Out with the old, in with new garden space...

So I tried to give away the jungle gym/swing set – first to the neighbors on the block club email list. One neighbor stopped by to check it out, but it was too big, and too big a task for them to take it apart and reassemble it. Little did I know how right they were.

It was a nice dry Fall day. Perfect for leaf chopping.
I spread compost from the composter and refiled it
with chopped leaves. plus dressed most beds
with chopped leaves too.
Then I tried Facebook. A couple people took interest, but no takers there. It is old. And it would be a lot of work to carefully disassemble and reassemble elsewhere.

So it was up to me to do the tear-down. And I vastly underestimated how much work it would be. I tried to save as much lumber for future projects as I could. The whole thing was put together with screws. Rusty, stripped screws that had been there for the 13 years we've been in the house – in  addition to how many years it was here before us – probably another ten or more.

After futzing for a bout an hour-and-a-half with trying to unscrew the thing, and only getting about a dozen screws out (of hundreds), I decided it would be much faster with the chainsaw. And it was. I still tried to save as much wood as possible – it's mostly 2"x6" planks of pressure-treated wood, with a few 4"x4"s and 2"x4"s thrown in. But with a chainsaw and circular saw, I had the thing down in just a few hours.

All while doing this, I also raked up the leaves and chopped them with the mower to fill up the composter, as well as spread them on the garden beds. I had enough leaves to fill up three composter. And there's plenty more that have fallen in the last week. Though it's wet now. Not good for choppin'. I was tired and sore from head to toe by the time the day was over with.

But now I have an additional garden area to work with – the equivalent of a third of the back yard is now available for new projects. In a small urban yard, that's significant. I already have plans, which I'll post in the next few days.
In the back towards the fence is a patch of pachysandra. That'll remain.
I now have stacks of marginally good lumber to use on other projects. Finding a place to keep it all over teh winter is the hard part.

Comments

  1. As I go into this winter thinking that I might have a new and much much smaller garden, in-town, next year, your small garden, first seen at the Buffalo Fling, is one I have been particularly watching as I think about a new and much smaller garden.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for such nice words Pat! Small gardens aren't necessarily less work than some larger gardens, but the impact of smaller projects is much greater!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts