While hacking out a stump in one of our “wild” side gardens, we scared this (harmless) garden or garter snake. He, or she, was very defensive, striking out several times and unwilling to leave the spot. So we left. Amie understood: it’s the snake’s garden too. In any case it brought home the importance of raking the leaves in the more oft used gardens.
And that’s exactly what we were doing.
We were outside all day long, from 10 to 5, we even had our quick lunch out on our new patio. The weather was chilly (in the 40s) but sunny, and we were hot from working hard. We got rid of some piles of stones in the beg garden, opened up the fence for better access to that garden, but mostly raked leaves in the back yard, where the kids play. Witness the huge leaf piles in the corner (it grew even larger after I took the picture).
The stone ring in the foreground was here when we bought the house and we love it. Wild irises grow in it in Spring. Haven’t see any popping up yet. But the peas are germinating! We also collected heaps of pine cones for kindling or hopefully for burning up in my (bee) smoker.
We also booked our lumberjack neighbor to take down four spindly pines in this back yard. He’s giving us a good deal because he won’t have to dispose of the (useless) wood by chipping it or dumping it. Instead we’re going to use it to make a little log house later on, for Amie.
DH did some dumpster diving in our neighbor’s discarded wood dumpster and surfaced with a nice Atlantic cedar log, the perfect size for a gate post. And the Mountain Laurel I put on Freecycle wasn’t a Mountain Laurel, but a Japanese Andromeda. The Freecycler took it anyway. Now I have room for depots, right next to our parking lot.
And now I am going to sleep, because I. Am. Exhausted.
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