Chasing Projects
My back hillside is finished. My Garden is done and perhaps overdone. My patio area is complete. My games area is ready and waiting. Even my Fairy Garden is set until the next change of season. What then to do with my abundance of time, enthusiasm and need for accomplishment? I guess I now have to rely on three sources of new projects. The obvious first one is to consider what I can overdo. Cover more of the hillside with more mulch, buy more plants, or add extra features ranging from outdoor sculpture to driftwood stumps? Those are the things that absolutely do not need to be done but which might catch my fancy during a lull. The next one is replacement or renovation. Certain things on the property are contextually fine, but might be getting old or worn and need to be replaced. I think this one is a stretch right now since almost everything outdoors is no more than two years old. I even ordered a new articulated umbrella for the spa, but have it sitting in the garage because the one out there, while looking faded on top, looks perfectly good from underneath. The one thing I can imagine as a big project is the huge pot outside the living room that is overgrown with aloe. The pot is cracked and I really should buy a new one. And then, last but not least, there is maintenance. The main thing about gardening is that everything keeps growing and growing and needs to be maintained to look good and not overgrown or weed-infested.
Clearly I am least enthusiastic about maintenance and that is mostly what Joventino should be able to do for me, but lately I have more build-out projects for him like planting new plants and that has left less time for maintenance. Also, the sort of maintenance that I should do for myself is weeding. When i ws in Ithaca this summer the gravel driveway, before I had a new load of stone dropped and spread on it, was looking pretty weed-strewn. Cousin Pete showed me how to use the propane weed burner and I have to admit it worked well. I said then and I reinforce now that that is an inappropriate tool for out West here in the land of the raging wildfire. The last thing I need is to spark off some neighborhood conflagration.
I know from my hired gun horticulturalist that weeding is almost impossible to stop. Weed killer is not a good thing for the environment and I certainly don’t want to endanger all the new plants I’ve put in the ground, so I think for the most part (perhaps only on the driveway and pathways, I will not be squirting liquid weed killer. The other alternatives are wiggle hoes that can dig under the mulch and cut the weeds off at the knees. I’m not sure that is the most effective way to rid myself of them for the longest period of time since I’m pretty sure they just keep rowing back if you leave the roots in place. That leaves me with week picking, which is back-breaking work, but probably the most effective. that same horticulturalist told me that every time you pull a weed you release forty other weed spores. I don’t know if he’s right, but I think that credo leads to saying that there is no way to fight weeds off and you might as well just give in and accept them as part of the landscape. I did not just lay down thousands of dollars of mulch and spend the better part of two months covering th back hillside just to surrender to some weeds.
So, that all means that I have to systematically attack my weeding needs as best I can, probably doin a little each day while I go out to water the plantings. Naturally, it is the added water that is giving the weeds the greatest boost to their existence, but I must overlook that irony. Once Joventino puts in the latest round of plantings tomorrow, I will tell him to do some weeding (he never does it quite as throughly as I would do it, but it will be a perfectly good start. After that I will reconnoiter the situation and have at it. If I really hate it, I think I can hire a guy for $160 for the day each month and have him do nothing but pull weeds. In fact, I bet I could even get Joventino to bring a buddy to do just that.
I don’t know whether to call this maintenance or replacement/renovation, but I will also soon need to deal with the three agave century plants that have shot seed pod trees up thirty feet or so into the air. We have had a lot of wind and rain lately and I notice them starting to list to one side. I will ask Joventino tomorrow if I should cut them now or wait for a few weeks until he returns. I know from my interaction with one of these monsters on the back hillside earlier this year that cutting them down in no small feat. These things are probably 7-8” in diameter and while these are succulents, there is fine line between a woody succulent and a tree. They cut with a chain saw a lot like a tree and the fall a lot like a tree, so I know I have to be careful where I lay these three trees down. I worry less about the one out by the road than the two up on the hill next to the garage. Nonetheless, it has to be done and then cut up like I was cutting up a regular tree. Unless Joventino wants to attack them tomorrow, I will probably take on this task next weekend. Now that I’ve watched an entire season of Big Timber, I am highly confident that I can make this happen without damaging my garage or myself.
Another thing i should consider doing is attacking the agave century plant stumps that have dried up and sit like tree stumps here and there. I have two on the back hillside from older dead agaves and now three new ones that will need to dealt with. There, I now have four new projects identified without even venturing into the overdone category. There’s the new mega pot for the aloes outside the living room window. that should satisfy my buying jones. Then there’s the cutting down of the agave trees and the cutting up of the agave stumps. That should satisfy my manly power tool pursuits. And finally, there’s my weeding. While I love wondering if I could safely use that propane weed burner, I am going to refrain from trying and stick to the more manual and traditional weed-pulling techniques.
I am sure that I will always find myself chasing projects around this property. In fact, once I get fully mechanized with my power wheelbarrow (due to arrive in another 7-8 weeks I think) I might start chasing even more projects and help my neighbors chase their projects, especially Winston. He’s already excited about my new purchase and I gave him the full updated tour of my property the other day and he was mighty impressed by all the cedar bark mulch I have already laid down. I have thought and thought about whether I need even more mulch downhill and continue to feel that I have plenty, or at least I have covered the right amount of the hill. As I walk around the hill now I see plenty of places that look thinner than I would like them to be, so Maybe come spring I will order a load of mulch and just have it dumped on the driveway without the muss and fuss of pallets and superbags (that will save me a bundle). Then I will slowly, but surely shovel it into my new power wheelbarrow, 10 cubic feet at a time. A super bag has 1.5 yards and that equals about 40 cubic feet, so in a mere four loads I will have moved a full yard into place effortlessly.
I can see myself chasing these projects like butterflies for years to come.