9/11

Never Forgive, Never Forget...

Annoying Neighbors

My neighbors had a Labor Day party.  Good for them, that's fine.  They weren't loud or anything.  But we don't have curbs on the streets here.  So parking off-street means parking on lawns.  In this case, mine. 

I looked out the front windows in the afternoon to see 3 cars parked on my front lawn.  That would normally annoy me a bit, but I had just rototilled that area to un-compact the soil so I could plant grass.  Argh!

Yeah, yeah, they have to park "somewhere", but I noticed that they DIDNT park on the host's lawn...  THAT'S what annoyed me.  It's like that was intructions from the host neighbor "park on the neighbor's lawn, not mine"...

I let it go...  I don't like to start fights about small things.  I can run the rototiller over the crushed soil again.  Small things can start bigger arguments.

But the next day, I discovered that the guests backing their cars out from the line of other cars, backed a dozen feet onto my loose soil.  Tire tracks don't lie.

Mumble, grumble, mumble, vague swear word, mumble, grumble...

I hope they don't have another party soon.  Otherwise, I think I may charge for parking.  ;)

Rototillering the Back Yard

Well, the back yard was sure a change from the front!  The front was delivered "topsoil", the backyard was existing soil from the ridge.  What a difference in quality, and not the way you would think!!!  The ridge in the backyard was better soil...

When I finished the first 2" tilling of the front packed soil, I was worried about the backyard because they drove the equipment around there a lot more than in the front.  But when I finished the 2" tilling of the new front soil, I did one experimental row through the back.

The back soil is WONDERFUL!  In spite of all the equipment driven over it, it is (relatively) soft, loose, and fertile-looking.  The surface seemed also hard, but the rototiller just went through it like a spoon through flour...  That part is going to be so easy that I feel better about having to spend time on the front.

Hurray for an easy part to the project!

Planting in the backyard is going to be easy.

The important part is deciding what to plant.  The front yard is easy - lawn (keeps the neighbors happy).  The backyard is more important to me and the cats.  We live THERE when outside.  And we like bugs and butterflies and birds and bees.

So, I want a small meadow of native flowers that will support locals bugs and etc.  I think there will be an edging of 3' shrubs (some to each flower in Spring, Summer, and Fall) and 2 pieces of 225 square feet (21 square meters) meadow (separated by a mowable path).  I have some suitable plants I can divide and plant in clumps (coneflowers, black-eye-susans, goldenrod, and I will buy a large packet of native meadowflower seeds to scatter among them in 1 patch .

The other patch will be the Lysimachia Firecracker that has been bedeviling me in the regular flowerbed.  In a patch I can finally mow around, it won't spread easily.  I love the purple leaves and the yellow flowers, it just isn't a friendly neighbor to other plants.  So it gets it's own spot where it can be controlled.

For the Spring Summer, and Fall blooming shrubs, I am choosing Azaleas for Spring, a Rhododendron for Fall, and I'm not sure about a small Summer-blooming shrub, but considering Knock-out Rose and or a dwarf butterfly bush.  Suggestions for USA Zone 7 are welcome.

When I measure the new area for a scaled layout, I'll post it.

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I do have to add a minor accident.   I was guiding the rototiller along the edge of the drainage easement in the front yard yesterday and I hit a rock.  The rototiller tilted, and of course it tilted in the direction of the drainage easement.  You know how somethings tilt and, just for one brief movement all is seemingly balanced?  And then it falls...

In the wrong direction, of course.

Before I go further, I should mention that it seems to me that everyone has some particular problem that happens to them more often than to others.  One of mine is that gas equipment doesn't like to stop when set to the "stop" position.  They just sputter and cough along refusing to actually stop.  My regular lawn mower does that and I have to use a screwdriver to short-circuit the spark plug to the chassis to stop it.  My gas chain saw does that (when I can get it to start at all).  The rototiller has the same problem.

So there it was, balanced on the digging parts trying to fall into the drainage easement.  It succeeded!  My first thought was DAMN!  My second was "I hope nobody saw that"!  But I set the lever to the stop position and it wouldn't stop.  Of course...

