Looking out the window at a nearby tree like I often do, notice it suddenly looks chubbier than I remember. The fall drain-down of resources from leaves to roots must thicken branches along the way like the spring pump-up lengthens them.

kontextmaschine:

Had been thinking I could have French drains draining some areas (paths, the edges of walls) and directing to planted trees, but the pattern around here in the rainy season everything gets plenty enough but in the summer it starts to dry so… French drains leading to some? kind of water-retaining fill near the trees that leaches water towards their roots in the dry season?

Ones that terminate in some gravel-filled shaft as a reverse well to recharge deep storage around there?

Had been thinking I could have French drains draining some areas (paths, the edges of walls) and directing to planted trees, but the pattern around here in the rainy season everything gets plenty enough but in the summer it starts to dry so… French drains leading to some? kind of water-retaining fill near the trees that leaches water towards their roots in the dry season?

Realized some garden projects I can still get done this winter, digging out pathways to a 2" depth to put down sproutguard fabric and then fill with rounded walkable pebbles from the bulk landscaping yard

So I have like five more minutes of sawing and 15 of mattock work at all before the organic parts of my yard are finally totally rehabilitated after five years

Like a tree service in January to take down some 3-story Mediterranean cypresses but 100% completion on everything from 1.5 stories to 2 feet under.

Next year I’ll be ready to plant a fughenzou sakura and an ume I still have to pick the right varietal of in the backyard for interest and privacy screening

The real next step though is to find the right contractor to rebuild my retaining wall

• including poss. a section of shoring up the slope back towards my rear neighbor
• minus a chunk on the side to carve an opening for a basement entrance for a future apartment
• including a section in the rear separating the upper from lower level and half-level planter
• with a shallower ramp and the steps shifted to the other side of the yard passing over this
• ramp rapped around a bulge landscaped to look like a craggy outcropping for a hot tub
• which discharges into and waters planters on the half-level

Then as long as we’re running water and electrical out there anyway put in a showerhead on the lower level and a small wet bar on the upper for entertaining, some electrical outlets too

And another main faucet, to replace the one patioed over with one a hose can actually reach everything from, and to water the planters if the residents aren’t in a hot tubbing mood

Oh, with the wall replaced, get a new fence and gate

Replace the main bedroom windows with a sliding door and the 2nd/office’s rear window with a door, build a rear patio, with steps down on either corner, leading to the ramp/stairs

Get a serious outdoor grill. This isn’t just Patio Man talking, the idea is to make the back a complete living space not least because then with the purchase of a composting toilet I can just live out there in the summers while the interior gets gut rehabbed.

Plant a Japanese maple (again, need to figure the varietal) shading the hot tub, plant rootstock for a tree-of-many-fruits in the side yard

Dig out where the shower discharges, line it with plastic and fill it with pumice, create a French drain so it’s watering the ume

The half-level planters cascade so they shed their excess outside in the side yard, do the same there feeding the tree-of-many-fruits but then create a new compost box above it so the water outflow soaks it and washes nutrients down to the tree

Then I can start work on the inside.

Like when I say that I’m gentry, part of that is evaluating, selecting, and improving real estate is a real passion project of mine

One of the more subtle things all this yard work/gardening has given me is a better appreciation and understanding of grass, there are probably at least 8 different species back there I can distinguish now

Finally raining again after a dry summer. This was the year that “next year, I won’t have to pull any weeds” finally came true, instead it was more of a wood year, chopping up the tree that fell into my yard and all the previously cut branches into firewood or building them into a huge compost pile w/trimmed leaf-on branches and grass clippings & fence boards. Should be ready to get to the retaining wall and then the new fence, got 2 trees planned to plant next year and more plans for later.

Seem to have finally trained my roses into a bush shape they keep all season rather than a few spiky canes, the trick seems to be cultivating enough branching below the point I trim them to overwinter so that when it pumps energy back up from the roots for spring growth it gets distributed rather than channeled into a few waterspouts off a central stump

So this

is a hori-hori, a Japanese gardening knife. They’re great and I think they’re within 4 years of breaking through – already within gardening scenes you see knockoffs – so let me fill you in.

