Landscaping: Phase 1

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Friday morning at work, a colleague who reads my blog regularly marveled at how much Matt and I have accomplished at the farm so far. I didn’t totally agree. Sometimes I see the difference that we’re making. Sometimes I just see the things left undone and the rest of the to-do list.

July does feel like a bit of a milestone to me, though. A turning point. Or a halfway mark. So I have decided to declare it the end of phase 1 of this year’s major project–landscaping–and I have decided to take a look at what we’ve done so far. If you’re interested in a refresher, here’s my previous progress report or the to-do list.

My focus has been the immediate area around the house. I used the very thoughtful technique of walk out the front door, turn right and start there. I slowly worked my way around to the side of the house. So the smaller of our two front gardens has been weeded and a new border of grass has been established.

Still to do: Put those poor plants that have been living in plastic pots for at least a year and a half in the ground. Transplant some other plants to fill in some of the gaps in this garden, and maybe give the yew and the Rose of Sharon a hair cut.

Around the corner from the front garden, we come to a creation I’m particularly proud of, the well garden. At the beginning of the spring, this area was a heap of hard-packed dirt strewn with rocks and overgrown with weeds. After digging everything out (including two window wells last year which were unnecessary after we bricked over the broken basement windows), leveling off the dirt, edging it with rocks (some really, really big rocks that required the help of Matt and his Dad to position), transplanting some plants, repositioning the downspout, installing a hose hanger and seeding the grass, it is starting to look like an actual garden.

Still to do: Convince the plants to grow. It’s a little hard to see, but I’ve actually planted quite a lot in this garden. I may do a bit more, but I’m trying to restrain myself, because I’m pretty sure once these plants take off, this garden is going to be pretty lush–just what I want.

Let’s go away from the house for a moment across the driveway to the fire pit. This really wasn’t a fire pit. It was more of an area where previous owners burned things. Matt and I have used it a lot as we’ve been cleaning up brush and lumber from the property. However, heaps of ash and brush wasn’t the nicest visual to see when I opened the front door or drove up the driveway. The brush I was able to relocate to a new burn area I’ve established behind the drive shed. The ash got spread around and leveled–and then I went back and forth over it with a big magnet to pick up all of the nails and screws (and hinges, door knobs and other metal) that were mixed in. The rock pile that I discovered buried in ash was picked up and dumped in the main rock pile behind the barn–talk about a dirty job.

Still to do: Make sure all of the metal has been picked out of the ash. Mix some manure and soil in with the ash so that grass might actually grow and seed it. Relocate the lawn chair and bench that were plopped beside the fire pit. Relocate the remaining large logs and lumber that were stacked waiting to be burned. Get rid of the dirt pile.

Between the fire pit and the house is the biggest undertaking of the year, the turnaround. This former mountain goat territory has been leveled, fertilized with loads and loads of manure and rototilled. I built a brick pathway across the middle of the garden and planted some bushes, hostas, trees, tomatoes and lettuce.

Still to do: Finish the pathway–I need 60-80 more bricks and sand to fill the joints in between. Put a bench beside the path. Pull the weeds that have sprung up. Plant a whole lot of plants. Seriously. This thing is going to eat plants.

So it’s probably obvious from this post that I can’t just focus on what we’ve done so far. Although looking at the photos above, I am able to see the transformation happening. Slowly, ever so slowly, it’s starting to look a little more like the picture in my head (or on my Pinterest board).

How are you doing on your summer to-do list? Are you looking ahead at what’s yet to do? Anyone have any tips for living in the moment and appreciating what I’ve done so far?

Landscaping… the long list

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I cannot bring myself to write a list of everything I want to do for renovations in the house, but for some reason I have no problem doing a master list for the landscaping outside.

Alright, I’ll admit it. That’s a little overwhelming.

There’s obviously a lot to be done, so it’s a matter of prioritizing what part of our 129 acres we want to focus on. This year, it’s the residential area.

And just to make things a little clearer than the animation above, here’s the plan for this year.

That’s manageable, right? As you saw at the beginning of the week, we’ve already made some progress on the turn around, the flowerbeds and the pond shore. Maybe by the end of the growing season, we’ll have the property in shape.

The long term plan will take who knows how long.

