The best-laid plans

Well, our neighbor with the dozer finally had a spare day/morning, so he showed up at 8 today. While he got started clearing (no pics of the “before” state, let’s just say the grass in this area was more than waist-high to me and the blackberries would have scared off godzilla. Though not, apparently, the bear which left fresh scat in the orchard again.)…

While he got started clearing the space of small trees, wicked thorny things and the occasional log or stump left over from the initial site clearing 9 years ago, Tom and I went into town to see about getting a bit of top soil to help level it out. We went where our neighbor suggested, but were not smart enough to insist on talking to the person he suggested. So instead of perfectly good but slightly lumpy topsoil we got the ulta-nice fine-screened stuff. It wouldn’t be a big deal, but we spent about twice what we would have for the other kind, and I feel badly that our neighbor had gone out of his way to help us find something more affordable and then we mucked it up.

In the end, though, we have a lovely pad about 35 x 25 feet square to play with (we’ll end up making it closer to 30×30), weed-free and ready to go. This evening, stidkid#1 and I are going to lay out the shape of the beds with string and tomorrow we may even plant.

Then, over the next 2 months or so, we’ll put up the fence panels that have been patiently waiting in the back yard, so the deer don’t decide we have just put in a buffet.

At least, that’s the plan.

Here are the pics the stidkid took for me while Tom and I spoke with our neighbor about how to move things around. You can see a big pile of stumps, they now provide a bit of a buffer at the end of the drive behind the mailbox. The willows were left in place intentionally to serve as a nice hedgerow between the road and the garden. We’ll coppice them every few years and let them provide habitat for the critters.

This next image shows the HUGE cedar log that is still mostly intact after 5 years. We are using it to define the terrace between the orchard and the garden space. The soil behind it is mostly sand, in front mostly “skipopa silt-loam” which most of us consider just clay… We will be amending the garden soil regularly with gypsum to help keep the clayey bits from clogging the beds.

Here you can see how big the space is, before the garden is laid out.

Here is the space, with the new soil nicely graded and shaped for the garden.

Finally, while I have been planning and plotting the garden, the children are slowly deconstructing the fort we built for them 7 years ago. We will reuse the boards that are still good for a tree platform, later this year or next. Always another project on the horizon!