Taking Shape

The yard is slowly coming together. I've built paths with our pile of wood from the ligustrum, hackberry, crepe myrtle, and red bud that got chopped down. In my dream world these paths will eventually have some kind of stepping stones with thyme or sedum growing between.

I laid these areas out just to get an idea of where I might want to plant things.  It was a very organic process. Didn't really think about it much. 

There is an incredible amount of satisfaction to seeing the paths laid out because it makes it easier to visualize the future of the yard. It also gives us a chance to try out the paths ways  and adjust them as needed.  So far, the paths are working very well indeed.

Backyard 2

More of the backyard. 

Here is a view of the patio. That tree in the middle is a Pecan. Sadly, not the easy to take care of native variety, but a fruit variety. Translation, needs more care and is more likely to produce falling limbs and tiny pecans when not given that care. It is very messy. I don't like  it very much, maybe I would like it better if I could actually eat pecans but they are not happy tummy food for me. The other evil is that birds love the pecan tree and not the pretty, interesting birds, but the evil grackles, so one must be careful walking or sitting on the patio. Someday, we would like to put some kind of covering on the patio. I guess the pecan is useful in that it does shade the house and it is kind of pretty, but I'm not sure it is worth the constant mess. Plus, pecan trees also put out some kind of toxin to prevent competition from other plants. Sadly, ligustrum can compete pretty well. 

One of the major things that I am trying to keep in my head as I plan out what to do for the backyard is the view out of this window. It is really the only view we will have of the majority of the backyard from inside the house.  Right now, I really enjoy seeing my alligator juniper sway in the wind from the living room. I hope I can manage to plant other happy green things that will go with the juniper.

Most of the view out of this window is the difficult part of the yard. The back gate, the yard section with the most ligustrum roots, and lots of dry, dusty bare ground with the occasional dead weed.

I don't yet have picture of the view out of the french doors from inside the living room. We don't have any pictures of what it originally look like any way. I've planted stuff and mulched so it looks pretty happy. I will take pictures of it later and add it to the backyard updates that will be coming out fairly soonish.

The backyard is changing faster than I can keep up with on this blog. I will have some exciting new pictures next week. I just spent the evening figuring out where I will be planting things in the future and where we will be allowed to walk in the backyard so we don't compress the soil in planting areas. 

The "Man" gave the okay for 4 cubic yards of compost and 2 cubic yards of garden soil which will be delivered in the morning. It got me in gear to figure out some kind of basic plan. The good thing about almost starting from scratch is that one can do anything which is also the bad thing since it is easy to get overwhelmed and not know where to start. I decided that I would just walk around the yard and place logs to mark off my semi-natural walking path tendencies and whatever ended up being enclosed would be enclosed. It seemed to work out  pretty well, but then I just have a hard time imagining yards with plants. I still don't know enough and well even if I did I wouldn't have enough experience with the yard, so who knows how much of this will end up being changed in the future or if somehow it will all just work out. I'm expecting it to all just work out.

I found this cool book at the library called Secrets to Great Soil by Elizabeth Stell which had several easy tests to figure out what kind of soil you have. I tried two of them. I took a spoonful of my soil and added some vinegar and it fizzed which means that it's PH is over 7.5. Not that surprising. I expected my soil to be alkaline which is probably why the alligator juniper is fairly happy.  It turns out that most of the veggies I am planning to put in my garden this year like broccoli and cabbage like slightly alkaline soil. I suspect mine is probably more than slightly, luckily they will be in raised beds. 

The second test is for the soil texture. I took some dirt from the yard that had been dug up threw it in a jar with some water and shook it like crazy. The 3inches of soil ended up with 3 layers: 1 1/2 inches of  sand, 1 inch of silt, 1/2 an inch of clay. I was expecting more clay in my soil. I suspect that the ligustrum actually did something good which was keep the soil from getting too compacted.  I mean to get to any soil I had to dig through lugustrum roots. My soil is 16% clay, 33 % silt, and 50% sand according to the math that the book had me do. I think that makes my soil sandy clay loam. Technically, one needs 20% clay to have clay loam, but 16% is so close. Besides, I forgot to add the dishwashing detergent. I wish the book explained precisely why the dishwashing detergent was necessary. Hrm. I'm going to put some dish detergent in and see if changes anything.

The yard is dusty and dry. Between the "Man" and I, we have dug up quite a few spots in the yard. I am sad to say that I found not a single earthworm. Having only 1 or 2 earthworms is indication that your yard needs serious help. I'm wondering if my yard has any nutrients left. Luckily, I was already planning with the idea that my yard was nutrient depleted. I figured the ligustrum took care of it.  I have my worm bin inside and was figuring I would eventually release some number of them into the wild though they are not the right kind of worms for that, but I like them too much to put them into my yard in its current state and sure instant death. 

I named this blog after my red wiggler earthworm collective. They are the second collective that I have worked with. Ted, the first, died after 4 years of care and learning about earthworms. Ted was killed by cockroaches. They stopped doing pest control at our last apartment.  One week Ted was limping along, the next gone. That is what I get for moving Ted to the garage rather than keeping the collective in the house like I did in the previous apartment.

This new collective is named Wren. Not after the bird, but an escape artist in the Canadian SciFi movie "Cube." When I first got this earthworm collective, I kept finding escaped worms, mostly dried husks. I don't know how they kept getting out and so far from their bin. They have settled in now and are pretty happy. Worms are the bestest housepets. I liken them to the Borg in Star Trek because the general worm philosophy is everything will be assimilated in our space. It's pretty amazing to put in the inedibles of a watermelon  with some newspaper and a month or so later all you got is dark, happy garden stuff and more worms. Ted loved watermelon and Wren is no different. Good thing, I like watermelon too.