Yesterday during the rock moving, my gloves developed holes. So today, I broke out a new pair. I have been interested in just exactly how long it takes me to wear through a pair of leather gloves, so the last ones I “date stamped” when I started using them: it was 11/6. I liked knowing that those gloves lasted for two months and 16 days, so I dated the gloves I began wearing today. This is how they looked when Jim and I were finished with Phase II of the Stroll Garden construction project today. I had to quit working because I had a massage client coming in 15 minutes.
So, you might ask. What did all that battering and dirtying of the new gloves accomplish? Well, the next two photos will tell the tale, I think. The first one is the same as the one I posted yesterday. The second one I took right after I photographed my gloves.
Sorry about the dog butt in the corner. The next shot was taken from closer to the house and gives you the whole expanse of bed. Tomorrow I will be working on the rocks that separate the garden bed from the grass and spreading mulch. I also will finish putting the dirt inside the new retaining wall, and putting mulch over the cardboard and feed sacks between the wall and the path edging.
If you sit on the new bench, this next photo is the view you have of Phase I of the Stroll Garden.
The reason I am posting this is that someone asked me how long it takes the feed sacks to break down. Take a close look at the garden bed that has the roses in it, in the left foreground. That whole bed was lined in a similar fashion with identical feed sacks and cardboard covering the middle. When I planted the roses about a month after I covered the area with mulch, I could not find any cardboard where I was digging the holes. At the edges where the feed sacks were, there were still a couple of spots where you could see the blue paper at that time.
That was September of 2008. It is now January 2009. The feed sacks are 90% broken down now. I just want to let you know that I have not had a single sprout from any piece of the grass that was buried under the feed sacks, cardboard and mulch. The spot just to the left of the big flagstone used to flash blue at me. It does so no longer.
And so, the work progresses. Today we moved five carts of large rocks, plus I hauled in two wheel barrows full of smaller rocks for the path edging work that I did today. Jim filled the pickup twice with mulch from the City’s mulch pile, and we have got one load of it spread out on the gardens. One wheel barrow load of that load is piled on the piece of cardboard. Tomorrow it will go in between the retaining wall and the path edge.
Onwards and upwards!
