Weekend Backyard Projects
This weekend we had two 75+ degree days and so I spent as much time as I could completing projects in the backyard that didn’t require anyone’s help . Lucky for me, I didn’t have too much wine at Friday night’s downtown Wine Walk.
I have several very large trees in my backyard and thanks to a certified arborist that I contacted on Facebook I know they are a silver maple, pecan and black walnut. At least two of them are likely around 100 years old. The point is, there are a lot of sticks on the ground. The person who lived here before me had an organic garden in one section, but it needed some love, and so all of the tree sticks and branches and so on found themselves in a pile in the middle of the yard. My first project was to break all of those down and stack them against the fence to use when I finally get a fire pit.
Next up, I made a trip to Rural King (and what a trip it was) to get hay to put down where the pond was. Once the fish were moved to a loving home and the water was drained, I had a huge dirt pit that becomes a mud pit and Blue magnet when it rains. I couldn’t think of an easy way to get it filled with dirt until I get the chain link fence removed, so I decided to get some hay to lay on top of it. I’ve never bought a hay bale before, and they don’t have them sitting in the store at Rural King. You purchase them at the counter, then drive around to the side so they can unload them from a large trailer into your vehicle. I thought, I don’t know, 5 would be good. $35 dollars later, I have 5 hay bales stuffed in the back of my Jeep. Hay is everywhere. When I got home, I lugged all 5 of them out of my car into the backyard. Hay bales are heavy! Then, I cut the strings and started to spread it around the big hole in my yard and come to find out… one hay bale was enough.
I plan to get the chain link fence, and the wooden fence in the center of my yard, removed and put a nice patio where the pond was. But that’s a project for another time.
