Spring == Piles

Spring is here, which means that there are lots of "spring cleaning" projects to do. What I have noticed, though, is that spring in the country is a time to create piles of... well, stuff.

Dirt
Our irrigation ditch had gradually filled with silt, and thus was not deep enough for the volume of water traveling through it. So we (actually, our neighbor who also shares this ditch) hired someone to dig it deeper.

But of course, that dirt has to go someplace... so half ended up in our yard, and half in our neighbor's. The blue tarp is there to kill the canary grass before we incorporate the dirt into our yard.

Orchard Slash
Our orchard pruning resulted in large piles of fruit wood. Initially we thought we'd be able to cut the majority of it up into kindling for the wood stove; but after several hours and little progress, we knew that these piles would be around at least until we had a chipper. (We haven't bought one yet.)

"Normal" Spring Cleaning
This is the kind of outdoor spring cleaning that most people do: pulling weeds and grass from flower beds, removing overgrown plants, etc. Donna came down for the weekend to help us out, and she really got into it. In the end, we decided to pull much of that ground cover out altogether and add it to our pile. The piles were then moved to a less visible pile hidden in the woods.

And just so you don't think that spring is nothing but piles of work:


- Mike (& Corinne)