Beginnings of a Backyard Oasis

I realized this week that it had been quite some time since I had posted anything for this blog. My original intention was to use this to not only share recipes, but to also write about the beer brewing, the house and yard projects, the music writing and any other craft type things that happen at the Crosshatch. But alas I have not kept up with the writing. Mainly because for the past two and a half months I have been building a split rail fence around our yard and another around the garden. Digging each fence post hole by hand doesn't leave me much in the mood to then blog about it. By I will try to do better at updating going forward and give you a little bit of insight as to how it has gone thus far.......

On March 28th I brewed 10 gallons of an IPA with my friend Jason. You can view this brew session on my brewing video link over there on the right of your screen if you are so inclined to have an extract beer brewing lesson. The following afternoon a truck arrived at my house carrying a load of a little over 700 feet of split rail fence materials. When the driver first arrived in back down to the area next to the garage where I wanted the materials, but then asked me if I had anything to prop under his tires before he got out of the truck since the brakes weren't working so well...not very reassuring, but I went along with it, grabbing a couple of logs off the woodpile and shoving them under the front tires. Once this was completed, he jumped out of the truck and unhooked the straps on the back of the flatbed. At first I thought we were going to have unload the rails and posts one by one, but he said that wasn't necessary as the back of the flatbed lifted up. Cool. So he raised the flatbed up, however all the wood just sat there on a slant about 3 or 4 feet off the asphalt. Suddenly he gunned it, and the truck shot up my driveway while all the wood flew off the back into a pile! It was nuts! He then handed me the receipt out the window, waved goodbye and was off. Well my rails seemed none the worse for wear after their short flight, although now that I have worked my way through the majority of the pile, it does seem I ended up with about six broken rails that had the ends crushed when the stack of posts landed on them.

  Now that we are nearing the end of the first week of June, I have completed fencing the front yard, down one whole side of our property, and around the garden. I have about 8-10 posts left to put in along the back of the property that were left over and giving us more fence than what we originally planned on putting in this go around. I have also successfully meshed the whole side yard fence so far which is now effectively keeping the neighbor dog from charging us or leaving us his poop presents to clean up.

As you see in the picture below I have also put up the fence around the garden we planted. So far we have in tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, green beans, cucumbers, pole beans, kale, beets, sunflowers, corn, swiss chard (although it is barely making it) and last night we planted a blueberry bush in a big half whiskey wooden keg. This in addition to the three rows of strawberries that were already there. And we have plans on adding more soon.

Front Gate Area of the Garden Fence

 

We still have lots more weeding, mulching and tree trimming to do, but the beginnings of our backyard oasis is starting to emerge. There are still plans on building a deck, adding a fountain, plus another water feature (waterfall and pond) in the back corner of the yard below the garden as sort of a zen garden/mediation area. Although these are future projects that most likely will not be happening this year!

I enjoy the gardening part and it is actually a nice break after digging each fence post by hand. I tried renting a one-man post hole digger but took it back after two hours of frustration. I can actually dig much faster manually since after about six or eight inches down, the ground is hard pack clay. The power digger would just spin on top of this clay and not really make much headway. I have had two occassions where after getting down about 2 feet I hit a solid boulder and could go no further and had to cut off part of the bottom of the post. Most of my holes I run down about 28 to 30 inches. In other cases I hit rock and just went around it, so the fence isn't solid straight, but perhaps more of a slightly rambling style which I have decided is just rustic charm. :) More soon!

Front right corner looking out over the garden