I’ve decided my goal when it comes to outside work is to transition from landscaping to gardening. Weeding flowerbeds is much more manageable than building them.

How do you handle renovations and landscaping at your house? Do you write everything down or just keep a mental list? What are you hoping to accomplish this summer?

Death by landscaping

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I am dead.

I’ve been working on a lovely introduction to this post referencing the Secret Garden and the joy of tending a neglected garden. But it’s not coming together for me, and I lack the mental power to make it work. Because I am dead.

You never heard any of the characters from the Secret Garden say, “I am dead. This garden has killed me.” Let’s be honest here, Ben probably said it, but Frances Hodgson Burnett did not include it in her story of love, childhood and horticulture.

In my story of love, adulthood, responsibility, country living and horticulture, landscaping has started.

The turn around has gone from mountain goat terrain to a blank slate, thanks mostly to our farmer with his heavy equipment.

I’ve weeded one flowerbed and my mother-in-law tackled two more. (All of the plant pots were left by the last owners. The plants are still alive, so I’ll be planting them soon on the blank slate of the turn around).

My father-in-law trimmed some of the trees and stumps around the pond. We still have a ways to go before we can actually mow the shore, but I’ve staked out the new fire pit, and we have lots of wood ready to burn.

Matt, my Dad and I dismantled one of our biggest rock piles on the property–and it only took us four hours.

I started building a new flower garden around the well head. And this is when I died.

Last year’s landscaping efforts were limited to some very cursory grass cutting. The property was unkempt when we bought it, and our neglect over the past year while we focused on the basement reno made it worse.

The amount of work required to bring a garden back after years and years of neglect is never mentioned in the Secret Garden. Sure there’s a bit of pruning and weeding, but mostly it’s romance and roses.

In the category of things get worse before they get better, even our efforts at clean up have led to more mess. Drilling the new well and trenching new waterlines destroyed one established flowerbed and left lumpy piles of very hard dirt in its place. Burning brush and scrap lumber as we’ve tried to pick up around the property resulted a mountain of ash and a half scorched spruce tree.

Landscaping was at the top of the list on my home goals for this year, and I will get a handle on the situation outside, even if it kills me.

“I could be Thor!”

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Pop quiz:

You’re walking in the forest and you see this tree.

What do you do?

Marvel over the crack and continue on with the hike. Nature will take care of itself.
Marvel over the crack and make a note to invite your father-in-law over with his chainsaw.
Marvel over the crack and decide that it’s too dangerous to leave and go find a saw to deal with it yourself.
Marvel over the crack. Poke sticks in the crack to try and lever the tree off the stump. Fail. Decide that this tree must come down right this minute. Decide that the best tool will be a sledge hammer. Saw, pshaw.

So my answer would probably be ‘B,’ but of course my resident lumberjack saw an opportunity to advance from his most recent experience felling a tree with an ax to be even more manly. The words “I could be Thor!” did in fact come out of his mouth.

A couple of hard whacks popped the tree off its stump–all while I watched and photographed from a safe distance. However, the tree is still standing more vertical than horizontal, branches tangled in his closest neighbour.

We are now moving on to plan B.

What would you do? Any idea what made the tree crack like that? We had a big ice storm the other week, so it could have been the weight of the ice, but other trees that came down didn’t crack horizontally across the trunk. Anyone else living with someone who fancies himself a god?

Matt the lumberjack

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Like Good Friday dinner and chocolate bunnies, lumberjacking seems to have become an Easter tradition for us. Last year on Easter weekend, we spent pretty much the whole time cutting and splitting firewood.

This year, it was only one tree, but traditional logging techniques were Matt’s method of choice.

This spruce tree has not been doing well. It needed to be taken down, and now was the time before the sap started to flow and the trees around it came into bud.

We don’t yet have a chainsaw of our own, but Matt’s been looking for an excuse to chop down a tree with an ax, so he was quite enthused to go to work.

The trunk, now stripped of boughs, is laying beside the fire pit. We’ll cut it into lengths and split it one day when we can borrow Matt’s dad’s saws and splitter–the novelty of lumberjacking lasts only so long.

How did you spend your Easter weekend? Did the Easter bunny pay you a visit? We had lots of chocolates, including my favourite Cadbury cream eggs. Are there any other wannabe lumberjacks out there? Do you have any unique Easter traditions?