At least the lever that disengages the digging blades (tines) worked.  So there I was with the rototiller on its side in the drainage easement, sputtering.  And besides, in trying to hold the thing up out of the drainage easement, I fell into it myself. 

Need I mention that there are brambles along the edge of the drainage easement at that ONE spot?  Probably not, what else would be there with my luck?  So I picked myself up out of the muddy bottom, pulled the rototiller upright, and got it into reverse and backed it up the side of the drainage easement side.

It's OK to laugh.  I wouldn't be telling you about this if I was easily embarrassed by the occasional failures in daily life.  After I had the rototiller back out of the drainage easement (and turned off), I sat down and laughed too. 

If you can't laugh at yourself, you have a problem...  LOL!

Rototillering The Front Lawn Soil

My Troy-Bilt Pony rototiller is the type with the digging tines at the rear.  The first kind I bought 25 years ago was a front-tine tiller with free-moving wheels, and those are AWEFUL.  The front-tines jump over everything and you mostly have to hold it back to let the tines dig into the soil (It's like making a mule go backwards).  30 minutes of that, and you have put in a full day's work!

The Troy-Bilt (and this is not an ad for them - I'm just really happy with it) has geared wheels and the digging tines behind them.  So the wheels have a set speed and actually prevent the tines from pushing the whole thing forward (mostly).  So you are steering it more than horsing it around.

There is also a sled-like bar under the chassis that controls how deep the tines can dig down.  Trust me, when the soil is hard it sure is easier to let the tines dig down just 2" rather than trying for 6". 

So I went over the entire front area 1-2" deep for a first shot today.  The area is about 2500 square feet (232 square meters).  It took 1.5 hours.  It was difficult to break down the track treads, but I got most of them turned into pellets.  I stopped for the day.  I was exhausted...

That doesn't mean I wasn't pleased with the results.  The hard-dried track-tread marks were all ground up, and that was all I hoped for on the first run-through.  Tomorrow, I will set the depth sled-bar another 2" lower and see how that works. 

I would LIKE to get the new soil tilled up loose to 6" deep (the maximum depth my hand-managed rototiller will allow) so that the grass will grow deep roots and hold the ground against heavy rains. 

There will be some annoyances.  I already discovered there is a large rock firmly in the ground (meaning I couldn't pry it out with a shovel).  And there are a few places where the rototiller just jumps up suddenly suggesting others I don't see yet.

In hindsight, I wish I had just had the contractor dump the 2 truckloads of soil and spread it out myself.  Spreading the soil by rake and shovel would have been easier than the rototillering.  But it seemed a good idea at the time.

But it will all get loosened enough for planting lawn grass while the weather is warm, so all will work out in the end even if I have to do more after-work than I expected.  Looking at the most positive view of this, I'll just say "Who can't use a bit more exercise"?  LOL!

More tomorrow...

New Soil Harder Than I Thought!

I got outside to prepare the bare front yard for new grass seeds, and the condition of the new topsoil wasn't as good as I thought!  It seemed loose enough when the contractor left on Tuesday, and I thought the track-tread of the spreader was light enough to not compact the soil, but I was wrong.

Yesterday, I realized the new soil had hardened like cement and there were deep tread-tracks embedded on it.  YIKES!  I sure can't plant grass on THAT. 

Well, I had expected to have to haul out my old Troy-Bilt Roto-Tiller anyway. 

I did that today.  I hadn't used it in many years, and equipment that sits around unused for 5-10 years doesn't like to start up right away.  But I filled up the gas tank, checked the oil, set the lever to "choke" (that's a good thing, if you don't know), set another lever to "start", and pulled the starter cord. 

Nothing!  20-30 tiring pulls later, nothing!  No big surprise, but I had hoped to get lucky.  I'm no expert with gas engines, but I know some basics.  So... I checked the levers to make sure they seemed to be working.  They were.  I checked the spark plug wire.  It was firmly attached and clean.  So I removed the spark plug itself.  Naturally, my socket set didn't have the right size cushioned spark plug socket, but fortunately it is slightly raised (sensible design) and I could loosen it with a regular wrench. 

