Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, I shared the overview of my third priority for 2025 - expanding the front yard island bed .  These first three ( Pizza Oven MVP , Renovation of the bluestone chips gravel path and this island bed) were pulled from my initial 'early look' list .   We caught a little bit of a run of decent weather this past weekend, so I opted to start the island bed expansion/extension.   Remember....I talked about one of the most critical components to this project:  time.  I need time to smother out the turf grass.  And time for the biosolids to 'mellow' out a little bit.   This bed started back in Summer last year when I dug up and created a kidney-bean-shaped island bed with a Korean Maple tree (Northern Glow) and a dwarf (Spring Grove) Ginkgo tree .   In the post yesterday, I showed the size (12x12) of the extensions and looked at some potential plantings.  This bed, when complete (at more than 150ish square feet) will be ...

The last time I checked in our compost bins was late last Fall when I was filling the left bin (holding bin) with the last of the Fall leaves that dropped in our yard .  At that time, the 3rd bin (the fully-mixed bin) was overloaded - above the top of the bin.  That's because compaction occurs and that material will settle as it continues to decompose.  The 'middle bin' was only half-way full and the last bin - on the left - which is the 'holding bin' was piled to the top of leaves.   Over the past few months, some of that compaction occurred and the level of the leaves in the 'holding bin' dropped enough to allow for the addition of garden (and kitchen) waste.   The past few days, I posted some photos of how we've begun to cleanup the backyard by taking down/clipping some grasses - Muhly Grasses , Karl Foerster Grasses and the little colony of Hellebores - where I took off last year's foliage .  For each of those clean-ups, I brought the materia...