Garden Projects Two - 2010

I would call it big and expensive

:)

Oh, yeah, nice pergola, Sherrie! I'd love one of those. I think it's called a pergola. ??? That's like a real fancy kind. Most I've seen are square and made of wood with flat tops.

Allison, the Zen bird feeder stand is very nice. I couldn't use something like cause of all the squirrels. I have to use squirrel proof feeders.

Karen

oh yeah.. that would be trashed in my garden

Yes, you have bears. That's much worse than squirrels.

Karen

It could also be called a wrought iron or castiron gazebo.... I am going to the acution and if it goes for 3-4 hunderd bucks I will own the darn thing. Along with other things.

Good luck! I will be jealous if you win!

Karen

good luck Sherrie!!!

I just put a cheap feeder back out... since no one has seen old smokey lately

interested to see how you do sherrie - hard to tell how big it is - any idea?

slow day today - had to go food shopping with the better half and talked to my neighbors for a while - only was able to transplant the other huge vib (man were they heavy), transplanted the incrediball hydrangea to the back middle of the bed where i took out the vibs - and planted a smoke bush on one side of it - have another smoke bush for the other side and need to get some dirt to fill in the crater left from the vib - also did some raking down back by the water to kill and hour.

hope to get a couple more transplants done tomorrow before the rain hits here.

Needed to do some transplanting, but spent the afternoon at the theater instead.

I raked and raked, then raked some more. Then I pruned and pruned some more. I did lay out the new bed, but no digging yet. I thought I should do the dreary work first. Here is a picture of part of the new bed. I outlined it with raked pine needles, so I could see it from the upstairs. I couldn't get a picture of all of it as it runs back up the hill. I see I need to tweak it as it is too round at the end. Can't wait to start. Patti

we had fun plucking up all the stakes from christmas that we couldn't get out before... Randy realized we needed a larger container to hold all that stuff.. between all the used zip ties & electrical tape we picked up... and clean up in the yard.. we have a lot of trash .. Randy said he is going to go buy a case of beer for the garbage guys before he puts all that stuff out.. think we made 14 or 16 large garbage bags this weekend .. and we have to get rid of an old swing that has been toast for a while.. and we are not close to being spring ready yet

Allison, If I put a stag like that on my lawn one of my neighbors would shot it! LOL! :-) Bill I've often thought about carving a lantern into one of my more pillar shape stones and placing the Drive and a solar LED in the stone would be cool. All my store work has to tolerate frequent freeze, thaw cycles. The problem is I add a lot of compost or mushroom soil every year and my freeze proof walls fall inward as the compost degrades (NEVER ENDING STORY) since they are constructed at about a 10 to 15 degree inlay to compensate for our freeze thaw cycle. Ric

Patti
Remember the lawn mower
The new bed looks great.

patti your alberta spruce needs a trim:) nice bed - saturday i also did the second floor window check on some edging and had to get rid of the snake line and smooth it out.

ric how would you carve out the stone? the stone blade i am using with my circular saw leaves blade lines behind - the first stone i cut out was a very heavy granite i think - not easy to chip and i ended up cracking the stone on a fault line i could not see - have another softer granite stone i will try next - not happy though the first stone was a perfect shape.

Ge1836, Ha, we don't have a lawn mower on Nantucket. That is the one thing we pay to have done. Plus the yard was littered with sticks. The raking gets rid of the thatch too. It sort of grounds me. Groan.

Wha, I can't decide whether to leave the "Bad Hair Day" that old Albert is having or trim it. Depends on whether we have the energy to drag a ladder out to it.

My pal from Brooklyn emailed yesterday that he wants to come up for at least a week in April to do some serious physical outside work. He is retired and loves being outside. No garden in NY. He is great at the destruction part and loves running the chainsaw and weed whacker.

I think I will turn him loose on the wild untouched part of our property, after I flag anything that should be saved. He started working on the upper end or it last year by cutting a path through to get to it, but it is a 1/2 acre of terrible tangle as was all of our property when we bought it in 1981.

He can make a big burn pile with all the stuff he takes down in the middle of it, as we can't see this area from the house or garden. We can burn the debris next winter. Then we can fence in part of it for a big veg and fruit garden. But not this year as he thinks we can. His mind runs faster and more grander than even mine. Patti

Does he have a brother? or clone?

Many from Brooklyn enjoy destroying and burning.

OMG cracks me up Victor,anyone you have personal knowledge of?

Ha, he he grew up as the son of an Air Force General, but not in Brooklyn. Spent a lot of his youth in Paris. He did a tour in VN then worked for the NYT for 30 years after a few years of living in Nantucket pounding nails or working in a restaurant kitchen. So I am not sure where he most honed his need to smash and burn. Plus he did go to Burning Man for the last two years. No clone available as he is all mine! Patti

I thought it might be something like that.

does he uproot what he takes down?

Ah - the NYT explains it.

out in the woods looking for rock today i noticed the first tick of the year on my thigh when i got home.

They are around - even in cold weather. Just not so active.

must have been on one of the rocks i was relocating. it did not get much, easy to pull off.

Wha, He will pull out what he can and DH and I will help with it. We do use the truck with a come along to help at times. We will save anything big or interesting. Lots of space on a south facing slope. We don't want to do anything that requires heavy equipment and money.

We already have a mountain of stuff to burn from when DH and I cleared part of the woods a 8 years ago adjacent to this space. It took us a long time working all fall and anytime we could in the winter until mid summer. So the first job now will be to make a cleared space in the middle to establish a burn pit. Then we will haul all the existing stuff to there and then start clearing around it before we burn. I think we can get a permit until May. I love bushwhacking too.

