Saturday, April 27, 2013

Outside Work

When I made my post a week ago I said the work on the living room quarter round was the first I'd done on the house for awhile.

Well, I forgot.  I've also been taking advantage of the days when fine weather and my time off overlap to get something done in the yard.

Allowing for pulling the henbit out of the (unplanted) vegetable plots, mostly it's been grinding up last fall's maple leaves with the Toro leaf-vac.  I can only do at a time as much as is permitted by 1) the time and daylight available; 2) my stamina; and 3) the dryness of the leaves.  Dry or dryish leaves equals great progress.  Damp or sopping leaves means constant clogs in the grinder wheel and repeated disassembly to clean it out. 

Several bags filled two Sunday afternoons ago as I cleared out the borders on the east side of the backyard.  Those leaves were pretty much all dry.  Got a few more bags filled this past Sunday as I tackled the border on the east side.  This part of the yard gets less sun, the pile was deeper, and I could only do the top layer.  Worked on it again this past Monday for forty minutes or so between paying jobs.

Still a good (or bad, depending on your perspective) amount to do.  But I have other work I have to complete first, and technically I'm only on the Internet to look up a fact for the sermon I'm writing for tomorrow.  Maybe if it will refrain from raining I can get more of this cleanup done tomorrow.

The ground up leaves will all go for mulch for the vegetable beds.  Assuming I get them planted, that is.

3 comments:

Karen Anne said...

Why grind them up? I use them as is.

Mayfair Mistress said...

I know the dry leaves/wet leaves mulcher process well, at least today I got to supervise the raking from three levels of scaffolding . . . Two years in and we're still working on the epic decade old drifts.

Kate H. said...

Karen Anne, I find that the ground-up ones integrate with the soil faster and let the moisture through better. The whole ones just mat. Or blow over to the fence again when the wind kicks up.

MM, yikes. I hope you've got a good machine.