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,