The Walkway in front of the raised garden

While waiting for the telephone company to fix our land line phone cable, I've started digging out the area where the walkway will go in front of the raised garden. We already have the area behind and to the North of the raised garden, so we have the front and to the South to do.

The first problem is to mark the area to be excavated.



Next we remove all the grass, exposing the dirt to be moved.



We dig down with the dirt. In some places, we only go a couple of inches before we hit rock. One day of digging gets the first half.



A second day of digging gets the second half.



As you can see, rocks lay just below the surface. So now we need to take out those rocks. We were hoping that we could use the dirt edge as one side of the framing for pouring a vertical cement wall, but it looks like the rocks do not happen to separate where we want them to, so we will need to extract rocks that will leave a void under the ground in the yard. Eventually we will want to dig out the yard too. It may be sooner for parts of the yard than we wanted.

So far we've done pretty well with just taking the rocks out of the desired area. Most of these rocks are too big to manage as is, so I've brought out the jackhammer and split them at the edge of the trench.



We have about half the rocks out now, and just need to continue to split them and remove them.

Continuing with the excavation, we are down to one (big) rock to remove, right at the corner of the walkway and the North Pit. In preparation for the cement wall defining the boundary of the walkway, we have to consider how the walkway continues from the raised garden to the back patio, so we have laid that out and will need to excavate the extended walkway, probably 3 feet or so, to provide the right support and connection to the extended walkway.



The objective now is to fill this trench with rock, ready for flagstones to make it a walkway. To do this, we need both sides of the trench well-defined. So we are going ahead and putting in the retaining wall that will separate the yard (dirt) from the trench (rock). Once we have that wall in place, we can fill the trench with rock. We use our standard technique of using the dirt for one side of the frames and the masonite boards as the other, separated by multiple 1x4 boards, and held in place with our bags of compost/manure.

Replacing our Telephone Line

We've been having problems with our telephone for some time. This is our AT&T land-line telephone, the one that was installed when the house was built in 1986.

For a couple of years now, the amount of static and noise on the line has been increasing. Last year (September 2010), when Hurricane Hermine came thru, we got 14 inches of rain in one day. A couple of days later, the phone line was generating so much static that we couldn't dial out, or hear much when someone called. At that point, a couple of guys came out and said the problem seemed to be below the concrete pedestal in the back yard with the electrical transformer. Then they went away, and gradually, the problems with the phone line went away.

This year, the static and noise increased again (and we've had no rain). Eventually it got bad enough I figured we needed to try again. I put in a trouble report with AT&T. In retaliation, the phone line decided to just die altogether. No signal. No dial tone. So at least it wasn't a subjective or transitory problem.

After 4 days, a repair person came out and agreed that the line was dead. The next day, a locator came out to (a) agree the line was dead, and (b) mark the lawn with where the line went and where the problem appeared to be. They can apparently send a signal down the line and when it gets to the break, it reflects and comes back. From the time it takes to get the reflection, they can compute how far down the wire the problem is. 39 feet. Which put it pretty much at the electrical transformer.

Another 4 days later, a crew of two guys showed up to dig up the lawn, to get at the phone wire at the point where the problem should be. They dug down and found the trench in the limestone where all the utility lines are (phone, cable, electrical). But they could not find the telephone line.



So this digging crew left, needing another locator. F days later, another locator person showed up, and found a spot on the other side of the electrical box. Another dig crew came out and dug down and found where our phone line was split off from the main cable.



Since it was now some 14 days without a dial tone, the installer put in a new telephone line by opening up the main line and splicing on a new cable, and then ran that cable across the yard to the interface box on the side of the house and attaching it instead of the old line. The old wiring is still there, buried in the yard,
but useless, and detached. The new wiring is just a black cable running across the yard. Another dig crew needs to come out and bury the line.



Turns out two dig crews came out. On Wednesday, a crew of two guys came out and filled in the holes and removed the plywood and orange plastic fence.

This left the telephone cable coming up out of the ground on the right side of the electrical box, and then going back down on the left before coming back up and crawling across the lawn to the house. And they said that another dig crew would come out and just "shove the line under the grass", which is what the cable people did when they needed to replace the cable.