I fully expected it to be fouled with old oil or needing to be cleaned and gapped, but it looked perfect!  Damn...  One always hopes for easy problems to fix.

Well, whenever I have repairmen around, I watch them carefully.  The last time I had a guy here to get a different piece of equipment (lawn mower) running, he said the fuel line/carburator was probably gummed up.  Now, you can either take the parts off and clean them, or get them running sneakily and they will clean themselves.  He did a "sneaky". 

He took the air filter off  (exposing the carburator) and sprayed a (flammable) cleaning solvent into it.  It loosened a stuck part and the lawn mower started right up on the next try.

Well, I don't have any fancy cleaning solvents, but gasoline is a basic solvent for old gasoline.  I took the air filter off to add a little gasoline into the carburator.  But I sure couldn't just pour gasoline from a big 5 gallon can into that small hole when I only wanted about a tablespoon of gasoline. 

I could have gone back into the house and gotten an actual tablespoon.  But I like to be resourceful.  So I decided that the socket that didn't fit the spark plug would work as a small container if I kept my finger tightly on the bottom.  It took a little work to splash just a small bit of gas out of the can, but I managed.  Then dribbled it into the carburator.  Puttng the air filter back on I pulled the starter cord.  Nothing.  Damn...

A second pull, and I'LL BE DAMNED, IT COUGHED A COUPLE TIMES, TRYING TO START.  ANOTHER PULL AND IT STARTED...  I had to play with the choke lever for a minute, but it settled down running smoothly.  I could barely believe it! 

Since it was running, I decided to use it on the hardened soil in the front lawn.  More about that tomorrow...

Bye Bye Ridge!

There has been this ridge in the backyard since I moved here 29 years ago (and by coincidence, this is the very week I moved here).  It has always been a problem.  Too sloped and uneven to mow.  A few years after I moved in, I was able to get it mostly cleared of scrub trees and vines.  But they kept growing back and English ivy slowly took over.  I cut back the tree seedlings many times and even painted herbicide on the cut trunks, but it hardly slowed them down.

I finally contacted an excavator who came out and gave me a quote for leveling the ridge and raising a portion of the front yard that flooded after heavy rains.  I accepted the quote on the spot and they said they would do the work the following week.  When they didn't arrive, I called only to be told they were too busy.

So I contacted some other excavators who decided the job was too small.  Only one agreed (reluctantly - he is 45 minutes away from here) and would not come out to give a quote - I would have to accept the cost afterwards. 

Then, Monday afternoon, the original contractor called to say they had a break in their schedule and could do the job the next morning if I was still interested.  I was, and they did!

I am delighted with the results.  They did even more than I thought they could (considering 2 small trees I wanted to save).

It looked like this to start...

They started by scraping the scrub tree seedlings and ivy off the top and sides.

Dumping it in a truck for disposal.  You can see the amazingly long ivy roots hanging down.  No wonder that stuff is so hard to kill!

The ridge was already nicely lowered from just that.

I would have had them just pile the scraped ivy all up in a corner to compost, but there was enough soil mixed in that they probably would have just kept growing.

See the soil dust rising from the bucket?  We havent exactly had drought here (lots of rain in June, but almost none since then).  Even 4' deep, the soil was dusty-dry.

The equipment is cool (literally).  The Bobcat cabin is sealed, air-conditioned, and has a stereo system inside!

They carefully worked around the 2 trees, watching for the 1st sign of main roots.  This one is a holly tree.  It's hard to kill.  When I first cleared the ridge so many years ago, I accidently cut it down and it regrew multiple trunks from that mistake. 

After all the scrub tree saplings and ivy were gone, they heaped up the remaining soil to examine the quality.  We had expected the ridge to be unusable gravel and clay, but it turned out to be good sandy loam so they moved it out as a base to raise the sunken front lawn.

Then they dumped 2 truckloads of topsoil on that!  They spent a good bit of time grading it carefully.   The whole area is now a foot higher than the drainage easement at the property line.  Unless we have a really severe hurricane before the grass I'll plant sets in good roots, my front yard flooding should be over.

