Okay that’s Blueberry Hill smashed up, either later or tomorrow I’ll cover it with the last of the leaves to rot then I’ll smash again before the fall rains
Okay another day when the limit of my smashing Blueberry Hill is the strain of keeping my balance on the semiconsolidated compost pile/rubble heap, it’s not the calves or even ankle muscles but ones at the sole of the foot itself. I’ve never really operated raised-arch on broken ground before, so I’m training those up from scratch I guess.
I’d give it two more days of smashing, then one of spreading leaves on top and then mud-sealing in the stone-block end (which was the one item on my yard work list when I came back after Christmas last year), there’ll be a nylon net in the mud and then when I plant alpine strawberries the runners will grow across this and the weave will hold the slope together, with the strain of frost-heaving pushing stones out resisted by the strength of all the strawberry roots.
Alright did some more Blueberry Hill smashing and got to a part where things were well-rotted, but that just meant trying to maul things under a layer of almost-dirt, it was like being in a sandtrap, and now I think it’ll take 2 or even 3 more sessions
Getting a better sense of how long I can spend smashing up Blueberry Hill and only be a little wiped after, think there’s 2 sessions left before I just pile on the last of the leaves and leave it to rot til summer at least
Ok, tried to smash up Blueberry Hill again and realized why I was so wiped after the second day of work earlier, it’s specifically where I was standing, swinging while on the loose debris works every muscle between my wrists and the soles of my feet.
All the stuff remaining is only reachable from there, so at this point I think it’ll take at least three sessions to clear.
Alright, finished the weed patrol through all my yards and all the neighbors’ reachable from the sidewalk, then some good smashing on Blueberry Hill but I had to cut it short limited not by smashing muscles but by the calves and ankles trying to balance on a loose slope of debris, so probably still 2 more days on that.
Okay, more bittercress and other weeding today, all the stuff of interest rn is the very preliminary growth of stuff that’s tiny when mature so you’ve got to look real close.
Think I can make this the last year for it and even all the clovers but one, then tomorrow year will be last for the final clover and crabgrass (and that only so long cause I’m always giving it freshly-turned earth to establish in)
Then more Blueberry Hill smashing, first reaching in to remove the even-pressure-treated-still-rotting fence boards I used to frame it and then turning the loose-ish piles of brush into denser flats of branches and twigs, probably 2 more days of that then I gather up the last of the year’s leaves to pile on.
Then inside, everything’s done in the more peripheral rooms so I’m sorting the kitchen, emptying cabinets and drawers I haven’t addressed since move-in and restocking them in light of what I’ve learned of the room’s rhythms of use
Dumped easily 20 trash cans worth of leaves onto Strawberry Ridge. Since I stripped all the curbs on the block for Blueberry Hill last year they’re bare – no previous years’ leaves rotting to dirt and growing weeds to catch the leaves this year, so they all blow down to collect in big drifts that’re easy to gather up.
That along with the side yard work where that realtor 2 or 3 years back told me all my work had made my neighbors tens of thousands of dollars richer, and since I’ve started cleaning up my neighbors in each direction have I guess realized that they looked underwhelming in contrast and/or the area was classing up to the point of being worth tidying…
Like, my looking out the window 5 years ago and being like “ah fuck, I should pull those weeds” has apparently cascaded into making the entire neighborhood look much better. Yay me!
Blueberry Hill is fully built up just waiting to rot down when the rain comes back, the thing where I had the outer layer be kiln-dried non-rotting fence wood worked, it kept its shape filling in with drainage-carried debris growing a web of grass roots on top then I mauled down the flat part. To use the new stuff I cut I’ve been building up another pile for a ridge to blow leaffall into to level the side yard out over the next 3-5 years, parallelism suggests it should be called “Strawberry Hill” but I’m actually gonna have alpine strawberry netting together the retaining wall slope of Blueberry Hill while this’ll just be grass/clover
Wild to look at Blueberry Hill and be like “fundamentally, this was all carbon in carbon dioxide five years ago”
Okay, there’s still a bunch of firewood drying in the basement and I need to sweep twigs out of the garage, but otherwise all the wood on my property – and we’re talking 4-5 VW microbuses full of branches – has been either been put into building up Blueberry Hill or processed, trimmed, & sorted for later use
Went to chop up some of the Blueberry Hill pile and there was a guy sleeping on the ground back there, who reacted pretty well to waking up to a guy shambling towards you holding a sledgehammer maul, honestly
Realizing if I switch from a 10" x 10" to a 8" x 8" tamper that’s 50% more force per square inch
Been taking the weeds (not yet gone to seed) and dirt I dig up with their roots and piling them on to be tamped down into a sorta rammed-earth ramp up to my backyard gate that won’t get muddy or sprout anything. You want to time the tamping for afternoons where a light noon shower turns sunny, so water gets down into the voids and makes the dirt easier to work but when you drive it out to the surface it evaporates rather than soaks back
Alright, got this coring aerator, now puddles don’t form and stick on the walk along the driveway to my door.
In exact opposite news, got a tamper and it’s helping me firm up an outer slope shell and rammed-earth ramp to Blueberry Hill as it settles
Won’t be planting all of Blueberry Hill this year but might start in some spaces I’m gonna be rooting into the retaining wall and slope in easy reach of the trail, so looking for a 2- or 3-cultivar Northern highbush combination that bloom and pollinate simultaneously, at least 2 of which would be good to just grab a bunch off as a snack
Had been kind of worried about establishing Blueberry Hill at the base of a pine tree dropping needles but apparently blueberry likes acidic soil and that’s a recommended pairing, so. (Berries are often forest understory plants used to growing under a taller tree canopy)
An interesting thing is blueberry hill is now piled so high exposed to the rain and then sloping down to several decades’ piled pine needles it’s now draining to and turning to dirt.
I’ve gathered up basically every leaf in every street gutter for a 1-block radius to build up Blueberry Hill this year and
A) it’s a lot
B) the streets now look better than they ever have, another case of my attempts to fix my lawn generating higher quality of neighborhood life as an unintended side effect
Had been kind of worried about establishing Blueberry Hill at the base of a pine tree dropping needles but apparently blueberry likes acidic soil and that’s a recommended pairing, so. (Berries are often forest understory plants used to growing under a taller tree canopy)
Okay, now that I’ve dumped a significant share of the leaves that flow down the street in a year onto Blueberry Hill and mud-mortared in another course of stones to the retaining wall I might call it a year; mud-mortar on some chicken wire to the wall and get some wild strawberries to start establishing runners there to tie it together before I start putting more weight on it (also the way it’s constructed the pile has kinda a void in the middle so as it settles it should fill that in rather than pushing out)