TAMING THE WILDERNESS

Its that time of year when many of us plan our gardens, leaf thru seed catalogs, plan new flower beds, wonder if the old mower will make it thru another season… some of us wonder if we will make it thru another season.

For a long, long time I have wanted to clear out the thicket on the acre east of the house. It has been a slow job, doing almost microscopic sections at a time, then watching the jungle grow back when I would have a summer with too much pain to do any work out there. Though actually, summer is probably not the right word – most of the work outside gets done in the spring or autumn, sometimes in the winter if it is a mild one, but summer is usually too beastly hot to get much more done than keep things watered and the basic grass cutting. Tree cutting is best done in the winter when the sap is not running. That is also a good time to not get into poison ivy as it is dormant unless you decide to pull its roots. Late fall, winter, and early spring are also the best times to work outside because there are no mosquitoes and ticks are fewer except on those really warm days when they wake up and decide they are hungry and you are delicious. Last year, a friend bought an old house to fix up. I gave him a load of camellias and another friend, an azalea grower, sold me a bunch of azaleas, at wholesale, for him. The only catch was, John had to dig the camellias up. So, while he was digging, he dug up more than he could use and we planted them out on the edge of my “thicket” and another friend put a park bench together for me in the middle of it all. Preston brought me a big piece of slate for under the bench, and things started to look good. I didn’t even mind the other half acre of junk trees and bramble that much. The middle was cleaned and slowly getting planted in baby camellias.

   

A couple months ago I posted a couple pictures from the bench toward the thicket. The cedar tree and the trees with yellow leaves are still there, but the jungle behind them is now gone.

Then I asked Charlie to cut down a 20 foot camellia for me next to the house as it was where the generator is going to go. It broke my heart to have it cut down, but, it had to go. I remembered it wasn’t much more than a twig when I planted it. But Charlie, chain saw in hand, decided to keep cutting. He headed out to the thicket and kept going. I never knew when he would be out there, or how much he was going to cut, but in a couple weeks, the jungle was cleared, his bush-hog chopped down the miles of vines and bramble and I could walk across that acre for the first time since I moved here. I could always see a beautiful old tree in the far end, but could never get even close enough to it to touch it. Now Charlie has even driven my truck around it! I lost count of the truck loads of wood he took out of there, much of it locust and cherry.

     

In the middle of this jungle, there is a tree that fell, rooted and kept growing, looking like the Loch Ness monster coming out of the earth. Charlie saved that, too, tho he cut the sucker branches off. It is sort of a built in bench out there. Used to ne that Punkin would follow me everywhere I went, but, he is gone. Imagine my surprise to see Spook, my scaredy cat keeping his distance, but exploring the “new” territory with me.

  

We kept a bit of jungle around the edges until I get Preston or someone to plant some evergreens as a wind break on that corner and slowly fill the lot with azaleas and camellias. My goal is to create a meditation garden, a place of Peace, perhaps prayer, contemplation… perhaps a couple redbud trees, a dogwood or two, maybe another fringe tree if I can find one… a beautyberry bush or so to round things out. I think I will sprinkle some digitalis seed here and there, see what grows. Maybe I will put in some daffodils next fall when I have a better sense of the form it will take. Of course, the big challenge will be keeping it clear as the jungle will try to reassert itself come spring.

If you are ever in the area and want to wander by, come on it, sit a spell and be refreshed. Or grab a shovel and plant a camellia!

COONIE BEARS STRIKE AGAIN

COONIE BEARS? That was how we were taught that raccoons were members of the bear family, not kitty cats to be played with, but unpredictable wild animals to be respected and avoided if possible. We have a problem with rabies around here, and coons are our #1 carriers. (Might I add at this point that possums are NOT rabies carriers. Just sayin’.) Several times each year we have a battle with raccoons. They always win. No, I do not do anything to hurt them, but it is always a battle of wits. They always win. The battle begins when the garden is new. The coonie bears are into rearranging whatever I plant. Sadly, this means I have to fence in everything to keep it from getting dug up – or dumped. Sure, they can climb any fence, but they don’t seem to like to climb either the nylon fencing or chicken wire. Maybe it doesn’t seem secure enough for them because a friend who has a wooden fence around his garden has his stuff torn up by the coons that climb in and out nightly. Nylon or plastic fencing comes in rolls, is cheap, and easy to put up as long as you don’t wear anything with buttons. Like netting, the small squares can get caught up in buttons quite easily and getting untangled can be a problem, usually because one’s hands are already busy hanging onto fencing, posts, hammers or thingies to tie the fence in place… and, of course, the phone in your pocket usually rings at about this time, too. Sigh. Anyway, since this blog is sort of a diary of what goes on in my yard/garden, that includes vandalism by the 4 footed friends that travel thru looking for munchies- or just for entertainment.