They even spent time carefully smoothing the added soil to the existing lawn.

Here is the new front lawn...

And here is the new back yard!

I don't plan to cover the entire area in lawn.  Lawn is boring...  I plan to put a mix of Spring and Fall blooming azaleas around the inside edges of the trees and wildflowers and some long-lived perennials in  between them.  It will be fun to decide exactly what to plant where...

I need to drag out the roto-tiller first.  Even though the Bobcat has track treads to reduce soil compaction, the new surface is still too packed to just plant in.  The front yard will just get grass.

I wish I had had this done 20 years ago!

Excavation Back On Track

To summarize, after the two huge trees were removed weeks ago, I had an excavator scheduled to arrive the next week to remove a 6'Hx50'Lx15'W ridges covered with English ivy, poison ivy, wild grapevines, and various 3' weedy tree saplings that I have never been able to kill.

The excavation contractor came out, provided a quote for that work and raising the sunken front lawn.  I accepted their quote on the spot and we shook hands on it.  They said they would arrive the next week with a day's notice.

Near the end of that week, I called to see when they planned to show up.  They decided they were "too busy".  I think that they simply got better jobs and didn't need my smallish one.  I wrote a negative review on Angie's List (a contractor review site) and found another person who was slightly reluctant to do the job ( I was on the far edge of his work are) but agreed to to the excavation and plant removal (but not the lawn raising.  Well, I can get topsoil locally, so OK.  But it would be 2 weeks...  It bothered me that the person would not come out to provide a firm quote, but the person had an "A" rating in all categories one of which was "fair pricing". 

Meanwhile, I emailed the original excavator pointing out that they had offerred a firm proposal that I had accepted and we shook hands on it.  I expected a "sorry, we really are too busy".  Guess what?  They called yesterday afternoon and said they could come out this morning if I was still interested.

I was, and called back immediately to confirm I wanted them to do the work.  For one thing, they had come out to look at the work so they knew what was involved.  And they proposed to do the lawn-raising too.

Groundhog Update

First, if you just can't stand the idea of destructive suburban yard varmints being "eliminated", don't read further than this paragraph.  No pictures, and I won't be detailed about their fate, but I don't exactly "adopt them out to loving families". 

So, last post, I was seeking to capture the groundhog who was eating my garden melons.  I have 3 sizes of hav-a-hart cage traps (small, medium, and large - what else?).  The small one is good for squirrels.  I was using the medium cage for the groundhog (it seemed smallish), but apparently it was too small.  The cage doors kept being closed, with the bait pulled out, so the groundhog must has been able to back out of the cage before the doors locked on it.

I brought out the large cage trap  2 days ago.  It has only 1 door (the medium size has 2) and the trip lever is father in.  The groundhog has to be entirely inside to step on the trip-level.  I baited it with one of the melons only nibbled on.  I stepped on the melon to break it into pieces.  One small piece was at the entrance for enticement; a larger piece was inside the cage just beyond the trip-lever.

The next morning, the groundhog was in the cage.  It is "no longer with us".  I thought that was the end of the problem.  I've never had more than one adult groundhog here at one time before.

Wrong!  I stepped outside quietly to do some yardwork after lunch and to my surprise (you saw this coming, right?) saw a larger one running away from the garden.  I even heard it moving around among a serious bramble patch where I assume it has a burrow. 

I rebaited the trap and out it in the path I saw it run in with some of the remaining half-eaten melon.  And I made sure to put it where I could see it from the house.  Nothing like trying to see into my house from cage level...

An hour later, I saw another groundhog in the cage.  It is also "no longer with us".  It is late in the season for young groundhogs, but I will set the cage trap up again in a few days.

The good news is that I have an excavator arriving tomorrow, and the cage would be in the way of excavating equipment, so I have to wait.  The arrival of the excavator is surprise good news, but I will post about that tomorrow. 

Today was about the groundhogs...

