Reclaiming The Back Of The Backyard

I'm not going to have to haul as much compost and soil for this one because I've filled it in with old branches and trunks of small trees. I didn't do this in the other sections, although I did have some old logs and old lumber to keep it from eroding. Here, I'll add soil and compost over the top of this old wood. Before I do that, I might add some more branches and small logs from the other brush pile.


Besides the brush pile behind the vacant house next door, I had a smaller one behind my shed. I have gotten rid of it, using some of it as fill for my next lupine garden area, and burning the rest. I have never cleaned up the junk behind the shed since I moved in here, but it's time. I don't think I am going to do this part this year, but I guess I'll continue along the yard as I have on the other side.

There will be room for a small section of lupines behind the shed, leaving me with enough work and walk space to do maintenance on the shed. It needs to be painted again and I think it's time to actually fix the roof and get rid of the tarp. I also need to clean up around both sides of it. There's no point in having a lupine garden in the back if the shed is going to be crappy.

With a small lupine garden behind the shed, extending a little ways toward the fence, I can still have a walkway along the south border, just right of center, and another along the north border fence.

I wish I could find someone who wants that big ladder. I can't even carry it anymore, let alone lift it. When I moved in here, I could, as I used it to paint the house. That needs to be done again too but I don't think I'm going to do it. Again, I can't lift the ladder and the smaller one isn't nearly high enough.

 

I'm on my second electric chainsaw. Fortunately, they're cheap.

 

I've decided to start taking the remaining brush pile apart, little by little. I can use the trunks of the trees there, as well as straight branches to frame additional planting spaces, and burn the rest in my fire pit. I wasn't going to frame the area behind the shed but since I have the stuff available to do that, I may as well.

By the way, I worked on the brush pile today in a thunderstorm and started a fire in the firepit in the pouring rain. That was about 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, and the firepit is still full of glowing embers, I know, because I have been wanting to put a cover on it before going to bed. I didn't spend six years in the Boy Scouts for nothing.

 

We won't get any flowers this year, I'm sure, and maybe not the next, but the plants are coming up. Most of these are lupines but some of them are from a wildflower mix that I planted last year.

 

I am taking a break today but I have started to hack away at this brush pile. There's no rush because it's behind the vacant house next door, not mine, although I put most of it there.

 

It was too wet to dig and haul compost today but I worked on getting this section ready. I just need to go under some of this and dig out some of the weeds and small maple trees, and maybe put down some cardboard to reduce the chances of them finding their way through. This is different than I did the others, with far more wood underneath.


This is behind the shed. I need to cut these saplings, and I might put down some rotting logs and straight sections of brush down before adding compost to it. Again, I am not committing myself to doing this part this year, anyhow.

 

It doesn't look like it, but it took four 30-gallon drums of compost to cover even this much of it.

 

The first lupines I planted are growing the least well, for some reason.

 

One more trip to the town compost pile, one bag of manure compost, and one bag of peat moss should finish this one off. Maybe two trips. It's hard to tell how much it will take once the compost settles into the old wood.


I am filling in the area between the repaired tree erosion and my oldest compost pile. I'm not done with it yet, though.

 

You know how YouTube advertises a couple of other videos once the video (above) has played. The videos that it advertises are generally based on the same theme as the one you had watched. Well, I just watched the video of me (above), and one of the videos that it advertised afterward was entitled, "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead."

 

I grew up in the 60s so I use a headband sometimes. I start out with caps a lot but they keep falling off and just get in the way.