Back to semi-normal — RET-ADD.com

Howdy,

Took a full day to clean up the mess. Wore this old man out. Started with the staging tent.

The fabric had ripped from the frame, and a few pieces of the frame got bent some — like the threshold piece.

Quite a few frame pieces had worked their way loose too. Found most of the nuts.

I’ll be keeping the fabric to possibly use as patching on the big greenhouse.

Came down a lot quicker than it took to build it. I am thinking of using the framing structure to build trellises over berry bed .

Next step was to clear the area.

Oh, all of this was before working on rest of the yard. I had a “plan” and you’ll see how it played out.

Ah, now that looks better — even if there is very little grass.

Time to build the extension to the berry beds.

Great job. Done so quickly too. (yeah, like 4 hours passed since I started). You may notice the back part of the bed is 3/4 full of twigs and branches that I chopped up as I picked them up from around the yard.

Then I mowed to pick up all of the leaves and littler twigs, along with the grass. And threw on the clippings from the prior mowing, and anything else that was in the compost bin.

I’ll water that bed heavily over the next week to try and push the smaller clippings/composting vegetation into the gaps of the twigs and branches below. This bed is almost 2 foot high and is 4x8 feet. So there is well over a cubic yard of debris in there.

To this I’ll top with bags of garden soil, and top that with potting mixture. The layers will allow for a slow release of composted nutrients for whatever I plant within.

Likely won’t plant anything until fall, and then just as a cover crop for next spring.

In case you are wondering what the yard looks like, now that I’ve cleared the debris, here are a couple of pictures.

And gratuitous bunny rabbit shot next door. You can see the trees that landed on my neighbor’s front yard, encroaching on his driveway.. He’ll need a professional tree guy to saw the limb off the tree. Much too big in diameter for my toy 10 inch battery chainsaw.

So, as the heading said, Back to semi-normal..

I do want to build out the trellis over the berry bed, and to redo the bird netting over the berry bushes that got knocked about during the high winds. Need to make it sturdier.

And I did this a few hours later — adding some pictures below.

Nice new netting over the berry bushes. Insects can get in, but birdies can’t.

And some framework to use as trellis material when those tomato plants start growing up.

Some of the strawberry plants have blossomed. These were just bare roots a few weeks ago. Could I get a berry this year??

Oh, and a word or two on my generator. So glad I had it. Wish I had checked the gas gauge though. Was able to make do with a tank of propane. Electricity was only down for me for just over 8 hours.

This morning I filled the gas tank on it, and have another 5 gallons as backup. Also replaced the two empty propane tanks, and put the one back on the generator (so there are 2 on the generator, and one as backup).

With the existing supplies, I think I can make it close to 2 full days on generator power. It was so nice to have heat and light and everything able to run.

Except for TV and internet. Around here we have Spectrum Cable for TV and Internet, and VOIP. Well, they must have equipment on the same power company circuit as the electricity in this house. Every time there is an electric hit, the Internet drops too.

Fortunately, I still have my Verizon MiFi which I was able to use most of the storm. And my AT&T iPhone also worked most of the time. Redundant Backup Plans are a must for me so that I can

Enjoy Life.