I do want to say that I do not have an special dislike for "varmints" in general.  If I could look down across the street to some large field where groundhogs and rabbits happily ran around living their lives eating meadow plants, I would enjoy watching them and I would leave them alone.  When the squirrels used to be here just eating and burying acorns, I never bothered them.  When the rabbits contented themselves eating the plentiful clover in my organic lawn, I did not bother them.  I'm not sure what groundhogs eat that isn't damaging, but if they did, we would co-exist. 

But any common varmint that gets at the things I value, I will rid my property of them as humanely as possible and at no threat to wandering pets (no poisons, no snap-traps).  If there was such a thing as a "Golden-Eared Groundhog" that was endangered, I would catch it and offer it to whoever cares about them. 

But anything that eats MY food is asking for it...

Good and Bad News

The good news is that I found a residential excavator who is willing to come some distance to do most of the work I need.  I'm at the edge of his regular service area.  He'll do the leveling of the 6'Hx50'Lx15'W ridge and haul away the brush and gravel/clay soil, but he really isn't into bringing in topsoil and raising the front lawn level.  Well, I can get THAT done locally.  It will be 2 weeks before he can arrive though.  At least he assures me he WILL arrive to do the work.

The bad news is that I was a bit casual about finishing the garden enclosure and left some small seams open while I fussed around with getting the enclosure door  to fit (it kept getting out of square each day as the posts settled and the soil around them dried).  And then I had the tree removal crew here for several days and spend time after that cleaning up (they cleaned up, but there were still piles of ground-up tree stump chippings for me to spread out and such).  And I wasn't seeing any varmints bothering the garden.

Well, the varmint situation changed overnight several days ago.  I walked quietly into the backyard one late afternoon and caught a glimpse of a groundhog running away.  There were a few melon leaves nibbled off nearest the enclosure door, so I set up a live-trap cage in the barely-open doorway.  I didn't catch it, but there was no further damage.  So I figured it was both suspicious of the trap AND baffled about getting in otherwise.  The other open seams were way around the back of the enclosure. 

Foolish me!  I went out yesterday afternoon and found my 2 small (unripe) dwarf watermelons and 2 of my 5 (unripe) honeydew melons completely gone, and another half-eaten.  It had obviously found the backside openings!  I closed the enclosure door and set the baited cage trap closer to the path it must have taken to the back with a part of the half-eaten melon (a trapping website said to use whatever is being eaten as bait - though melons were usually best).  So melon was best for bait of both counts. 

This morning the cage trap was sprung but no groundhog.  But the bait was pulled out, so it must have reached in carefully and tripped the lever while still outside the cage enough to get free.  Well, I've never thought that varmints were exactly dumb; if they were, they would be extinct.  The idea is to use their habits against them.  I set up a "V" of upright 2"x12" boards to "guide" the groundhog to the trap.  That has helped in the past.  and I covered the cage trap with landscaping fabric to make it look more like a safe tunnel.

I'll bet it doesn't work.  But I did finally lock the enclosure door frame in place and seal the chicken wire seams around it, so that's no longer and problem.  There are still 2 more opening in corners, but it was dinnertime today and I was starving!  So I put a piece of chicken wire over the remaining melons, piled some melon leaves (which it also seems to eat) at the remaining openings (for distraction bribes) and called it a day. 

If I don't catch it by tomorrow morning, I have pieces of leftover chicken wire cut to size to seal the remaining openings.  After that, my garden area should be safe anyway. 

I still need the groundhog gone.  It will eat flowering plants too, and I can't protect everything.  In past years, a groundhog would show up in Spring, I'd trap it and relocate it.  Or find it's burrow and dump used cat litter into the hole until it fled in disgust.  But this August appearance is a surprise and I can't find the burrow (it may be in a neighbor's yard).

That melon-eating varmint has GOT to go, one way or another.

Mild Underved Destruction

One of the things I had to do when I expected the excavator contractor to show up "any tomorrow" was remove the birdfeeder.   It wasn't easy.  Try setting a pipe 3' deep in the ground for almost 30 years and see if IT is easy to pull out! 

It took work.  But I did it.  But then I had this thing with a 24" saucer under it and a 18" baffle below  (successful squirrel baffles) and no where to put it.  So I set it against the deck where the 24" saucer fit in tight.  Seemed safe.

