Dry Lot Done

Before breakfast, Phil came in with quite a find: the most enormous night crawler I'd ever seen. It had been growing under the remains of our bag of potting soil, and apparently found the accommodations most invigorating.

Right after breakfast, Joe and I went to transplant five more hazelnuts. These five were thriving at the edge of the woods, but the cow's dry lot would have left them in danger of trampling, so we moved them up. Joe is now quite adept at finding buds, and he dug an entire hole or two all by himself.

Which is especially impressive because he uses a full-sized shovel, but is too small to step on it. So by sheer force of will, he plunges it into the ground and lifts out what he can.

After we planted those hazelnuts, I kept on weeding around the apple trees. The 10,000 daffodil bulbs have been delayed beyond imagination, but in order to be ready to plant whenever they arrive, I have grass and weeds to remove around the base of the trees.

I ended up finishing three rows, 82 trees cleared up and awaiting bulbs. And when Phil brought down a tractor bucket of pine wood chips, I mulched around the blueberries planted yesterday. I like the feeling of covering the plants with a moist blanket.

Phil again spent the day working on the cow's winter dry lot. He first had to take out some 60 feet or so of fence in order to make the uppermost garden bed more even in shape (it had ranged from 22 to 29 feet in width, but now is a wonderful 29 feet all the way).

Sadly, we had stacked all the T-posts and extra cattle panels along that section of fence, so he first had to move them out of the way, panel by panel and post by post. Then, because the posts weren't quite far enough over, he had to move them again.

All told, we figure he probably put up some 350 feet of fencing in the last two days, carrying many panels down and up the gully, weaving 16-foot panels between trees, pounding well over 60 posts eight inches or so into the ground. Each post needed three bits of wire cut and tightened.

And, finally, he put up the gates.

Since they realized that I have been watching Jeeves and Wooster movies while I do the dishes, the boys have been most solicitous of my kitchen habits. "Are you going to wash the dishes now, Mommy?" was a frequent question during the day.

In the meantime, Abraham went to dig holes.

And Isaiah armed himself with an arsenal of ball, bat, frisbee, and rock tied to a string.