The trash pile may be gone, but there was still a small pile of random garbage the previous owners had chucked into that space (first pic below). It all had to go into our regular garbage bin, but I managed to fit it in last week. We still have a giant tractor tire and a buried road sign to deal with, but we’ll get to those eventually.
As you can probably guess from the lack of posts, it’s been a busy couple of weeks as we manage the large piles of wood chips created from the giant trash heap and tree trimmings. I’m happy to report, though, that about 1/8th of the wood chips are now spread in a couple of places around the property, and each day I work at spreading another few cubic feet. Seriously, who needs a gym when you live on a big piece of property?
I started with the area next to the garage (pic 2). A large fir tree dominates it and the previous owners did some extensive landscaping, but there was no sign they ever put down any sort of ground cover, so there’s a lot of exposed bare earth surrounding the plants. This rather smallish section took a bit longer than anticipated as I managed to break the garden rake (pic 3). Agent Smith repaired it, but I also went and bought a brand new one.
Most of the tools we use for such work like the rake and wheelbarrow were included in the sale of the house, and most are pretty weathered, but it was still nice to have a lot of useful things ready and waiting for us when we took ownership. Many if not all will be replaced in time, but for now, as long as I wear work gloves when using them (to forgo nasty splinters), they’re great.
The sixth pic shows the dumpster currently on the property for the deck removal that happened today (more on that in another post). Just behind the dumpster is a small mound. That is the pile of chips I’ve been working to spread out. It’s mainly all walnut and gum tree bits, and it was originally 4 times as high as it is now. A vast quantity of the finer mulch from the gum tree is now spread out behind the pile and around the gum tree, but there is still enough material there to spread towards and then around the fig tree in the foreground.
Because the pile is not uniform in composition, certain layers are comprised of bigger chips, and it’s the bigger chips I’ve been shifting around with a wheelbarrow. We haven’t uploaded pictures of the giant mounds of chips behind the garage, but the last quick shot I took tonight shows another area where we’ve spread chips. On the near side of the far white fence, all that brown stuff is wood chips. If you know where to look, you can just make out a couple of the piles we still need to deal with (blocked from direct view by the shrubs).