This seemed short-sighted, so I went out and dug up both sides, to find the cable, and then along the front of the electrical box, down to bed rock (which isn't very far right there), and threaded the telephone cable from the one side (where it attaches to the main telephone trunk), over to the other side, where it will continue to the house. There was lots of extra cable, so I coiled the extra on both the left and the right sides.



Then I buried all this, so that the right side of the box is completely finished, and the cable just comes up out of the ground on the left side, and then runs across the yard to the house.



Literally 5 minutes after I finished this work, the final dig crew showed up and 3 guys pushed the cable under the grass in about 10 minutes.



That should hold everything until this entire area of the yard is excavated.

Head waters of the new Walkway

The landscape plan shows a walkway from the gate past the North Pit, joining a walkway around the raised garden and then extending back to the walkway around the deck in the back. One side of the walkway is, effectively, the North Pit, so we are going to start excavating it, using the North Pit as a working area.



We've "outlined" the walkway using the grubbing hoe on the one side and have expanded the North Pit over to the curving edge of where the walkway will be. The next step will be to dig all the dirt out, put in the two "walls" below ground level that will define the two sides of the walkway, then fill the space between the walls with rock and put down decomposed granite, as a base, and the "Oklahoma Thin" flagstones that we used for the walkway around the deck.

First step is to dig. I'm starting the excavation near the raised garden, working towards the gate. That way the gate can continue to be used until I dig out the part just in front of it. If I then back fill at that end first, the gate will be unusable for the shortest period of time.



The excavation goes thru the traditional (a) dirt under the grass, (b) construction left-overs, and (c) native clay. All of these layers, especially (b) and (c) have random rock in them, which we pull out. Then we hit the first layer of rock. We could use this as the base of our walkway, or we could take it out and go down another 6 to 8 inches to bedrock.



Part of the last 6 to 8 inches of rock comes out easily, so we removed it. But we are planning on leaving most of this layer in place and putting the walkway on top of it.



Once we have this much excavated, we can start putting the walls in that will separate the dirt beds from the walkway. We start with the outer wall, next to the un-excavated area. We use a piece of black plastic on that side to separate the concrete wall from the dirt. When (if) we eventually get to digging up that side, the plastic should allow a clean separation between the wall and the dirt.



Putting the wall between the North Pit and the walkway is more difficult because it has to be supported on both sides. It's hard to get either wall up high enough because our forms are only 16 inches tall. I'm doing it in layers, so I can pour concrete, wait for it to firm up, then remove the forms and raise them up to pour the next layer.



I added a piece of 4 inch PVC irrigation pipe stretching from one side of the walkway into the North Pit. This is to allow wiring or pipe to be run from one side to the other in the future. It is expected, for example, that we will want to run 3/4 inch or 1/2 inch irrigation for Zone 3 from the valve controller on the once side into both the North and South Pits, to provide a water supply.



Once the concrete was built up enough, I can then mortar on the limestone blocks on the top, to finish the wall off next to the North Pit. Now I could put the dirt back in, and let it settle before planting.



This should finish the North Pit, with the exception of putting in irrigation and planting. Both the North Pit and the South Pit should be Zone 2 of the sprinkler system.

Removing the Last Juniper Tree

In 1993, I removed all the male juniper trees on the property. Over time, I've removed the female trees too. All except one. Linda put an "owl box" on the least female juniper tree, and so we were keeping it. But Linda says the owls, if there were any, have left for the summer, so I took the opportunity to move the owl box to another tree and cut down the last juniper tree.



At first, I was going to leave the tree -- just sort of trim it up a bit, so I took off the lower limbs, to "raise the canopy", leaving stubs for the birds to land on.



But then Linda said I had butchered it so badly, why didn't I just take the entire tree down? So I did.



This works out reasonably well, since the City is picking up "Large Brush" and tree trimmings. (The neighbor across the cove cut down 3 juniper trees, and has a much bigger pile of branches as a result.)



The owl box was moved to the Monterey Oak outside the kitchen.

Partitioning the North Pit

With the master landscape plan in hand, I know what to do with the North Pit. Next to the raised garden, we want a walk-way, similar to the walk-way around the back deck.

The back part, between the fence and the raised garden is already basically in place. We have a cement wall under the fence and the whole area is filled with rock. Now we want something similar next to the raised garden and the North Pit.

The first step is to dig out the remaining dirt next to the raised garden.



Next we need to build the wall that will separate the North Pit from the rock-filled walk-way. We first clear a path for it.