Nope!  I went out today and the whole thing had fallen over.  And falling over, it broke!  I don't think it is repairable.  I'm going to have to build a new one.

Now, on one hand, I'm sad it broke.  It lasted 20 years (all cedar) and the cardinals and finches loved it.  On the other hand, I wanted to improve it a bit anyway.  I'd rather it had stayed intact, but I'll take advantage of the damage to build it better. 

A lot larger to begin with, and with an interior slope to make the last seeds go down to the feeding tray. 

But I wouldn't have to worry about this if the excavation contractor who said they would be here had come here instead of begging off for better jobs.  I'm still p&*@ed about that!

I hope the new feeder is as well-built as the previous one.  Some things just go better the first time around and you can't duplicate it.  So maybe the new one will be better and maybe not.

We'll see...

The Yardwork Excavation Contractor Blues

"GLOOM*

I spoke to the excavation contractor early today.  I'd been patient.  They (Della & Son) said on August 14 that they would be out to do the work "next week" (Aug 17-21) with a day's notice "because some jobs go way faster than others and some way slower, and to keep the crews busy they have to juggle the schedule".  OK.  Well, it isn't exactly urgent, like plumbing or roof repair work.

But when I didn't hear from them all last week, I called.  It seems they are no longer interested in doing my work.  They are "busy".  Good for them.  I suggested keeping me on their list, but they said they probably wouldn't get aroubd to my little job this year.

Stunned silence on my part...

I asked if they had decided their job estimate was too low; they said it wasn't, they just weren't going to be able to schedule the job.  And didn't want to keep my job on their list.  So, like "goodbye, and don't call us again".

Wow!  I was disappointed that they wouldn't do the work, but worse, it left me kind of out of options.  There are 2 kinds of businesses who do yard grading work.  One is excavators, the other is landscapers.  And all the others of both types had not been very interested. 

Excavators want to move around a lot more soil in open areas.  Landscapers are more used to residential grading, but their main thing is to plant the new area.  My job doesn't quite fit either.

The Della & Son proposal was perfect.  They would scrape off the plants (English Ivy, Poison Ivy, vines, and 3' tree saplings) from the surface of the ridge and dispose of the material.  Then depending on the quality of soil beneath that, they would either move it to the sunken front lawn, or haul it away as "fill dirt" (used to fill up ravines or to level under parking lots, etc).  If required, they would bring in topsoil to raise the front lawn above the height of the drainage easement.

No one else I talked to was willing to do that.  I was so pleased, I accepted their proposal on the spot, and we shook hands on it.  I am considering trying to shame them into doing the work anyway.

But I found another residential excavator today (Cornerstone Excavations).  His ratings are "A" in all categories and no one who wrote a review has been displeased.  Unfortunately, I am on the far edge of where he will travel to for work.  He won't travel to provide a firm quote.  He won't do the entire job (the spreading of soil on the sunken lawn isn't stuff he does).  But he does have the light equipment sufficient to scrape the ridge level and dispose of the unusable ivy and saplings without tearing the entire backyard up and he does the work himself.

The Della & Son proposal for the whole job was $3500.  While Cornerstone can't give me a firm price ahead of time, he estimates $1000 to scrape the ridge and $350 per truckload (estimate 2 truckloads) to dispose of the material.  He said I would get a much better deal having the topsoil to raise the sunken lawn done locally, and I think he is right.

Hoping that his estimate of $1700 doesn't suddenly become $3000 when it is done, I've agreed to send him pictures of the worksite and schedule the work.

Now, back to "shaming" Della & Son...  They gave me a written proposal and I accepted it, pending only a one-day notice for them to show up.  And they backed out.  I got their name off Angie's List (an independent contractor rating site).  Contractors care about their ratings there.  Della & Son have a straight "A" rating (price, quality, professionalism, punctuality, etc).  I'm going to give them a negative review.  Contractors often respond to reviews there.  I would still like them to do the whole project, because they had seen the work to be done onsite, described the work to be done perfectly, and given a firm quote.

We'll see what happens...