Among other fun activities for the night, they pulled out some of the tomato plants (again) and emptied the pot of dill plants that I grow for the enjoyment of the black swallowtail caterpillars. The basil also got rearranged.

I had just repotted some old geraniums that had wintered over in the greenhouse… apparently the Coonie Bears did not like they way they were potted… so they unpotted them and a few other things. sigh. 

One of their main attractions when not destroying the garden is looking for left over cat food. Now that Punkin is gone, there is not much in the way of cat food left outside… so they removed the stainless steel bowl that goes in this ant-proof holder. We have not found it yet. They have taken cat dishes before and they were never found. Amazing creatures! So I keep the dry crunchies in a very heavy crockery bowl inside an even heavier crockery bowl, and now Spook is eating out of a pie tin that sits where his big food dish once sat. Fences have gone up where I never bothered to put them before, but the carrots bag got dug out, one bag of onions, and the tomatoes twice in spite of having a ground cloth. 

  Even the potatoes got dug out and are now fenced in.

This fencing is for the deer since the beans are just at the right height to be nibbled on… and it would be easy for the raccoons to climb up inside – but so far it seems to have kept them out.

A STAND UPPITY GARDEN 2013

Back in 2009, a neighbor built me an elevated garden (http://possumlane.blogspot.com/2009/07/stand-uppity-garden.html) It was a wonderful creation, a real back saver, but, alas, like so many other wonderful things, it was not built to last. One must NOT use treated lumber in a garden – the poisons leach out of the wood and into your food. So, the untreated wood next to wet earth for several months of the year tends to rot – quickly. I truly meant to rebuild it, possibly using synthetic wood for the sides, but, well if you keep up with what has been going on here, you can see how my time has been spent. Running a Kitty-Hospice was just so much more important. Then after losing Punkin, it has been extremely hard to work outside as Punk was never more than a few feet away – unless I was on the mower or had the weed-eater out. It is hard working with a little kitty ghost seeming to be peeking out from everywhere… But this week-end I bit the bullet and demolished the old one that by now was propped up on concrete blocks. Much of the wood was so rotted thru I had had to prop it up so it would not fall on Punkin who loved to camp out on the pallet I kept under it. In fact he spent most of his last week that he was outside on that little shelf which is why I did not knock it apart sooner.

     

Once down, I managed to move some concrete blocks in place, and given the lateness of the season and my time restraints and other obligations, I simply put a pallet on the blocks, nailed a half sheet of plywood to it, and opened up a BIG garden bag. That is a dustpan in there… I use that to scoop the old soil from last year, stored in the garbage can, to fill the new bag and smooth it off.

You might recall, I have used these garden bags to grow potatoes in for a couple of years, and last year grew carrots and onions in them. But this BIG bag has a diameter of 4 feet and holds as much potting soil as the old 4x4 garden it is replacing. So, last night, when it was not raining as they said it would, I planted a couple rows of yellow wax beans on one half saving the other side for Italian flats to go in as soon as the wax beans have 3 good leaves. Today I will fill 2 new potato bags with soil and start the carrots. Then this Saturday I hope to visit an organic grower and pick up some baby plants for the rest of the garden areas. I guess Spring has sprung even tho they are saying we might have temps in the bottom of the 40s by this week-end. SIGH.

This years potatoes and a bag of onions…

SPOTS - PICTURES OF PROGRESS part 1

It seems like yesterday we started this project. Well, OK, maybe that is a stretch, but it is hard to believe we have been working at this building for so long. But then, we are doing most of the work by ourselves, a few hours each week-end, sometimes with 2 or 3 of us, sometimes with a whole crew of 6! It is amazing how much we can get done with 6 people all pooling their efforts. Lets do a little review from a few years ago (2009) up to (more or less) today. The check leasing the building:

The first thing we needed to fix was the roof, to say it leaked was an understatement. Unfortunately, it took a while to get a grant to have a new roof put on. It is easy to see the leaks in the “office” area where we actually had a ceiling. The big room was open from the floor to the roof.

   

We even had our first Santa Train with tents INSIDE the building to keep the rain off the visitors and food!

  and we had to keep Santa dry…

BUT, first we needed steps, new windows, then electricity, some door repair until we built our own doors.

  Then we had to replace the BIG beams, brick work, some floor floor, and walls, and fill in the pit at the old scales.

      

And then remove the old walls and ceiling in the office area…

The north end:

 

And on the inside, we built a ceiling in the big freight room:

removed the track-side door, made it a little smaller and reinstalled it. then we built a new door for the south end.

 

replaced the office door:

and added French doors in the freight room.

An HVAC system was installed and we fenced in the outside unit.

The walls were prepared and insulated, then came sheetrock and paint.