My son works in a high end restaurant in the evenings. He gets in late at night. I found his Mother’s Day gifts on the counter when I got up. (The meal was in the fridge.) Sometimes he surprises me!
I got busy early and got as much prep work done for the woodbee as I could. I planned to mow the yard, as I usually do on Sunday mornings and it takes all morning.
I got started at 9:30 and finished around noon. I’d gone around and deadheaded all the gone by daffodils and tulips too.
I took these of the little violas on the Back Porch garden. At top, you can see one of the brown buds. There were a lot of these in this garden and the New East garden. I don’t know why.
I amended the soil the same as the other gardens. I can’t help but think it has to do with rain water drainage. This is a tiny garden and a lot of rain comes off the roof here. There is a gutter, but it still flows into this garden some with heavy rain.
This is the wood ash pile, about 3 years worth or more. I no longer use wood ash as my potassium is too high in the gardens. So I offered it on the BuyNothing and Gardeners groups.
I rested for a couple hours and then started getting set-up outside. Tom thought using sleds again would be a good idea, so I got all of them out.
When people arrived at 3PM we got all the stuff (foreground) out of the shed and started hauling wood.
Loran (overalls) was the organizer and she spent the whole time in the shed stacking. They had brought their dog and he was in there too, on the other side of the shed.
My intern got many of these shots on my camera, which was not working well for her. This is me and her sister; Loran is in background.
We started out with the expected 5 adults and there was one little boy about 3 years old. But as time went on, more people arrived, and we ended up with 11 not counting me. I joked with my intern that now I HAD to go tag saling, as I don’t have enough sleds and might find more out there.
The wood guys had warned me that there was a good amount of rotten wood in the pile. The processor cuts all of it and they couldn’t prevent the bad stuff from being added.
So as we went along we tossed the punky stuff over the bank. That was the little boy’s job. He also had the job of hauling the empty sleds back to the pile. But towards the end he mostly played in the dust on the slope. He was one dirty kid!
It took us nearly 3 hours but the mountain of wood was gone. The pile in the front is rotten stuff. I still have a few loads of odd shaped pieces to get into the shed, and some pressure treated posts to remove from this mess. Then I will call the wood guys and they will push the whole mess over the bank.
Then I hope to smooth it out and plant grass and try to keep it mowed, like I used to. I hope to get the briars cut back around the shelter and mow that too.
The wood guys thought there was about 2½ cords in the pile. I think at least ½ cord went over the bank. We filled the shed about ¾ full. This wood will be used in autumn and spring for fires that don’t need to push a lot of heat.
I did a small amount of clean up while I waited for the dinner my son had given me to heat up. My window lady, who makes the most wonderful soups and often brings me some, stopped by with a fish chowder she made.
On Monday I hope to finish cleaning up inside, get laundry done, and Tom invited me to a recital for the homeschoolers in the evening. There’s a bring your own dinner at suppertime and I will be bringing the chowder. We’ll see how much rest I get during the day and how I am feeling.
It would also have been our 35th wedding anniversary. There are lily of the valley, but it was too cold all weekend for the lilacs to open. They will open for sure because we soar into the 80’s by the end of the week.