We could pour a pure concrete wall, but computing it out, it appears to be less expensive to use concrete blocks. The concrete blocks are 8 x 16 x 4 inches. With the limestone block on top, the wall should be about 20 inches tall. With blocks of 8 inches, I can do 16 or 24, but not 20. So I figure I'll pour about a 4 inch base in concrete, which will even out the uneven rock surface and give us the right height.



Once the cement base has set, I can mortar on the cement blocks. I leave a gap in the lower rank of cement blocks, in case water needs to flow from one side to the other. This is not expected to be a problem, but just in case. I can't finish the entire wall, since it needs to tie into a similar structure that I haven't excavated yet.



Once the wall sets, I can put all the rocks on the right side and start to spread the dirt on the left side.

A landscape plan

Once I started working on the North Pit, it became more obvious to me that I needed a long term plan of how to work on the yard. While I feel there is value in digging up the yard, removing all the rock, and improving the soil, I'm not sure that it should be returned to just grass once all this is done.

So we contacted a Landscape Designer, Liz Klein, from DesignMyYard. This started in March. Ms. Klein came over and walked the yard with both Linda and me, listening to what we wanted and seeing what we had. There were several sessions where she presented ideas and listened to our comments.

The result was a landscape plan for us to work on. While Ms. Klein normally seems to both come up with a plan and then arrange for it to be done, in our case we were happy with just the plan, and our own intentions to implement it over a longer time period. I'm not sure I care about reaching the goal of the entire landscape plan, but it gives me a direction to go when I need to make decisions about current work.



This plan shows that, for the current work, I will put a walk way from the fence next to the garage, past the North Pit, joining for a moment with a walk way around the raised garden, and then on around to the existing back patio/deck walk.

The area between this walk way and the house will become a bed for plantings. Part of this bed has already been excavated, but I will need to expand that. In addition, I can expand the North Pit slightly to lay the foundation for the walkway.

It's getting very hot now with Summer coming on, so most of the plantings should probably wait until Fall. That gives me several months to get things ready.

Changing the irrigation in the driveway peninsula

One side-effect of the digging in the North Pit is that it exposed part of the irrigation pipe for Zone 1. Zone 1 is mainly the peninsula of dirt that is between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway. I dug it all up and redid the sprinkler system for Zone 1 some time ago. The controller for Zone 1 is near the fence between the front and back yard.

It turns out one of the sprinkler lines started in the front, went under the fence, into what is now the North Pit, then over, parallel to the fence and back under the fence to in front of the fence. When I excavated the North Pit, I removed that line, leaving me with 3 stubs -- one to a head in the monkey grass in the back yard by the house (the garage actually), one that went to a sprinkler head in the front, and the supply line from the controller. The obvious thing to do was to move the supply line back to in front of the fence, and then run a line to re-attach it to the sprinkler head in the front. The head in the monkey grass should be re-routed to Zone 2, with the rest of the heads in the monkey grass.

So to get the stubs of the sprinkler lines out of the North Pit, I took a week to re-do these lines in front of the fence. Looking at this area, however, it seems silly to do a general spray head. The only thing in this area, near the fence between the front and back yards, are 4 crepe myrtle trees. Most of the peninsula is a few trees -- crepe myrtles and Bartlett pears -- and rocks. The dirt is covered with mulch. Nothing much will grow there, because of all the shade from the trees.

So rather than re-routing a line to the spray head, I took the spray head out, and put in bubblers for the 3 crepe myrtle trees that it should be watering. This gets more controlled amounts of water directly to the base of the trees, which should be much more effective.

The first thing to do was to run a water supply line over to the middle of the crepe myrtles.



Then, we ran a line down the middle, between the trees. We branched off this middle line to run a line to each of the trees, and put a bubbler on the end of each of them.



Then we covered the entire area with mulch. It took 10 bags of mulch to cover this area, where we had been digging.




It took 15 more bags to cover the rest of the peninsula.



This little back corner of the front yard, although it is adjacent to the rest of the peninsula has apparently never been excavated. This makes sense, since doing so would damage the root system of the trees. But for this limited digging, I found a lot of construction level rock and debris. I removed everything I could, and added a bunch of leaves and compost in putting the dirt back in.

