Garden Growth–1st May, 2019

A victorious day in which the new leaf bin finally happened!

• Watered all the seedlings, Maude seems much happier back downstairs.
• When my partner came home from work, we ran through the list of what should be done.  He’s still really wanting to work on the grape area, and I finally had to not so gently remind him that we’re running out of time and we don’t even know that the grapes will produce anything, so to my mind they’re low on the list.  He was not pleased.
• While I made sure the wire working tools were handy, he started pulling the copious likely grey willow seedlings up by the old doghouse area after removing the last of the free wire fencing from the tree we had anchored it to for the short term.
• We then began raking out the new leaf bin area, digging out some young shrubs we then moved towards the area we are trying to make the fence hedge.  Many rocks were unearthed and piled to the side, including some of a reasonable stepping stone size.  There is what we’ve started calling a “trash tree” in that area (same as the type by the garage that has to go), and when he realized how much work there would be to get it out we decided to leave it for now.  That entire fence line has a lot of saplings that eventually will need to go.
• Speaking of, a few thumb thick trunked saplings did get yanked, and will likely be used for bean teepees this year.  It’s really a shame we do not have a woodstove because we have quite a lot of woods that could be used for at least fire building.  I miss having a woodstove, really.  Of course, if we had one then we’d need to get actual stove wood, and need a place to keep it, etc. etc.
• I did remember to show him the small tent of small black caterpillars I’d found on the crabapple tree.  That reminded me that I still need to ID those.  [Later Note: They are likely eastern tent, but I will keep an eye on them to make sure they are not gypsy moth once they grow up a bit and show whatever coloration they may develop.]
• It took us longer than we thought it would to first clear the topsoil layer and then fit the two remaining pieces together around the crabapple tree to outline the leaf bin.
• One of the rubbish piles is nearby, and we kept finding all manner of trash, some half buried where we wanted to put the bin.
• We then took the remaining 12 (?) leaf bags I got from our neighbor and dumped them inside, raking through them as there was some yard trash that had been raked up when they were gathered.  I had totally forgotten that there was a healthy amount of pine needles in some of the bags, and I scooped up armfuls and did a much more thorough job of pine mulching around Shoobie, who is already budding I’m happy to say.
• Now that there was room to breath in the garage again (I am still trying my darndest to be able to fulfill my promise that a car will fit functionally in there by fall at worst!), we focused on windows for quick and dirty cold frames.  More of the freebies I had gotten from one of his former coworkers had partial wood frames than I recalled.  Only two were completely vinyl, so for now we pulled those out.  I plan to do something with them later this week.  I wanted to avoid those with wood framing because the wood is untreated and although I don’t really care about the windows, I still don’t want the wood to rot and we don’t have much paint to at least give them a hail mary coat to protect them yet.
• He asked if we had wood he could use for the grape trellis, and given how hard we worked I didn’t want to argue about priorities again so we went into the cellar and found wood he could work.  We also found two bedposts I had completely forgotten I had salvaged when I took apart a homemade bin that was in the garage (two years ago?) that was too big to move as is, and we didn’t have a purpose for it (it looked like they had kids’ outdoor toys in it from what was still in there).  So the wood leftover from that had all been since moved to the cellar, and I had completely forgotten about the bedposts.  We think we might use those for the reformation of the Black Raspberry Division of the Berry Army.
• Folded all the bags that didn’t have major rips in them, which I may use as either weed bake bags later, or possible tree bags since some folks that says they want saplings may still actually come and get them, and I only have so many large pots.  (A few folks have shown interest, none have followed through, and with each yard clean up, there are less and less that we could give away because I simply don’t have time to nicely prep them for transplant all by myself–so when we need to clear a spot, they go to the wood pile to dry out and die instead of a new home.)
• Tidied the garage a bit more, glad to be able to get to my garden cart again.  I just realized as I write this that I still have to inflate one of the tires I never got around to last year.