Yep, moved to the Klopeks, now for renovations!

[ck80]

So, not much has happened with this home front in quite a while. Mostly chasing gremlins and getting sidetracked by other needs and projects.

Removed a good deal (most) of the old shrubbery using tow chains on the front hooks of the yukon. Wrap around a few times, shackle to the hooks, no measly shrub will fight the 8.1L wrapped in a 3 ton beastie (yeah. I'm too lazy to unload it.)




Roots and all, one shot, it's gone. Much easier than digging. Place is looking better, quickly.

As for the replacement, I was leaning towards a Japanese garden style approach with rocks and ornamentation, not much in the way of new plants. And looking through the soils, I kind of want to put in a French drain situation to get water away from the slab on a related/unrelated note.

I've looked into the whole ditch witch thing, and, getting an older used unit upwards of $2k doesn't seem worth it for what I'm aiming for. At the same time, to do it right is probably 3 egress pipes running to the moat/ditch/defensive perimeter of the property. On one side of the house I have little options due to the buried utilities, so, I won't be running a drain across there. Instead it'll be front LH side of house to front road; frontnrh side of house, and rear rh side of house, to right side of road. Left rear side of house will need to go west to the border of the neighbor's land. All told without gis measuring it out I assume about 600 ft to lay

 

[64nailhead]

A low maintenance yard is always a way to keep you in the garage - think ‘concrete’.

😉

 

[pagrunt]

A low maintenance yard is always a way to keep you in the garage - think ‘concrete’.

😉

Maybe alittle with some green paint. Then again dye the concrete green.

 

[ck80]

A low maintenance yard is always a way to keep you in the garage - think ‘concrete’.

😉

Funny you mention that.

My plan 'a' was to cover the areas near the house with a concrete slab then spread rock over it with a few large planters mixed in. No weeds because nothing could grow. Every few years rake the rocks out of the way, power wash any fines out of them and out an opening at the end, respread and repeat.

Then I calculated the volume of concrete to make a 3" slab everywhere id want. I called the plants nearby, and found out it would be over $6000 just for material and delivery if I found my own float team. MASSIVE building boom in these parts, economy has been in overdrive. They just broke ground on an 850 unit single family development down the road, and, another cotton field a few miles out has a zoning hearing sign up to go from AR to R8 class.

That, as you could imagine, was the end of that. Too many other priorities to deal with to spend $7500 on concrete and rocks to dump on the ground. I want to spend money on tractors and cars. So, as a more temporary measure I'm thinking making a fabric and plastic barrier and surfacing with pea gravel for now.

I wish we had the 'builder sentiment collapse' they've got everywhere else you hear about, give me a chance to score some deals on improvements around here.

Then, worse yet, the farm I'd ordered 125 containerized 18" tall rabbiteye blueberry bushes to put in this spring canceled my order due to production issues, and asked if I'd like to place an order for next spring instead.

 

[86LK]

Funny you mention that.

My plan 'a' was to cover the areas near the house with a concrete slab then spread rock over it with a few large planters mixed in. No weeds because nothing could grow. Every few years rake the rocks out of the way, power wash any fines out of them and out an opening at the end, respread and repeat.

Then I calculated the volume of concrete to make a 3" slab everywhere id want. I called the plants nearby, and found out it would be over $6000 just for material and delivery if I found my own float team. MASSIVE building boom in these parts, economy has been in overdrive. They just broke ground on an 850 unit single family development down the road, and, another cotton field a few miles out has a zoning hearing sign up to go from AR to R8 class.

That, as you could imagine, was the end of that. Too many other priorities to deal with to spend $7500 on concrete and rocks to dump on the ground. I want to spend money on tractors and cars. So, as a more temporary measure I'm thinking making a fabric and plastic barrier and surfacing with pea gravel for now.

I wish we had the 'builder sentiment collapse' they've got everywhere else you hear about, give me a chance to score some deals on improvements around here.

Then, worse yet, the farm I'd ordered 125 containerized 18" tall rabbiteye blueberry bushes to put in this spring canceled my order due to production issues, and asked if I'd like to place an order for next spring instead.

ask for a discount, after all you are helping them out with their production issues 👍

 

[ck80]

ask for a discount, after all you are helping them out with their production issues 👍

Well, they're already only charging me $2.45 each so I'm not sure how much lower they would go. I mentioned a few times how it threw off my planned planting for this spring and all I got was a well, our order book is open for next spring if you'd like us to add you... and a few mentions by me only git the same dead end answer. I don't think they cared that much

 

[ck80]

Today fully cleared another 12ftx40ft patch of brush and trees, then we burned it. Also burned 2 stumps. Then thinned out the brush and trees for another patch about 10ftx60ft



More of the land is getting cleaned up towards the fence line. At this point there's about 10 feet of buffer to the property line remaining, that's were I did the thinning. We've been getting mailers from the arbor day group, and I think both the wife and I will take them up on their 'special offers'.

Using the plants they let you choose from I'll likely finish clearing what's left behind under 8"DBH along that fence line and install the mix of crape myrtle and all the rest they let you get nearly free back there.

Still more work to do, but, it's coming along.

 

[ck80]

So, more adventures in tracking down dumb s*** people do...

At first I thought we had an issue related to various sprinklet system equipment that hasn't been maintained in... ???? years. My bet is at least 20.







Some kind of sprinkler/irrigation/fertilization system. Found it hidden by overgrowth.

The only reason I found it is we had, I thought, a sprinkler leak based on some water coming from the ground through the grass when mowing on Thursday.

Well, today took some time for exploratory diggings, trying to trace water flow. I expected to find some buried hose, line, fitting, whatever.

Whelp, eventually I got to where instead of seepage flowing from the side of a hole, it came straight from the bottom.

Dug down with a small trench shovel, got to something hard I felt water flowing past. Turns out, it was a piece of broken brick. Then a piece of old wood/root. Then another piece of brick and some small crushed granite stone. Clearly backfill debris.

But solid water from below. Slowly.


Eventually, walking around, I heard noise from over by the house and see the water bubbling up faster. Got near the house, and, of course the noise stops for pinpointing purposes.

Open the door and notice the wife is running the washing machine.

So. It appears at some point a grey water line was run from the house with construction debris dumped on top buried a foot down, and just left there, leading to sunken areas in the lawn. Just so happens I caught it in a saturated phase.

Still not sure everywhere that is connected to this, as it's nowhere near the septic. Maybe test various drains and water sources with some dye of different colors a week or so apart, see if I can identify it with the colors? Then I can decide how to remediate.

 

[DRIVEN]

Duck pond!

 

[ck80]

Duck pond!

At first I thought they mightve filled in some high water table areas with debris and then covered it in a foot or two of soil, fairly common practice in new subdivisions here. Had that been the case I was seriously thinking about opening up a couple thousand sq ft koi pond.

Unfortunately, seems like a very different issue