Finishing the North Pit

With the trench behind the raised bed pretty well done, I need to extend the cement wall along the entire length of the fence. While the bulk of the digging in the pit is done, the edges need to be finished off. We have left about a foot of untouched dirt next to the fences, for stability while we were working.

For the cement wall, this means taking the edge of the excavated pit right up to the fence.



Continuing around the edges reveals more big rocks and also some irrigation pipes.



We need to decide if we take out the newly exposed rock, or just cement it in place and leave it there. Take it out. We took out all the rock along the edge of the pit next to the fence, and then, using our masonite pieces, made forms and poured a concrete wall down to bedrock.



It took 22 60 pound bags of Quikrete concrete mix for this wall (Home Depot, $51.92). Once the concrete was poured, we then mixed a bag of mortar mix and put the white limestone blocks on top.



We will wait a couple of days to let everything set, and then remove the bags of compost and forms, and then start shovelling dirt over into this corner. We will need to re-do the irrigation system where it comes under fence by the gate, and then back under the fence over in the corner.

Behind the Raised Bed

With the North Pit mostly done -- I'm still not sure how to finish it off -- we turn our attention to the strip next to the fence, behind the raised garden that would connect the North Pit and the South Pit. This strip is really weedy. It's only 4 to 5 feet wide and 16 feet long. It has no water supply (no irrigation), and is of variable sunny-ness, depending on what is in the raised bed. If I dig it up, I can continue the cement wall topped with a limestone brick on the top along the fence -- I'm inclined to do this treatment around the entire lot at the fence line.



But what to put back there? It's a pain to mow, and trim, this area. It's too small to really grow something; it mainly is used as a walk area to be able to get to the raised garden.

So, instead of putting in grass or a ground cover, the suggestion is to make it a walkway. In fact, to put a walkway all around the raised garden. If we put in a walkway that matches the sidewalk around the deck, it would match. That sidewalk was dug out, and then filled with stone and sand and decomposed granite, with flagstones put on top. That seems like a reasonable treatment for this area too.

The first step then is to dig it out. Starting on this, we find big rock from 2 to 8 inches under the soil. The soil is very dry, and easy to dig out.



At the moment, we will continue just taking the dirt off the top. But we need to decide whether we take the big rock out, or just cover it over, using the big rock as fill. If we take the big rock out, we will need to replace it with smaller rock to fill the space. The easiest answer is to leave the big rock there.

If we remove the big rock, however, we effectively trade the few big rock for lots of smaller rock. The big rock is easier to get rid of than the smaller rock. Plus there may be more dirt under the big rock, so removing it would give us a more stable finished product -- all inert rock and sand, without any shifting clay soil. On the fence side, we can do our cement wall with limestone block on top. I'm not sure what to do next to the raised bed.

A couple of days later ...

It was very easy to take out the big rocks.



The next step was to straighten up the fence side of the trench, to pour the concrete wall and put the limestone blocks on top. We needed to buy more limestone blocks (Whittlesey Landscape Sales, 640 pounds for $51.88). Plus I would need concrete (24 bags of 60 lb. Quik-crete, $56.64 at Home Depot).



As before, I draped some black plastic on the outside, to keep the concrete separate from the dirt on that side.


Then I used a set of 1x4 pieces of wood to keep the masonite form spaced from the black plastic, and poured the concrete in between. I used the bags of cow manure that I've been buying to mix in with the dirt (60 bags so far at 1.40 a bag, from Lowes and Home Depot). to keep the forms in place. I had to take special care around the fence posts.



And when the forms are removed, we have our wall.



Next, a little mortar and we put the stones on top.



And now we need to clean up the trench, getting it down to rock with both sides straight and clean, so that we can fill it up with rock.



The raised bed should be all pretty good dirt, so we want to partition it off from the trench and keep the dirt in/under the raised bed. We will use landscape cloth -- a weed barrier -- as a curtain to separate the dirt from the rock.

Once the weed barrier is in place, we can start filling the trench with the rock that we dug out of both the trench and the north pit. All that rock that we wheel-barrowed out to the driveway now is wheel-barrowed back. While it was on the driveway, we were posting it to Craig's List and so most of the larger pieces are gone; we have apple-size (and smaller) pieces left, which should be good fill.



This cleans off the driveway. We need a bit more rock for fill, and then to cover it with sand and decomposed granite as a base for flagstones.