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a dreaded sunny day
Mar. 27th, 2010 08:43 pmSlept in this morning and didn't manage to get out the door until after 8am. But immediately went out back into the chill air and bright sunshine. Yes, the air was chilly, the surface of the ground was frozen solid. Worked until noon. Came in for breakfast. Back out into the warmer sunshine. Took a brief break at 3pm and headed back out. Finally came in for good at 5:30 pretty much chilled through the bones.
Today we got the rest of the railroad ties pulled out of the ground and out from under the chunks of granite. They are stacked in piles awaiting transport. I climbed up in one of the trees and cut all of the rose vine out of it. The rose vine was doing its best to kill the poor tree. We raked a whole lot of leaves and twigs and other dead matter from a large swath of yard. I attacked the rose vines that were overpowering one corner of the yard. They attacked me back. Put more soil down in the area that will be the upper part of the terracing. Cleaned up a lot of garbage, again. Ripped up a lot of vines. Dug up a lot of dirt and picked the bamboo roots and other undesirable bits out.
The final project we took on for the day was moving the concrete monolith that is laying unevenly on a part of the gravel bank. It looks awful and I'm not sure anything we can do will make it look good. I was considering getting a mason's chisel and trying to make a seat out of it, but I got another idea today. I'm going to try to stand it up. It has a hole in the top which could take a pole for holding a birdbath or a tiki torch or whatever. Also, standing up it'll delineate the corner of one of our planting areas. It's 30 inches on a side on what will be the base and tapers in slightly to what will be the top. It's about 4 feet long. In concrete that means it weighs a lot. Today we got the place where it will stand dug out and leveled and we got the first bit of raising it done (two sections of 4x4 wood under the 'top' end). It took a lot of doing to get that far. I'm sure with some heavy equipment we could get it moved or broken up in no time, but that would be too easy. Plus we've got garlic planted within a foot of the thing.
Today we got the rest of the railroad ties pulled out of the ground and out from under the chunks of granite. They are stacked in piles awaiting transport. I climbed up in one of the trees and cut all of the rose vine out of it. The rose vine was doing its best to kill the poor tree. We raked a whole lot of leaves and twigs and other dead matter from a large swath of yard. I attacked the rose vines that were overpowering one corner of the yard. They attacked me back. Put more soil down in the area that will be the upper part of the terracing. Cleaned up a lot of garbage, again. Ripped up a lot of vines. Dug up a lot of dirt and picked the bamboo roots and other undesirable bits out.
The final project we took on for the day was moving the concrete monolith that is laying unevenly on a part of the gravel bank. It looks awful and I'm not sure anything we can do will make it look good. I was considering getting a mason's chisel and trying to make a seat out of it, but I got another idea today. I'm going to try to stand it up. It has a hole in the top which could take a pole for holding a birdbath or a tiki torch or whatever. Also, standing up it'll delineate the corner of one of our planting areas. It's 30 inches on a side on what will be the base and tapers in slightly to what will be the top. It's about 4 feet long. In concrete that means it weighs a lot. Today we got the place where it will stand dug out and leveled and we got the first bit of raising it done (two sections of 4x4 wood under the 'top' end). It took a lot of doing to get that far. I'm sure with some heavy equipment we could get it moved or broken up in no time, but that would be too easy. Plus we've got garlic planted within a foot of the thing.
