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It's garden time!
The snow is almost all gone (75 degree weather will tend to do that) so I set to work this afternoon on creating a garden from a pile of gravel.
You can see I have my work cut out for me.
I've mentioned in past entries that we live on gravel tailings from strip mining. Mining in our valley was done with a gold dredge, which is basically a house-sized siphon that sucks up muck and rocks, sorts the gold from everything else and spews the leavings out the back in a tremendous jet. Because of the way it sweeps back and forth, you end up with long horizontal ridges of rocks, like hay that's been raked into wind-rows. Some of the rows are quite wide, but there's a swath of them between the septic tank and the old outhouse (fun neighborhood, that) which are only about 3 feet wide, ideal sized for garden beds.
My plan is to fill up the valleys with dirt and use the ridges as paths to walk about in the garden.
I picked the most clearly-defined valley to start with.
It is said that farmers in New England could build a rock wall, using no mortar, that will stand for hundreds of years.
Mine will be lucky to stand through the next windstorm.
More to come as I progress.
Also, last weekend we took a hike up in the hills behind the house ... it's really astonishing how much more snow there was just a few days ago! We found lots of weird post-apocalyptic junk -- remains of cars, an old aquarium, and, strangest of all, a coffin. Izzy completed the fun by jumping on top of the coffin and falling through its rotten wooden top. Go, Izzy. Luckily there was no one inside.
The dogs playing in the creek some way upstream. They are actually standing on ice with water flowing over the top of it. Just out of sight are a couple of culverts that go under the road; the water was getting sucked down under the ice and into the culverts. Dumb dogs. But they stayed in the safe area and didn't fall in.
This valley comes down from the hills and joins up with our valley. The snow was shallow enough that it wasn't hard to walk in it (usually not more than ankle-deep), but there was still a lot of it then. All of this snow is now gone, except for lingering drifts in shadowy places.
The abandoned coffin, with a hole in the top where Izzy fell through. We didn't even really notice it until she climbed onto it -- we just figured it was some kind of weird box. Then when we went to help her out, we got to looking and the shape ...
It's in the yard out behind an abandoned cabin. I don't think I even want to know.
You can see I have my work cut out for me.
I've mentioned in past entries that we live on gravel tailings from strip mining. Mining in our valley was done with a gold dredge, which is basically a house-sized siphon that sucks up muck and rocks, sorts the gold from everything else and spews the leavings out the back in a tremendous jet. Because of the way it sweeps back and forth, you end up with long horizontal ridges of rocks, like hay that's been raked into wind-rows. Some of the rows are quite wide, but there's a swath of them between the septic tank and the old outhouse (fun neighborhood, that) which are only about 3 feet wide, ideal sized for garden beds.
My plan is to fill up the valleys with dirt and use the ridges as paths to walk about in the garden.
I picked the most clearly-defined valley to start with.
It is said that farmers in New England could build a rock wall, using no mortar, that will stand for hundreds of years.
Mine will be lucky to stand through the next windstorm.
More to come as I progress.
Also, last weekend we took a hike up in the hills behind the house ... it's really astonishing how much more snow there was just a few days ago! We found lots of weird post-apocalyptic junk -- remains of cars, an old aquarium, and, strangest of all, a coffin. Izzy completed the fun by jumping on top of the coffin and falling through its rotten wooden top. Go, Izzy. Luckily there was no one inside.
The dogs playing in the creek some way upstream. They are actually standing on ice with water flowing over the top of it. Just out of sight are a couple of culverts that go under the road; the water was getting sucked down under the ice and into the culverts. Dumb dogs. But they stayed in the safe area and didn't fall in.
This valley comes down from the hills and joins up with our valley. The snow was shallow enough that it wasn't hard to walk in it (usually not more than ankle-deep), but there was still a lot of it then. All of this snow is now gone, except for lingering drifts in shadowy places.
The abandoned coffin, with a hole in the top where Izzy fell through. We didn't even really notice it until she climbed onto it -- we just figured it was some kind of weird box. Then when we went to help her out, we got to looking and the shape ...
It's in the yard out behind an abandoned cabin. I don't think I even want to know.