Yardwork

Oi. We have all of these huge trees in our backyard, along the fence row, on the side between our dog fence and the neighbors' assorted privacy fences. Well, these trees are all as tall as at least one of the wires leading to the house, so I have to be extra careful cutting them down. In fact, I am going to have to find our rope and pull some of them to me. In the past, I've done tricky take downs where I needed a tree to fall within a given 90 degree region. Yeah, now, because of the placement of wires, to take a tree down, I get to aim for a slice of yard at most half that width. And they are all catalpa and box elder or something, so if I cut them to stumps this year they will be in the wires again in two years. I may ask mom to buy me some sidewalk salt and make a salt/flour paste to smear on the runk and hopefully kill the damned things.

Well, I took down one of the safest trees today. I just had to make sure it didn't fall on the neighbor's privacy fence. Being a catalpa, I sawed about a third of the way through then just pulled it down. (a four or five inch diameter trunk. Those trees are so worthless.

I went out there to get limbs to build a trellis with. The catalpa branches that were a lot thicker than my thumb weren't good enough. I'd put a little stress on the branch and it would snap in half. The box alder or whatever they are were all bendy and would fold in half every time I put them under pressure, so I was stuck with mulberry branches (from the limbs that I'm taking down as soon as mom gets someone's ladder) Yeah, the average diameter of the mulberry branches? About half a centimeter.
I used mostly mulberry and two really thick alder branches for the end posts. I've got a nine foot long four or five foot tall trellis in the front yard now. I only wired a few pieces together then pressure wove the rest together (That actually will stay together better than wiring the whole thing together.) Then after I finished, I put my remaining snow pea plants in the ground. Yay! I still have half a pot of soil left from that, which I think I'll use to make mounds for the artichokes! Oh, the only problem with this trellis is that if something goes wrong, an entire frame of it could go all at once. It is made of six poles sunk into the ground with three sets of branches wired to them horrizontally as a freamework and a bunch of other branches woven among the parts to make the holes smaller. I only had one frame fall apart while I was building it and that was because a box alder branch sneaked through my selection process and I used it in a high pressure spot. It bent double and the whole thing that I had woven it into as the keypoint fell apart.

Well, this puts me one step closer to done with my origional planting plan! I still need to plant the artichokes and the brocciflour, but I need to figure out where they go first. Then a little field collecting and planting of trees and I'm done until something dies or fruits.

The end of Michael's eternal posts about planting things is in sight!