Living Off the Land

Let's actually do a post before 10:30 at night to see if I can stay awake for it...

Update on the garden: The concrete footing for the pond and for the first three beehives was poured today. Stripping of the bark off all the juniper cedar limbs that will be used for the garden furniture and structures continues apace with the stripped bark being used as a large-format ground cover in the cacti and on the back sides of the beds, and the outlining branches for the paths were all laid today. In general the week felt slow, like very little was accomplished, but in reality what got done was seed work for the next stages that is going to make the next parts go quickly. That's the hope anyway.

Sunday the bees come home to roost (like chickens, but smaller), and beginning Monday--except for the stream in the backyard, work is going to go from top to bottom of the property from now forward. We got a little off course by having live projects all over the yard. In some ways it made sense--work by task rather than by area so that, e.g., all of the weeding that needed to be done was done at once--front and back. But now we are moving into quantities of materials that make having all of them delivered at once for the entire yard impractical so we are going to go from man-to-man defense to playing the zone, as Dave used to say to describe alternative parenting strategies.

In the new garden--the top of the world--the pond walls will be set Monday, poly-vinyl will go down on the path areas, the irrigation pipe will be put down on top of it running to each of the new beds, and then the decomposed granite will be laid on all the paths. Those steps right there are going to make everything feel so much more done! Then it's just getting the rest of the pond and bog pond put together and beginning on the furniture. The furniture for that area is going to take some time as it's going to be made from the reclaimed limbs of juniper cedar and so will be a little more free-form and artistic and a little less quick. There are a couple of benches, a swing stand, trellis arches, obelisks for vines, and other cool wooden art pieces that will be designed as we go.

As they're finishing in the top of the world, the dirt for the front beds will be delivered and all the existing front beds needing it will be topped off, then covered with weed cloth, and mulched. Then we're getting several loads of river rock delivered. The existing river rock areas will be raked clear, weed cloth laid, the rock raked back over the top, and the new rock added to freshen and fill it up. The rain garden in the front is being held for later, and we're not even going around to the garage side of the front yard (where the deck in front of the sunroom is going to be replaced) for now.

A planter inspiration for the herb garden

After the front is done, we'll run decomposed granite down the north side of the house, and another boatload of topsoil will be delivered  for the backyard beds. Wash, rinse, repeat on filling the beds with new dirt, weed cloth, and mulch. Put mulch in the area under the live oaks, add some new yellow jasmine to the white jasmine growing up the deck, and the basic gardening is done back there. I will add a few more shrubs, plants and trees, but most of the hernage is done. Fun, creative touches to the back include tumbling recycled glass in a cement mixer to make into mulch for a couple of bed/walkways,  and building vertical, staggered-height boxes on the stone patio for herb garden.

The electrician is coming Monday to rewire the stream with 220, and to put switches for the pumps in the rain barrels up by where I turn on the hose, and revamping the existing hard-wired lighting. With the new wiring for the rain barrel pumps, I can easily switch from purified well water going through the hoses to water from the rain barrels when I'm watering in the backyard. Replacing the irrigation system is up in the air, and I haven't given up on finding a way to distill and use the waste water from our reverse osmosis system on the well. Jay has been working on designing a distiller cannibalized from a solar hot water heater that looks like it will process about 4-6 gallons of usable water an hour from any water source without breaking the bank...

...And with one thing and another (dinner and Serenity for two) it's now 10:00. If I really want to finish before 10:30, I should stop now. More garden news (and an update on the solar system approval) as it happens.