Changes in 2017: The Batting Cage

Continuing with my saga of the changes 2017 has brought to the gardens, next up is the aptly named 'Batting Cage'.  As you may recall, in November of 2016, we had the back yard torn up due to our septic tank/drainage field/mound replacement which left us with a lot of mud and dirt where the River Bed and lawns were.  

Since we were going to be replanting the lawn and siting the River Bed in a new area, the question came up about the old gazebo.  Should it stay or should it go?  Cut to the chase, Karen, yes, it did move...(I wrote a three (or forty?) part series on the move, but if you're interested in the really short version, there's a video showing the process:  Gazebo Moving: The Video

The Gazebo in early May before the Big Move

In the above picture, the gazebo is gone and we are left with an empty feeling.  The area needs something, but what?  At this point in May, we had not reconfigured the River Bed yet nor planted any grass.  

With the gazebo gone, upon entering the back yard, the Quarry, barn and chicken coop areas were all visible at once, which was a bit overwhelming.  I prefer to have a bit of mystery in the garden which draws visitors in to see what lies ahead.  

In our stash of things Carl has purchased from work for scrap value was a set of five stainless steel drying racks we've had for years.   I always walked past them and wondered where we could put them to good use.  Now the time had come.  

We thought about making an arbor for morning glories and hyacinth beans that would close in the view a little bit and add some dimension and interest.  We carried the panels up to the old gazebo site and buried them to a good depth; angling each panel slightly to give the illusion of a slight curve. 

Carl, burying the first of the five panels

Carl had built the titanium planter a few years ago for Valentine's Day as a gift to me. I thought the design of the planter worked well with the drying racks.

 

There I am, holding the first three panels in place while Carl takes a photo: Do we like what we see?  We're not sure.....yup, it looks like a batting cage, doesn't it?

Ok, so maybe it wasn't the best idea, but we didn't have much money or effort invested yet, so let's keep going and see how this turns out.

Using stainless wire, Carl ties the panels together at each joint.  Eventually, we had all five panels installed.

The next step was to plant the area; here I'm planting canna bulbs along the fence with the hope they would grow and form a maroon back drop. 

 

Two of the Girls (chickens) assisted me by raking the dirt smooth with their feet.  I rolled the titanium planter into place after planting it with dichondra 'Silver Falls'. 

 

 

I ended up rolling the planter back out of the area so I could plant my hyacinth beans and morning glory seedlings on the fence.  By dark, I was done with the first of the planting.

I couldn't resist putting the lawn chairs right in front. See, I was trying to convince myself this wasn't a baseball diamond, but was instead a garden feature.

 

The following morning, I transplanted some 'Albomarginata' hostas on what would be the shady side of the wall once the vines grew up the fence.

The pipes were sunk into the ground from years of sitting around.  (The big stainless circle will 'some day' be polished and installed in the garden, too....but I don't know when.....?)

We still felt like the area needed something else, though, maybe some big urns for structure.  My next bright idea was to utilize some very heavy one inch thick side wall stainless pipes which Carl had also purchased as scrap from his work.  The pipes had been lying out in the Back Eight for who knows how long; we always wanted to use them somewhere, but didn't know where.

The pipes weighed far too much for us to pick them up unaided, so we incorporated the Super H tractor and lifting straps to haul them to the Batting Cage.

 

 

After jockeying for position, backing up and going ahead, and me asking Carl to turn them this way a bit, no, maybe not, come forward.....a little bit south....maybe a little bit northwest?....ok.....I'm satisfied.  I think..........we had them where they were going to stay. 

We filled each of the impossibly heavy cylinders full of soil so I could plant sweet potato vines in lime green and burgundy, along with a variegated geranium and a miniature King Tut grass.

Every time I watered the pipe planters, the soil level dropped another foot or so; I forget how many times I had to rescue the poor plants which had slid halfway down the pipes.  After a week, the settling stopped and the plants were much happier.

 

As spring went into June, the Batting Cage was starting to take shape.  I know we had our doubts about the whole thing, but once in awhile it is fun to branch out and try something entirely different.  We had several visitors stop in while we were working on this project and most people (I could tell, even if they didn't say too much) were as doubtful as we were about the 'beauty' of the plan.  We couldn't blame them, it was really weird looking.