A hori-hori is used for weeding. Unlike the garden trowels I was familiar with it doesn’t work by forcing its way down and scooping up the root, instead you plunge it into the soil to sever the deep attachment and your other hand pulls the weed up by the above-ground part, which feels like an order of magnitude easier.

The one in the picture is like what I’ve found to be good - a heavy, thick straight blade with a straight tang one side serrated (for root-sawing). The ones I got the blade was blacked at the start but that wore off, musta been style.

I see ones with leaf-shaped blades and I dunno, especially how those often incorporate like line cutters by the hilt, seem a little tacticooled out.

Distrust the ones that have depth in inches marked along the blade.

Distrust the ones that have narrower blades than that and especially the ones that have aluminum thinner and call themselves “hori-hori"s

This tree used to be a goddamn rat’s nest mess, but it’s looking great, with a few open patches still waiting to fill in

In the foreground shadowed in is a tree I cut from like 5 trunks at shoulder height/13 at next branching to like 2.5/6, it’s too dark but at left you could see a scar healing over my first attempt to cut off a branch when I had no idea what I was doing.

Seem to have reached an understanding with my neighbors that if they don’t tend and weed their parking strips they’ll end up colonized by the things I don’t mind enough to pull

Finally after years of trimming my rosebushes look like bushes and not spiky cane stands, but still nothing on the guy down the street.

Portland is the “Rose City” for basically the same reason Pasadena was: cut off from Eastern craftsmen but transportable as cuttings, they became a rare symbol of civilized luxury

This wasn’t originally intended as a compost heap, it was a pile of dead branches I realized would rot down faster if I dumped grass clippings on it

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

The westward third branch I’ve been filling in from a far-side shoot since the mess up top was chopped and you got new shoots all over.

It should be solid enough to sustain a full season of growth to get even thicker, then at the end I’ll trim it back to the few westward bits that grow at this part of the season before the tree canopying it over gets its leaves and chop off all the eastward mess that thrives later

I now realize that one was dead at the time, it had started to bud then that ice storm cold snap must have killed it.

Alas, that’s four years down the drain. Might train a shoot coming higher off that right branch to curl around it 2 or 3 times then go off. At least learned this time to not trim it up every year, if it’s not in the way leave the leaf gore on for a bit to grow the main shaft thicker.

spoke too soon

kontextmaschine:

The westward third branch I’ve been filling in from a far-side shoot since the mess up top was chopped and you got new shoots all over.

It should be solid enough to sustain a full season of growth to get even thicker, then at the end I’ll trim it back to the few westward bits that grow at this part of the season before the tree canopying it over gets its leaves and chop off all the eastward mess that thrives later

I now realize that one was dead at the time, it had started to bud then that ice storm cold snap must have killed it.

Alas, that’s four years down the drain. Might train a shoot coming higher off that right branch to curl around it 2 or 3 times then go off. At least learned this time to not trim it up every year, if it’s not in the way leave the leaf gore on for a bit to grow the main shaft thicker.

kontextmaschine:

Someone asked me for tree-trimming tips and I might have actually answered before but let’s do it again.

