The yard crew showed up bright and early Monday morning to tackle the mowing, weed-eating and the removal of the mounds of wood chips where the tree stumps were ground back in March.
Wow. We had no idea what a chore that was going to be. They had to use a pickax to break up the mounds of chips due to grass roots winding through all the mounds. And the chips were saturated with water all the way to below ground level. It’s a three man crew with two of them on huge zero-turn mowers and the third doing the weed-eating and blowing the grass clippings away from the house. He started on the first mound while the others will still mowing.
After the guys who were mowing were done with that chore the moving of the mounds of wood chips went much more quickly. Still, it took them over an hour just for that when it normally takes forty-five minutes to an hour to mow the three acres and trim around the house, shop and all of the trees.
Looking out across the yard I had a thought. I want some raised flower beds and why not put some of them where the wood chips were? The tree stumps were ground well below ground level. It wouldn’t be that difficult to build some square frames to set on top of these spots and fill them will soil and let is settle over the summer and do some planting in the fall. The iris plants do better when moved in the fall. It’s a thought. We could set aside this area for veggies and put the flowers and herbs out near the yucca plants.
The huge mound of wood chips can be used as mulch in the beds with the most of it going out to the farm for Audrey to use in her plantings. Those big sections of pine tree trunks are for the farm as well. I’m not sure what she has planned but we’ll need to get someone to move them. Those suckers are heavy and about four to five feet long each.
While we were celebrating Rachel’s birthday on Sunday I got some photos of the hens.
Audrey said they should begin laying before long and she has plans to greatly enlarge their enclosure and add to the flock this fall.
Rural Texas Knitter 