Putting the Hard in Hardscape

My colorized version of the landscape plan

As I mentioned in my last post, I have this landscape plan now, and it calls for lots of pretty plants, and I also have 12 pounds of native grass seed to spread.  Around the house will be a nice fescue that can be left long or mowed, and the rest will be a native erosion-control blend.  Neither should require much water once established.

I want to get as much of the tractor work done as I can before I start planting, so I don't tear everything up.  Here's where we are so far:

First thing, adios upper driveway.  I don't need it, and being uphill, it was causing a lot of my erosion problems.  So I plowed it under. If I have any grass seed left, I'll sprinkle some, but the native weeds will eventually fill it in.

Next, I dug out a space for a paving-stone patio.

The stones were on sale, so I ordered them now before the price goes up.  Not sure how soon I'll get around to all the knee-crawling this job will involve...

Installed the boulders in two groups.  They are dug into the ground to make them look more natural and also to avoid hidey-holes for Mr. Snake. One group on each side of the house.

 

The rocks are actually kind of cool.  They're crystalline white, and some even have lichens (or something) growing on them.  They must be native to this area, because they came from an outcropping on the property right next door.

Curiously though, there are zero rocks on my entire five acres. Not even little ones.  I think the glacier came through here and wiped the place clean.

One thing I did find after grading the driveway was a leftover from a previous user of this land: barbed wire.  There are some posts sticking out of the ground down near the road that an old-timer told me were part of a cattle loading ramp.

Yesterday was the day that put the hard in hardscape.  I had graded a path from the house to the shop and set up some bender board, and by yesterday things had dried out enough to start putting the dirt back in.

 

I had hoped to use the tractor for this job, but it didn't turn out to be practical, so it was one wheelbarrow at a time. This is as far as I got yesterday. Once the path is done, I'll also need to put back the dirt on both sides of it.

Most people buy decomposed granite for this job, but that's pretty much what my ground is, so I'm just putting back in what I took out.  I'm over-filling the space, because I'll be spraying it with this glue-like binder, then tamping it down to the top of the bender board.

Dirt glue, AKA pathway stabilizer

I want delivery drivers to start going around the oak tree instead of just pulling up in front of the house, so the next job yesterday was trimming the low-hanging branches so even the big UPS truck can get around without scraping his roof.

Once the tree was trimmed, I took a few more passes around it  with the tractor, then staked off the driveway. The area between the tape and the house will be grass and plantings.

And Just in case drivers were confused by the tape...

This morning, I raked the large area in front of the house and spread the first of the grass seed. I have three long hoses hooked up to I can hand water a couple times a day until the seeds are set.

Life goes on in the mean time.  I'm still working on the ship model case in the shop, batteries need attending to every month...

  

And just to keep us on our toes, the heavens provided a little late-season snow a couple days ago.  Today it was in the 70s.  Go figure.

I'm not letting a little case of quarantine slow me down.  I'm having fun, and I hope you are too. Stay home and do some of those projects you've been putting off.

Remember,

The News From Lake Morena

A Touch of Red Might Help

I'll be 75 in August, so it was time for a red pickup truck.

Actually, the timing had less to do with my age and more to do with rocks...

It All Started With Landscaping

My beloved Sábado is a pleasant place, but aside from the mustard weed (which will eventually take over the earth) it's kind of a barren wasteland. The ground is sandy, so when it rains, erosion becomes a big problem.  Thank God (and the Medinas) I have the old Ford tractor to smooth things out, or I'd be living in the Grand Canyon.

Things got so bad down by the road that I had to put down a load of golf ball-size rocks to fill the ditch, since the regular gravel just washed away.

So I brought in an expert

I know nothing about plants or landscape design, so I hired a local designer to make me a plan that used only native plants and grasses. She did a nice job of understanding the place and how I use it, and came up with this plan.

Barely visible at this scale are some small dark spots.  Those are rocks.  Boulders.  There are no rocks on this entire property, but the designer insisted I need boulders to enhance the 'natural' look.

Luckily, my new neighbors to the north had some lovely white crystalline rocks that they were happy to donate to the cause, so I loaded up the tractor bucket, the neighbor's Bobcat bucket, and my truck bed with big white bolders.

That's when the trouble started...

Loading these monsters into the truck using the tractor bucket, and then unloading them took a toll on the truck (predictably, I now realize...) The bed was dented and the tailgate bent, and there were a few other owies to the poor 14-year-old pickup.

I called my insurance agent to find out if Comprehensive covered idiots dropping huge rocks on a truck and was assured that it did, so I took it to the body shop.  The next day State Farm called to say they were totaling the thing, since it would cost more to repair than it was worth. They were going to pay me an obscene amount (relatively speaking...) to send an otherwise perfectly good truck to the salvage yard. Kind of broke my heart, but they said she would be permanently saddled with the registration caveat "Salvage" if I decided to keep her.

Nowadays you can buy a car online, so I sat down at the computer and found this beautiful 2016 Ford F-150 with less than 10,000 miles on it. It had been a company truck for an outfit that must have gone out of business or something, and it's essentially a new vehicle, still covered under factory warrantee.

So I guess my rock-hauling days are over, and I have a car payment again and something that deserves getting washed more often than every time it rains.

But I'm in love.

I'm still a little nervous driving such a nice big truck though.  I stopped for coffee on the way home from the dealer and this is where I parked.

The Sun Shines Bright on my Old Morena Home

The same new neighbors who gave me the rocks, Eric and Ofelia, also gave me two big solar panels. (That's what you call a good neighbor!) I ordered up the mounting hardware and a new charge controller, and took advantage of a visit by my favorite brother-in-law Danny to get them installed on the shop roof.

I now have nearly 25% more solar capacity and the batteries are back up to 100% before lunch!

Dan The Man

I lay in supplies when Danny comes

Other good friends Sarah and Scott had a big elm tree die in their yard, so with a lot of help from Macey and another neighbor I call Rancher Rick, I now have a full wood shed ready for next winter.

In the Shop

Haven't made much progress on the shop remodel, but I did manage to build a little cabinet for my drills.

And Danny and I made an Aggravation board for his daughter.  Now the other daughter and a cousin want one.

 

The big project at the moment is a case for a large, full-rigged model of HMS Victory built by old buddy Bruce. The case looks like a simple structure, but will probably consist of nearly 100 individual pieces by the time it's done.

Need to get this thing finished before I can start on landscaping.

And of Course I Voted

Hope you did too!

That's the news for now.  Stay tuned!