, and (b) when I eventually plant things there I won't be able to do that. I was thinking I'd have to lug the big, heavy, rusty wheelbarrow out there to conveniently move them. But this cooler would work much better, and be easy.
When I'm not picking up sticks I can use it to pull my gardening stuff around, like my little tote bag of hand tools, my knee pad, etc. Or to move smaller plants from one place to another.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of that, but I thought I was rather clever. It did occur to me that if it still had the lid, I'd also have a seat. But if it still had the lid, I'd be using it as a cooler, and would never have thought of this. I'm sure I'll manage, or figure something else out.
Our clematis vine is in bloom!
And, I made major progress on the dining room garden. It's not done, by any stretch, but it's a good start.
I dug up four shrubs, three of which I was able to do myself, although it wasn't easy - except for one I was able to basically pull up by hand, the others had some serious root systems. I was digging and pulling like mad before I finally got two of them out, and one of them just seemed to be set in concrete. Nothing I could do would budge this thing.
After breaking the shovel, and resorting to a pry-bar and a machete, Matt finally got it out.
Tyler enjoyed hanging out with me while I worked outside today.
So the dining room garden went from it's original state ...
... to this ...
Oddly, the dirt in this bed is too deep. The top of the soil is about 8" higher than the sidewalk in front of it. That might not be so bad, except I want to incorporate some of the 'black gold' from our compost pile that came with the house. (In the far back corner of the yard the prior owners had piled what looked like several years worth of leaves, several years ago; it's degraded into a wonderful bunch of compost). I can't dump more compost on top of this much dirt, or I'm going to have a raised bed without the benefit of sides on it.
So I hauled two wheelbarrows full of dirt out of the bed and back to the compost pile, to be mixed in (in a different spot, of course, from where I take my new dirt from). But it needs more taken out before I can start putting the good stuff back in, and by the time I had that much done (about 2:00 p.m.) I had completely, totally, utterly exhausted myself.
I just barely had the energy to put my tools away, take a shower, and take a nap. And I'm pretty well done for the night. Wow, it sucks to be so out of shape. Well, a summer of this kind of work ought to fix that. Because this is only the beginning ... only a tiny fragment of the areas of the front yard I plan to re-landscape eventually.
But ... I've made a start, anyway.
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