But as the plants started to grow, the Batting Cage started to grow on us, too.  Though it is hard to see, I added some stainless steel wire lathe 'chips' in a vining pattern to the drying racks which gave the illusion of a stainless steel vine meandering around.  I also added two sets of one hundred tiny solar lights following the vining pattern and when they light up at night, I smile every time I see them.

Here we go, into the end of June, things are growing in a bit more.  I planted Dusty Miller from seed along with a 'Queen Red Lime' zinnia which grew to over three feet tall which blended in well with the dark cannas.

Another view coming through between the house and garage.

As the season progresses, things changed.

 

By the time August arrived, we couldn't see the Batting Cage any longer. 

The cannas rose to all-time record heights for me; must have been all the rain we had this summer.

The whole Batting Cage took on a jungle appearance. 

By the Booyah party in August, the lawn had come in quite well and you'd never know we'd did some major renovations.

 

Another reason we wanted to move the gazebo was so we had a place to set up our big circus tent for our annual second Saturday in August booyah party.  With the gazebo gone, the tent fit perfectly in the area and we set up tables and benches for guests to be out of the sun (or rain---but so far, we've been lucky with no rain!) while they eat.

 

 So, despite our worst fears, the Batting Cage turned out to be a success.  (The booyah party was fun, too; we had a great turnout, around ninety friends, family and neighbors.)

So now, we're into September and here are some pictures I took yesterday:

 Even the back side of the Batting Cage is interesting and casts a lot of shade.

May 2017

Amazing how much plants can change things in just a few short weeks time, isn't it?  

September 9, 2017

I am not looking forward to removing all the vines from the drying racks after our first frost, but it was fun while it lasted.  Once we dig all the bulbs, pull out all the annuals and remove all the vines, if there isn't too much snow on the ground, heck, we could still play baseball.  It's a multi-use garden area.

Batter UP!

What's a Quarry Without More Rocks?

I'm going to be playing catch up on what happened around here this summer, but in typical me-fashion, the events won't be chronological.  Coining Monty Python and the 'Search for the Holy Grail', I'll be skipping ahead a bit, brother.  And then back again, but oh, well, you'll see...

Carl and I spent the last week of August into the first week in September hauling rocks.  Our friend, Leo, called and asked if we'd be interested in some rocks he had purchased a decade or so ago which were left over from his raised garden bed project.  Of course, the answer was yes even though we have plenty of work here to attend to.  The siren call of rocks needing a good home was too hard to resist.  Besides, surely it wouldn't take long to load them up and haul them the eight miles home.  There weren't that many. 

  Well, at least, that's what we thought.  In the picture above there is a scoop shovel head lying near the pile which gives a fairly good indication of the size of the rocks we needed to wrangle.  None of them were too big to pick up, but none of them were mere pebbles, either.  The rocks had sunk into the ground, so each of them needed to be shoveled loose.  And to make matters more interesting, the pile was home to a village of really large, black and red ants who quite rightfully despised our invasion.  

Our first plan was to simply drive the car and trailer through the narrow opening between Leo's greenhouse and garden bed outlined in stone.  Carl managed to squeeze the Oldsmobile with our increasingly decrepit trailer into the small area and parked right next to the rock pile.  We commenced to loading, stopping when the springs on the trailer were starting to flatten out.  In no time at all we had our first ton of stone ready to roll toward home.  

Ah, but nothing is ever that easy, sadly.  As Carl maneuvered the car and trailer back through the narrow opening, the trailer slid over on the steep hill and lodged itself right into Leo's greenhouse.  Drat.

 Yeah.  That's not cool.  Carl tried unhooking the trailer and we pushed and pulled it into a new angle, but no luck.  We had no choice but to unload all the stone, carrying them one by one to the driveway.  Ok, not a problem, we had the trailer empty in about fifteen minutes, drove ahead, and reloaded the stone.  The slow drive home was uneventful; we took back roads and a half hour later, arrived at our house.  

Not knowing what we were really going to do with the stone, Carl opted to put it all on pallets so we could move it easily with the tractor.  The first load filled nine pallets and I was staring at them uneasily; hmmmm........I dislike handling rock more than we have to and pallets only last a year on the ground necessitating the need to move them to new pallets which is, of course, more handling.  