1. Always cut back to a side branch, which will then become the main branch. You can’t arbitrarily cut a branch to length like hair, if you try that it won’t grow back from there instead a bunch of “waterspout” shoots near the end will head straight up next year and get real long and spindly
2. Wood is “built” using photosynthesis-powered carbon capture at the leaves and water and resources pumped up from the roots. This means a given “patch” of sunlight can grow about the same amount of wood whether it’s split among one branch (and its sub-branches) or many
3. Branches grow (differentialy) towards light but will avoid contact with each others’ leaves. This means if you have too many branches “competing” for the same arc of canopy and sunlight they can get long and skinny and all trying to shade each other out
4. The natural inclination of a branch is to further branch, chemicals generated at the very apical tips of branches and flowing mostly downhill from there suppresses it (this is why horizontal branches branch more than vertical trunks where it’s all very downhill)
5. On the other hand the resources generated in leaves and roots is also hydraulically spread and so the material to make new wood is preferentially found at the lowest point, once growth is sloped down sufficiently it will rapidly grow down to the earth (or at least shade)
6. As a tree grows, shorter, lower branches will get canopied in, and will tend to eventually sunlight-starve, rot, and get detached but manually trimming it can save the “maintenance cost” (and whatever shade it was casting lower down) of the wood in the interim
7. Know the energy cycle of your tree. Leaves generate energy, basically, to be used locally or further downhill. Depending on the tree in a season it will either flower first on last year’s growth and then grow new wood or grow new wood and then flower on it. By the end of fall, energy is sucked down into the roots for storage, this is a good time to trim branches cause you won’t waste any. At the start of the season it’s hydraulically pumped back up to the branches for growth. This is key for lower branches that are sorta shaded in – easy to pump to but don’t generate as much locally off leaves. Also when the canopy is cut back to less than the root system’s support capacity it really encourages upward growth as plenty of energy is pumped high.

Oh 3b. On the other side you can use this to your advantage: if you’re trying to grow a horizontal branch where branches are tempted to go vertical you can get a few shoots growing so they “fan out” with the upper ones curling upwards and the lower ones ducking under them in the more level form you want and you can just lop off the superfluous vertical branches later and repeat the process further down

Someone asked me for tree-trimming tips and I might have actually answered before but let’s do it again.

1. Always cut back to a side branch, which will then become the main branch. You can’t arbitrarily cut a branch to length like hair, if you try that it won’t grow back from there instead a bunch of “waterspout” shoots near the end will head straight up next year and get real long and spindly
2. Wood is “built” using photosynthesis-powered carbon capture at the leaves and water and resources pumped up from the roots. This means a given “patch” of sunlight can grow about the same amount of wood whether it’s split among one branch (and its sub-branches) or many
3. Branches grow (differentialy) towards light but will avoid contact with each others’ leaves. This means if you have too many branches “competing” for the same arc of canopy and sunlight they can get long and skinny and all trying to shade each other out
4. The natural inclination of a branch is to further branch, chemicals generated at the very apical tips of branches and flowing mostly downhill from there suppresses it (this is why horizontal branches branch more than vertical trunks where it’s all very downhill)
5. On the other hand the resources generated in leaves and roots is also hydraulically spread and so the material to make new wood is preferentially found at the lowest point, once growth is sloped down sufficiently it will rapidly grow down to the earth (or at least shade)
6. As a tree grows, shorter, lower branches will get canopied in, and will tend to eventually sunlight-starve, rot, and get detached but manually trimming it can save the “maintenance cost” (and whatever shade it was casting lower down) of the wood in the interim
7. Know the energy cycle of your tree. Leaves generate energy, basically, to be used locally or further downhill. Depending on the tree in a season it will either flower first on last year’s growth and then grow new wood or grow new wood and then flower on it. By the end of fall, energy is sucked down into the roots for storage, this is a good time to trim branches cause you won’t waste any. At the start of the season it’s hydraulically pumped back up to the branches for growth. This is key for lower branches that are sorta shaded in – easy to pump to but don’t generate as much locally off leaves. Also when the canopy is cut back to less than the root system’s support capacity it really encourages upward growth as plenty of energy is pumped high.

Well after like 4 years of trimming and reshaping my rosebushes they finally look like bushes this year and not spiky bamboo stands

The westward third branch I’ve been filling in from a far-side shoot since the mess up top was chopped and you got new shoots all over.

It should be solid enough to sustain a full season of growth to get even thicker, then at the end I’ll trim it back to the few westward bits that grow at this part of the season before the tree canopying it over gets its leaves and chop off all the eastward mess that thrives later

On the down side, my neighbor’s tree fell into my yard, on the up side I had been peeved about how it was shading my trees, it scraped down a matchstick pine as it went so it only damaged stuff I was going to replace anyway, and now their homeowners’ insurance might pay for it