The doughnut tree

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Outside the front door, what looks like a regular maple tree is not. It is a doughnut tree.

Doughnut trees are sneaky. Under the canopy of leaves in the spring and summer, you forget that they bear a remarkable fruit. However, as the tree sheds its leaves in the fall, the doughnuts become visible again.

The question is though, how does one pick a doughnut?

Any suggestions?

To do: Relax

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As sad as it may seem, I put “hike” on my holiday to-do list.

Yes, I have to actually make plans to relax.

However, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be.

Beginning on Christmas Eve, Matt and I ended up taking near daily walks across the fields and through the forest.

I snapped this shot back in the woods late one afternoon.

This is exactly why I wanted a large property.

I hope that you have a relaxing weekend.

Growing free

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

When we had the nephews at the farm two weeks ago, the tall one and I went to work on task #10 on the fall to-do list: remove stakes from established trees and stake the new trees that we planted this spring. The first step was to unshackle the trees from the cuffs that were wrapped around them. Some were tied with rope, some had sections of garden hose, some had wire. All were snug. Some were strangling. It was quite an arboreal torture chamber we were running here.

No tree emerged unscathed. Some are simply scarred.

Others are permanently deformed.

We cut the wires and hoses and ropes out of the trees as best we could. Where we ran into trouble was the stakes. The nephew and I did fairly well on the first few trees rocking the stakes back and forth to loosen them up and then pulling them out in a coordinated effort. However, after he left and it was up to Matt and me, the rest of the stakes held strong.

We must have been missing the magic touch, because no matter how much we wiggled the stakes we couldn’t get them to budge.

In desperation, Matt went and got Wiley, and I found a rope. We tied the rope to the stake and attached the other end to Wiley’s loader. Then Matt raised the bucket, the rope snapped, and the stake stayed where it was.

I went and got a chain. We hooked everything together, and Matt raised the bucket again. And the front wheels of the tractor lifted off the ground.

We spent a while adjusting the chain, adjusting the tractor, tugging on the stake and only succeeded in bending it.

The conclusion I came to is that the stakes have been in the ground so long that the tree roots must have grown around the metal. I don’t think we’re going to get them out. Above ground, the trees are free. I can only hope they survive their ordeal and continue to grow. Matt, however, is a bit traumatized from his wheelie on the tractor, so we’re calling this job good enough for now. The rest of the stakes–removing them from the older trees and adding them to the new trees–can wait until spring.

Fall colours on the farm

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Matt and I took full advantage of all three days of the Thanksgiving holiday to catch up with family, food and, of course, work around the farm.

In between all of the visiting, eating and working, I went for a wander. The autumn leaves were at their peak everywhere I looked, so this means I have lots of pictures from all around the property.

The reds, golds, browns and greens of autumn foliage under a moody fall sky, with my favourite tree on the whole farm in the centre.

Looking up into the underside of my favourite tree

Up in the canopy in the back forest

Fallen leaves down on the forest floor

A bright orange maple on the shore of the pond

Coloured leaves on the border of the marshland at the back field

Matt hikes along the trail on the east side of the back forest

My favourite tree all dressed up for fall

What’s fall looking like where you are? Have you gone for a hike in a fall forest yet? How did you spend your long weekend?

Taste is more than skin deep

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Our beautiful spring blossoms have become slightly gnarly apples.

Nothing personal, but they’re just not that pretty

The tree appears to be pretty ancient and wild, so I didn’t have high hopes for its fruit. Especially when they turned out all lumpy and dimpled.

However, being the selfless individual that I am, I did pick one for a taste test to satisfy your curiosity.

First bite of my gnarly apple fresh off the tree

Surprisingly, it was really good. Nice and crisp and sweet. The dimples were just dimples and despite the apple’s appearance the taste did not suffer.

The expression on my face is not reflective of the taste of the apple. I think I was still giving photography instructions to Matt at this point. I’m starting to realize why there aren’t more photos of me on this blog. And yes, I did cut my hair, and yes, I am looking exhausted. I think this drywall blitz is starting to wear me out.

Has anyone else gone apple picking yet this fall? What’s your favourite kind?