But, ok, maybe pallets weren't the worst idea.  After all, there's not that much stone there.  It was four o'clock in the afternoon, we were still fresh, there was still daylight, and Joel was on his way out to wind the church clock in town, and kindly offered to help us load the next batch.  Carl's next idea was to haul our old lawn mower and garden trailer so we could transport the stone from the pile to Leo's driveway as we weren't about to try to drive the car back into the same area again.  After we had the equipment loaded, back to Leo's we went. 

Having Joel help load was a blessing, it's amazing how much faster the work goes with his help.  With me manning the shovel, digging up the rocks, and the two men putting them on the garden trailer and then driving to the car trailer, unloading and then coming back, in no time at all, we had a full load.  Unfortunately, as it turned out, a little TOO full of a load.

I eyeballed the heaping helping of granite before getting into the car, "Are you sure we'll make it home with this load?"  

"I'll drive slow.  It will be fine.  Get in," Carl said.  

Joel remained behind to shovel out a few more stones for us before leaving for his home.  

It was obvious we had a much bigger load on the trailer this time as every bump in the road was exaggerated by the tug of the trailer on the car.  True to his word, Carl crept along at 30 mph as we inched our way home.  We crossed the major highway and proceeded on the back roads, chatting as we drove along, when suddenly a tire blew out on the passenger side.

"Now what?" I asked, but Carl kept on going. 

"We're only three miles from home, maybe the tire will hang on," Carl said.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the tire separated itself from the rim and went a good fifteen feet up in the air before rolling down in the ditch.  Now we were on the rim.  

"We have to stop, you'll ruin the wheel," I protested.

"The rim is already shot," Carl pointed out. 

"Well, we're leaving a two-sided grooved trail on the road which anyone will be able to track," I said.

At that, Carl admitted defeat and I dialed Joel's cell number.  He was halfway back to Green Bay but turned around and came to his parental units rescue once again.

That's a big ol' load of rocks.

The car jack could not lift the trailer, so Joel took me home with him to our house and we located the floor jack while Carl stayed with the load.

After changing out the tire and letting the load down off the jack, wouldn't you know our luck; the spare tire was underinflated.  Carl thought we'd be ok, he'd just drive even more slowly; surely we could limp along for a measly three miles.  We tried to send Joel home with our thanks, but he said, "I'll follow you just to make sure."

I opted to ride along with Joel.  He went down the road and turned around in a driveway to catch up to Carl.  We needn't have hurried; Carl had only gone an eighth of a mile when the spare tire also went flat. 

Flat tires Number Two and Three

 Joel and I went back to our house, picked up two more spare tires, made sure to fill them with the air compressor and scurried back to Carl one more time.  This time, he put two new tires on the trailer and voila, we made it home with no further incident.  We learned our lesson, 'Do Not Overload the Trailer.'

Once secure in the fact we were home, Joel then returned to Green Bay with our thanks.   It was still light out, so once again, we unloaded the rocks back by the windmill, filling up an amazing amount of spare pallets.  We'd thought at the outset that there would be approximately five loads (or tons) of granite, but as it turned out, after all was said and done, it came out to eleven loads total.    We'd figured on a possible two day estimate of the hauling time which stretched out to over a week, especially when Leo decided he wanted to get rid of some substantially bigger boulders that were already incorporated into his landscaping. 

Awful picture due to getting dark, but Carl is winching this beauty on.

Leo did not want to part with his Lion, though, so it stayed put.

 The boulders needed to have the trailer deck tipped down and come-along straps and a three ton chain hoist used to winch them onto the trailer.  Some of the later loads contained only two rocks due to their weight.  We'd learned our lesson about overloading. 

The first three loads had all been placed on pallets until it became obvious we didn't have enough pallets, so I talked Carl into building more low walls around the top of the Formal Garden.  We simply backed the trailer into the garden and unloaded each load as we brought it home from Leo's.  We were already handling the rock three times, considering we had to pick it off the pile, put it in the garden trailer, drive it to the car and reload it onto the car trailer, drive home, and unload it one more time onto pallets.  This way, we were done with it once it was on the wall.

Round granite doesn't stack very well, and, no, it is NOT a good idea to pile tons of rock on tree roots, but the spruce trees are dying anyway, with or without the stonework.  Once the trees are dead and gone, we will replant with cedar or something else, but for now, we have tree trunks and stone walls.

 The little pile didn't look THAT big, now did it?  Looks can be deceiving, can't they?  Ann stopped in last Friday morning and helped me unload the first eleven pallets we'd brought home the first day.  I cheated, though, and went and got the tractor to haul them to the wall.  Enough of this walking around, carrying rocks, work smarter, not harder.

