No rest here, Dave. Where I cut down all of my trees, I’m now tilling up all the ground and seeding it with grass seed. My neighbor loaned me his tiller – a little 20 lb. Mantis that you pull backwards. For an 80 x 14 ft. area, that’s tiny. It took me 6 solid hours to till and my hands got horrible charlie horses in them most of the night after dinner, but I survived. Today it’s laying the seed, working it in with a garden rake, covering with straw and then water, water, water as needed.
Since I seeded the front year in 2009 after Tom died and did a great job, I decided to widen my talents to a much bigger area. I’ve attached pics of the tree project. My 25 year old and I did it all – yes, even cut them down ourselves in pieces. Cut off the branches, gave away the big wood and all the mulch. It was going to cost me over $5,000 to have this all done – by the time the grass is growing and all is done, I will have spent about $400 total, and the exercise certainly did me good. What an accomplishment though! My neighbor thought I was crazy as it could have been done much quicker by someone else, but I couldn’t afford spending the money on this project.
Many ask, why the heck did you cut THOSE down? Well, they were dead a foot back, overgrown into one another, killing off the neighbor’s trees, and were horrible to mow around. I own land on both sides, and my shoulders just couldn’t take the mowing around them, in and out and in and out. I will be planting new more manageable trees that will be much easier to mow around, and a couple of bushes as well.
As you can see, we only had one mishap during the whole process. I think my parents thought I had gone out of my mind with the picture of my oldest in the shredder. Of course, it was turned off and not running at all. Our only regret is that he wished he had taken hold of both of my arms rather than one, and we should have had a shoe coming out the chute. Oh well – I thought the picture was hilarious – still have my sense of humor. 🙂
Hopefully we’ll have the seeding done today and I can have at least one day tomorrow to rest before heading back to work. 🙂 Take care, Feel free to share.
Ruth
