Just puttering along...

[johnridley]

It took over an hour to get the rototiller running yesterday. Though I'd already used it a bit this year, it refused to run more than 5 seconds at a time. I figured carburetor problems. I took the valve plate off the side of the carburetor but all looked OK, so I put it back together and tried again. Finally I guessed maybe it got some water in the tank when I left it in the rain, so I ran it on ether sprays for about 10 seconds, and it managed to eat its way through the bad stuff and then ran OK.

So anyway, 2 loads of compost on the garden, and those are worked in. Also I extended the size of the garden about 5 feet across and 6 more feet down. We will be planting in another week or two, once we're past last frost.

I mixed up some Roundup and sprayed down a plot in the side lawn where I hope to have a new flower bed. It's surrounded by some plants on the side and some new spruce trees to the north, and the corkscrew willow we put in last year to the south. Also there's a nice piece of granite that I'm going to put in mid-path as a sitting rock. I'm not doing any tilling there; just killing the grass, and the planting area will just get mounds of new topsoil and compost on it, and the paths will get weed stop cloth and wood chips. I'll have to respray in a day or so because I'm sure I missed some areas.

I got the perennial area mostly weeded, didn't start on the annuals. I took the Roundup around and hit the thistles again and the uglier weeds (the herbicide I used a few days ago must be dead; it's several years old and didn't really do anything to the stuff I sprayed it on).

I got started on weeding the disaster area that is the butterfly garden. I put in about 2 hours, but it's going to take several days, it's quite overgrown. Once I figure out where everything is in there and on the front flower bed, I'm going to till and mulch a 2 foot border to make it easier to hold back the ever-advancing grass, and also to make it easier to mow without risk of hitting a plant.

There was what looks like a volunteer burning bush starting in the flower bed. I attempted to move it but when I dug it up, I got almost no root; the root was running from somewhere else and I cut it. I moved it anyway and watered the heck out of it, and cut it back some. It probably won't live but I've been wrong before; the sand cherry behind the pond had almost no root when I moved it and it's thriving.

We have hundreds of free-swimming tadpoles in the pond now. They're fun to watch.

I did a little tree trimming, just took down a few low branches on some trees that are tall enough now. The brush pile seems to just stay the same size; I throw branches on it every year, and it just crushes down a little farther. There's probably an entire ecosystem in there now. I'm certain there are at least rabbits in there from time to time, and I've seen snakes coming and going, as well as mice.

All the bird houses have been occupied but I haven't been able to see what moved in. There is nesting material visible in the holes but I didn't see any birds hanging around them. I'm betting it's sparrows, since I haven't seen a bluebird around here yet. I'll have to go out and watch for a while, I'm of a mind to eject sparrows this year, at least from the first house. The 2nd house is too close so I don't think bluebirds would occupy it anyway. I should probably move it down to the other end of the lot. I suppose I could do that now, nothing's laid eggs yet.

Tom asked if he could start mowing the lawn, so he got his first shot at that today. He did very well considering it's the first time he's ever really driven anything at all. I walked around after him for about an hour, helping him learn to hold a straight line, etc. Of course he was all over, left lots of unmowed patches, etc. Still he did a pretty good job for a first attempt and he's keen to keep doing it. It will be interesting to see if he can stand the boredom of 3 straight hours of mowing; I think it'll be good for him to try. He stuck to it for the whole easement today, and considering that he was running at about 1/2 speed due to inexperience, that's not bad. There's a lot more stuff to avoid in the rest of the lawn, especially the back lawn, so it may be a while until he does that.

One day quite soon I need to do some serious cleaning of the garage; it's hard to move in there.