Doug built a little retaining wall at a spot where the slope is particularly steep. You can see it in the picture below. Isn’t it cute? It will be great to no longer have mud running across our driveway. I can't even imagine what that is going to be like.
I decided that I wanted to plant some liriope (groundcover) on the steeper slopes so that I wouldn’t have to mow grass there. Doug figured out that we needed 2500 plants to cover the area. 2500!!! I would have said never mind, I’ll just mow, but he had already ordered them. It was exhausting planting those stupid things and it took about three weeks to get them all planted. I think we got them in just in the nick of time before it got too cold. I can’t wait to see how they do next spring.
There was a huge unattractive rock pile under our cedar tree. I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to have one there, but it tripled in size over this past year with various rocks that had emerged during the grading process, huge chunks of cement, and miscellaneous pieces of cinderblock and bricks. I finally couldn’t take it any longer and I spent an entire week moving that damn pile, first down to the driveway, and then into Doug’s truck. And then to the dump in about six 500 pound trips. One rock at a time. Rocks are heavy. I just love my life right now. But now the cedar tree has beautiful liriope planted under it and it looks quite elegant.
The electric company had been snipping away and totally deforming our Norway Spruce near the power lines for years. It was looking really ugly as a result. We knew it was time for the tree to go away so Doug called them up and said told them it would be okay with him if they cut it down. They said they would do it for free, but they would leave everything there for us to clean up. So I spent a week sawing all of the branches off of the trunk, loading Doug’s truck with the branches and the trunk chunks, and taking it all to the dump. It was about 6 truckloads of branches. Unfortunately a large part of the trunk is still standing. A totally bare trunk that is about 20 feet high. It is more than I can handle by myself. I wonder when we will finish cutting the rest of it down. Anyone want to place bets? One month? 3 months? 6 months? Longer than 6 months? I know how our neighbors would bet.
This has been an exhausting fall, but now we have a cute little retaining wall and tons of liriope.