The collage shows the part of the woods we cleared that runs down to the uncleared space and a picture of the driveway to our neighbors which shows the slope that we own down to the turn in the road. It is a pie shaped piece of land. We could build a smaller second house on it someday for us.

Sorry about the tick, I get a big blast of antibiotic whenever I get bitten. I don't even wait for it to be tested. Hope the rock was a good one!!!
Patti

all four were perfect for bird baths, already cut one up and it chips pretty easily. i only get the antibiotic's if they are on for more than 24 hours - this guy probably was not on for more than an hour if that - my doc will not prescribe them unless i lie about the 24 hours and then argue about not needing an office visit so he can nod his head like chevy chase and say yep tick bite.

have the red x picture here now so i can't see the photo - sounds like hard work similar to what i did clearing out down by the wet lands last fall - shovel, pick axe, and loopers are in for some exercise!

Pick axe is a good thing! I don't have one here in Nantucket, but do in Vt, so I should bring it down for this job. I got a new long handled Black & Decker Ropeless tree prunner this spring. It work well for small high branches. I have a gas powered heavy duty whacker with two heavy duty blades as well as a string attachment. Then we will bring the chain saws out too. I could use a mule!

I have a doctor who is great about not needing to always see me just to run up an office visit bill especially about ticks. I always seem to get bitten on a weekend and the 24 to 48 hour time frame is important.

Here is a better picture of the new bed to be. I will start it as soon as the weather allows. We have friends staying with us this week, which will slow things down. They are not the digging kind. But I may try to do a Tom Sawyer with them. Patti

Good luck and have fun!

bbrookrd

wonderful place you have there. how much acreage? You need goats they will take care of it within a year....LOL

At least mine did and they were small, no telling what the larger breeds would be able to do... then only thing is if you want some of the smaller trees, they might not make it as the goats like the trees too....

Janet

It will be a great looking garden when finished, Patti...wish I could borrow your friend..I have a fence that needs to be taken down, & a huge rose trunk yanked out...and that's just the begining.

Very nice Patti

Thanks, we have 2.6 acres. I just wish we knew exactly where the boundaries posts are. It is an odd shape as is our neighbors property. The neighbor use to be my best friend who owned our property before selling us some of hers, so we could live next door to each other. Then she sold her house to a Dr. who never lived in it but flipped it after spending big bucks to tart it up. It has since been sold again, but rarely used to an Architect from Princeton.

The problem is that we years ago probably planted trees on my friends property as the boundary line didn't matter to either of us, just the look. I now think, after looking at one of those google map aerial views, that some of the trees and part of our deer fence is on their property. I know we have given them more space in other areas which is actually closer to their house, by not fencing that part in. They have not made any attempt to meet us, though we have left them notes and returned some packages delivered in error to us to their house and we have called their caretaker when their alarms were going off etc. so I am not sure whether to let lying dogs lie. I may call to see how much it would cost to get the property resurveyed to see where we have a problem. I am sure they must know what they bought.

The 1/2 acre I want to clear is the part of our property that they will see the most from one end of their house and driveway. So seeing us back there clearing might make them nervous and get nasty about the part of our deer fence on their property. We are talking about a small stretch of fence 50 to 75 feet along the line encroaching a from a foot to a few feet at most in places. They have a guest house and shed already, so they can't build another structure., except put in a pool or tennis court.

When we built we sighted the houses together, so as to have views and privacy from each other, so that part is good. In the collage the viburnums are on our property, but the cedars that we planted are most likely not. eek! The deer fence runs behind those cedars. double eek! The other picture shows the side of their house and the part we will clear as well as their guest house behind trees that they own, which is below and behind the house adjacent to the part we will clear. They do own a bit of buffer between their drive and our uncleared part. Dilemma.

Goats, I love goats....but sheep with the historical connection and Nantucket and having two border collies would make more sense. Wonder if I could rent a few for the summer? Patti

sounds like you will not need to worry about the cedars regardless of where the property line is as they do not seem to care based on the none response's in the past.

might be a good idea to give them a heads up on the clearing plans and suggest some trees to plant as a buffer - maybe more cedar although i think they take some time to grow. having the survey done before hand will let you know your options in any case.

i can remember when i lived a couples towns over - i took out the plot plan, measured and decided to plant hemlocks down the property line - guy next door went NUTS claiming i was on his property when i started digging - had the survey done and he lost more land - to his credit he apologized although did not help dig the 10 holes for the 5 ft. hemlocks:)

just tried to order 10 yards of dirt - had called yesterday afternoon and no one there - had to leave a message for them today - the on hold music was christmas tunes?? - i might be a tad early for them:)

did order 10 yards of compost from the town set for delivery a week from friday - i mix it with the dirt.

Is your town compost free?
We have free mulch, but its only shredded once. Big sticks in it and I found a slat from a Krate once. I used it for kindling.

no $15 per yard

When we bought our land, the seller told us our lot went from a pear tree on one side to an apple tree on the other (we live in a former orchard). Both trees are long gone, but since we were friends with both neighbors, nobody minded....one neighbor is still there, the other house has sold several times, if they know where the property lines are, they're the only ones! The other neighbor tried to give me some of her land last summer, but since no one knows where the boundaries are, it's probably our land to begin with since I vaguely remember where the pear tree was.

Could mean trouble down the road.

We got almost 3 acres and I dont know where the lines are. I have an idea but dont care.