The Oldsmobile, a 1989, decided to call in sick on Friday afternoon when Carl was leaving work.  He had purchased a new battery and a new starter and was just about to take the car in to a mechanic to redo the exhaust system (which fell off about two years ago) and to have me call the DMV for a new front license plate (which also fell off who-knows-how-long-ago? since he just noticed it was missing) but I talked him out of it.  Heck, the value of the car doubles whenever we put a full tank of gas in it.  I hate it as much as he does, but we do have to say goodbye to the old gray ghost and soon. We're weird, but our cars become like family.  The Oldsmobile is older than our son, David, who turned 27 in June. They don't make 'em like that anymore.  

So, that does it for the latest rock hauling saga.  Below are photos of the last of the bigger rocks I still have to find a home for.

Hmmmmm......what should we do with these?

 I'll keep you posted on where they end up.

Next up: More Updates on 2017 Changes

September

The calendar page was flipped to September over a week ago and our temperatures are in agreement; fall is very near, like it or not.  We've been having very cool to downright chilly weather the last few weeks, all the way down to the 40's.  

We didn't have a very hot summer, I guess we never even hit 90 degrees, which is all right with me.  I'm no fan of hot weather.  I do remember a few days when it was quite uncomfortable, though, and I'd caught myself wishing for a cool breeze at times.  

There I go again, wishing my life away.  That was something Mom was always cautioning me about.  And she was right; now that the hot weather is a distant memory, how I'd welcome the warmth.  I was taking the recycling out to the road tonight and had realized in a few short weeks, I could be trudging through snow.  When will I learn to appreciate the here and now?

Summer was a fast-forward blur, much more so than any other year I can remember.  I can scarely believe how fast the days flew by.   I melodramatically admit most times I feel like I'm a tin can tied behind my Buick being dragged down the highway at breakneck speed.  The only way to slow down the days is to prolong the nights which is not in my best interests.

I know a lot of my problem is grief coupled with anxiety. Settling my mother's estate has been.... well, not dreadful, but definitely not easy.  With every step I take in closing accounts and making decisions as to what to do with everything she ever owned, I feel another pang of loss.  I know it is natural; losing those we've loved is never easy for anyone.  At times it feels as if she's been gone for ages and then at other times, I swear I'll see her sitting at her painting station in her kitchen every time I go by her window.  

I wish I'd kept some recordings of her voice, but she never did like calling me and even if she did, she rarely spoke to the answering machine.  I didn't think to make any videos of her with my phone, either.  In a way, I knew she wouldn't have liked to be secretly recorded, so I didn't.  

I wish I had recorded her playing her organ, though.  I remember one night two years ago when my little dog, Pudding, was still alive and how we went out for a walkies right before sunset.   I was going to stop in and pay Mom a visit, but the sound of her organ music was drifting out into the twilight, calling us in.  

Unbeknownst to Mom, Pudding and I strolled in, sat down on Mom's front porch steps and listened as she played her favorite hymns.  If we'd gone in the house, Mom would quit playing and I didn't want to disturb her.  

I remember stroking my dear little dog's silky head as she looked up at me adoringly.  Pudding was getting to be an old dog by then and congestive heart failure was taking her from me slowly.  Still, she loved her walks and I wouldn't begrudge her.  

As my faithful Pudding leaned into me, tears came to my eyes as I listened to Mom's lovely organ music; she was very talented and played her hymns with devotion.  Still, I could not deny I knew our time was short.  Old age and congestive heart failure was also taking my mother from me, too.  

As my tears fell, Pudding licked my hand to comfort me.  Too soon, the mosquitoes found our perch and I had no choice but to continue our walk, leaving behind the strains of 'Amazing Grace' wafting gently on the evening breeze as Pudding and I made our way home.  Pudding left me a few months later.

Still, every time I walk down the road and hear a leaf skitter on the black top, I look behind me in anticipation--- oh, how the sound mimics Pudding's quick little feet.  But she has crossed the Rainbow Bridge where she suffers no more.  

My dear mother no longer suffers.  I'm still grieving, but I know she would not want me to.  She would want me to live each day to the fullest.  And Mom, I'm trying.  I really am.

  I have my memories; even though they are as ephemeral as rainbows.  

And they are beautiful.