Saturday. Our first weekend warrior day, and we had a late start. We had to have Matthews car to the mechanic at 10:30, and the boys had eye appointments at noon. Due to a snafu at Binyons, we had to reschedule our appointments, getting us home earlier than we had planned, so we got started on the garden around 1:00. Not ideal with the amount of work we had to do! First we cleared all the wood from the demolished garden boxes that I had left laying around willy nilly. It actually made a big difference in how the garden looked (more like a garden, less like a trash pile) so that was encouraging.
After the wood was cleared, we got started on the last garden box which was also the biggest one. I had tried and tried on Friday to get it apart, but most of the screws were rusted or stripped, and I didn't have enough strength to pry the boards apart with a crowbar. We tried everything we could think of to get that box apart on Saturday, and finally had to resort to sawing the boards off the 4X4 corner posts. Matthew was able to get the whole thing torn apart, and boy, were we ever surprised at what we found. A whole garden box full of.....ROOTS.
Apparently the previous owner had planted asparagus plants, and they have the craziest roots you have ever seen. The box was like one big root bound pot!
You couldn't just dig the plants out, because the roots filled the entire box. Sometimes they would come out in big clumps, but mostly it was individual roots. This was a small clump we got out....some others that we got were bigger than Rowan!
We got really frustrated with the whole thing, and decided to work on other projects before tackling the roots again. The previous owner had also put in a horseshoe pit in the garden. Isn't that a weird place to put something like that? To make sure it wasn't going to go anywhere he had sunk the backboard and the metal pole into about 2.5 feet of concrete each. Which meant we had a lot of work ahead of us digging through the sand to get those up. They were a major pain.
After we got the wood moved, the posts dug up and the last box taken apart we dug up the last of the blackberry bushes that were along the fence. They also had huge roots, at least an inch in diameter, and spread everywhere. After the days work was done on Saturday, we had quite the dump pile!
We called it quits around 630 and headed in for dinner, tired, sore and dreading what surprises the next day would hold...
After the wood was cleared, we got started on the last garden box which was also the biggest one. I had tried and tried on Friday to get it apart, but most of the screws were rusted or stripped, and I didn't have enough strength to pry the boards apart with a crowbar. We tried everything we could think of to get that box apart on Saturday, and finally had to resort to sawing the boards off the 4X4 corner posts. Matthew was able to get the whole thing torn apart, and boy, were we ever surprised at what we found. A whole garden box full of.....ROOTS.
Apparently the previous owner had planted asparagus plants, and they have the craziest roots you have ever seen. The box was like one big root bound pot!
You couldn't just dig the plants out, because the roots filled the entire box. Sometimes they would come out in big clumps, but mostly it was individual roots. This was a small clump we got out....some others that we got were bigger than Rowan!
We got really frustrated with the whole thing, and decided to work on other projects before tackling the roots again. The previous owner had also put in a horseshoe pit in the garden. Isn't that a weird place to put something like that? To make sure it wasn't going to go anywhere he had sunk the backboard and the metal pole into about 2.5 feet of concrete each. Which meant we had a lot of work ahead of us digging through the sand to get those up. They were a major pain.
After we got the wood moved, the posts dug up and the last box taken apart we dug up the last of the blackberry bushes that were along the fence. They also had huge roots, at least an inch in diameter, and spread everywhere. After the days work was done on Saturday, we had quite the dump pile!
We called it quits around 630 and headed in for dinner, tired, sore and dreading what surprises the next day would hold...