3 Nov: deconstructing spooky plants

Sunday, 3 November 2019

at home

Skooter still sleeping after our breakfast time

We had had just a wee bit of unexpected rain.

I had quite a list of garden projects for today.

First, drag and chop the soft material from the Corridor of Spooky Plants from this pile into the compost bins.

Second, retrieve and crumble up for the compost bins some wood from the old stump next door.

Third, weed and mulch (with some of the root balls from Long Beach hanging baskets) the front driveway bed.

My results:

The soft pile is pretty much dealt with.

The stump is somewhat chopped away.

The bigger chunks went into a pile for little critters.

driveway bed is improved

I have one little stunner of a fall crocus in that bed, with no memory of where I acquired it.

Bob Nold tells me it is the saffron crocus, C. sativus, and adds, “Ever smelled fresh saffron? Give the styles a gentle tug, they’ll come off.”   I will, if they are still there tomorrow (because I am writing this five days later).

Meanwhile, Allan’s project was to run all the woody debris through the Mighty Mac.

the woody pile from the Corridor of Spooky Plants

The Mighty Mac (Allan’s photo0

After awhile, I smelled and saw a cloud of smoke.  Silence reigned as Allan turned the Mighty Mac off and poked about underneath.

Another lesson in how to run the thing: you should clear out underneath now and then.  A belt had broken.  The pile of willow in the background won’t get chopped today.

Allan’s photo

Allan turned to the electric Pencil Sharpener which takes one slim branch at a time.

Allan’s photo

This much of the woody Halloween pile still remained.

Allan’s photo

Allan’s photo

I took all the woody lily and helianthus stalks from his pile and hand chopped them into the compost bins.

There is Halloween in two bins:

The shreddings and chippings…

…went back to the bogsy wood as mulch.  The Pencil Sharpener makes finer debris but takes longer.

The Halloween woody debris pile is gone.

At the very end of tidying up, I had an unfortunate encounter with my Mermaid rose….

…adding one more owie to my right hand. I had on a glove, but only a thin exam glove. (Looks worse than it is,  but it sure did hurt.)

Now Allan’s task of sorting and storing the light strings is all that is left of Halloween.

Tomorrow we must seriously apply ourselves to a week of work, so that task will wait.

Standard time has come upon us with the end of Daylight Saving Time.  It felt glorious to close the curtains at 5 PM and look forward to long, dark evenings with more time to read.

After dark, Allan helped Jenna move one last thing, a heavy tool cabinet, to her Mermaid Sandcastle….

with the help of Don and Jim.

…and then ran all her extra cardboard boxes to the recycling bins at the port.

Tomorrow: back to work with another week of clear weather in the forecast.

 

 

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4 Nov: chipping Halloween

Sunday, 4 November 2018

We “fell back” one hour for the end of daylight saving time.  Unlike most people I know, I relish the two time changes each year.  Now the evenings are good and long for reading and relaxing.  By March, I will be thrilled to have longer evenings for gardening.

We had had this much rain overnight.

Much to our surprise, the weather forecast for today was wrong.  We had a lovely, sunny, rather warm day, perfect for trying out the new chipper shredder, not perfect for the rainy reading day I’d been planning.  We had a large pile of woody branches and stems that had been used for our faux woodsy Halloween grotto.

new chipping machine

I was pleased that, except for when it was chipping a larger branch, its basic sound was no worse than a vacuum cleaner, and it had no annoying whines.  You can read all about it here.

It’s a cutie! The SunJoe electric chipper shredder

One does have to chop all the side branches off of a long branch, because the feeder slot is so narrow.  That is fine with me, as that means there is no way to put your hand in by mistake.

prepping branches for chipping

It did well on lily stems and woody herbaceous stems such as tall Helianthus and Joe Pye Weed.

results with lily stems

and an assortment of branches and stems.

Planter Box Teresa stopped by with a large piece of gauzy white fabric for next year’s Halloween.

I immediately made her examine my compost bins—truly my favourite part of the garden.

Allan says he must reset the sundial for the end of daylight saving time.

Carol and Bill stopped by, as well.  While Teresa and Carol toured the garden (the non compost bin parts), Bill and I talked about my new bathtub, coming soon, I think!  Our house is all plumbed and ready for it; the old tub was a ridiculous tiny thing that had been removed by the time we bought the place; we donated it to some folks who lived in a tiny trailer.

Carol and Teresa tour the garden.

All of the woody part of Halloween filled up this bin:

And the Jack O Lanterns, now going mushy, went into the other plastic bin.

After!

Halloween is now all put away.

Before:

the woody pile

After:

I am definitely envisioning a little garden shed on our land by the Nora house driveway, just big enough for the chipper and the mower, or maybe long and narrow and just big enough for Allan’s boat.  That way, anyone living in the Nora house would see a cute shed rather than our mess of buckets, water trailer, plastic compost bins, and wheelie bin.

The rain did come in the afternoon as Allan was mowing the lawn.  He did manage to finish.

before and after in one photo

I caught up on blogging this evening.  In this busy time, I am reading just a chapter today in The Gardens of Good Hope, Marion Cran’s 1926 memoir about South African gardens.

 

 

 

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