Thursday, March 18, 2010

Starting The Box

The next area to work on is a planter/bed area just off the porch. It was dominated by a large cedar tree, which we had cut down. So now we have a stump to remove. I've started by clearing off all the previous plantings, and removing the little stone edging around it.

Here's what the tree looked like before it was removed.



And that leaves me with the following to work on:





And in particular the stump.



I expect to dig around this until it's isolated and then break it up into smaller pieces to get it out.

After a couple of days of digging, I have exposed a couple of big rocks in a 5 foot by 7 foot hole. I managed to pry the small one out and put it on the stump to get it out of the way. I pried another larger one up on top of another. I may need to break these into smaller chunks to make them manageable.



Under these rocks, about 21 inches from ground level, it appears I have a solid, smooth unbroken layer of rock, so that's about as deep as I can go.

After this work, it has rained, so I can't really do anything more until it dries up. And Spring Break is over, so it's back to digging only on the weekends.

Last work on the Bamboo Grove

I'm off work on Spring Break, and it's stopped raining for a few days, so I was able to go out and shovel more dirt into the bamboo grove. This should fill it back in. The wall is done, and other than needing to bring in more dirt as things settle, the Bamboo Grove is done. All the dirt has been dug up, the rock removed and the dirt quality improved. As the dirt settles, I will probably need to bring in a bit more.