When Irma passed through last year we lost quite a few trees, I think 8 in total. We also had a several more cut down this past week that were a little too close to the house. Anyway, the result was that it opened up a huge area for me to do something withā¦Our house backs up to a creek. The lower you go the wetter the soil is, but the upper portion where you see the banana and the stumps is well drained and remains fairly dry unless we get really torrential rains and the creek comes up, which doesnāt happen all that often.
As bad as it was losing the trees, I did get a lot of firewood and I feel like I have a blank canvas. Obviously, there are roots all over the place, but I was thinking about bringing in some dirt and leveling the area off a bit. Still keeping the slope, but making it plantable, possibly for some more fruit treesā¦Fence is getting replaced. There will 4ft picket and a gate where you see the posts. So what would you do with this space? Thoughts, suggestions?
@galinas, great suggestion, Iāve got a bunch of other blueberry bushes, but this could become a real blueberry patch. Would be able to plant out a bunch of native blueberriesā¦
itās a bit of a blessing and curseā¦now I have more yard that needs regular cutting so it doesnāt get overgrownā¦amazing how quickly nature can reclaim somethingā¦
This is the same banana tree as in the pic from aboveā¦itās incredible the amount of growth itās put on in less than 3 monthsā¦to top it off, itās started floweringā¦not sure what variety it is, I think itās a dwarf of some sortā¦used to be part of our yard landscape before I removed itā¦the tree had gotten pretty large and would flower every year, but the bananas never ripened before they got killed by a freezeā¦We probably have another month and a half of mild temps so Iāll be curious to see what it does this yearā¦stay tuned.
My company has been on mandatory work from the last 3 weeks and like a lot of people weāve been spending most of our time at home save necessary trips to the grocery. In addition to having job flexibility, Iām also fortunate to have a great outdoor space. Couldnāt imagine riding out the next month or more in an apartment or tiny house with no yard, Iād go stir crazy. I feel for the folks that have to endure that.
With some extra time on my hands, I decided to do some clean up in creek behind our house.Itās technically a tributary that runs out to the St. Johns and itās fed by freshwater, but itās pretty shallow (less that a foot in spots and it gets swampy where the dead vegetation has accumulated over the yearsā¦Whatās particularly nice is itās super-shady so even in the hottest part of the day its relatively cool back thereā¦I got the girls some boots and we went to work cleaning out as much muck and debris as we could, even started finding freshwater mussels and friendly raccoonā¦
Here are some pictures of what it looks likeā¦Probably should have take a before, there was lots of duck weed and other vegetation clogging it upā¦Itās pretty clear nowā¦Iām spreading the stuff weāve raked out on the groundā¦I figure the decaying vegetation should be good fertilizerā¦If nothing, it will help fill in some of the low spotsā¦
Whatās really interesting is some of the stuff weāre pulling up out of the muck/water, including old pottery, medicine bottles from the early 1900ās and other random trashā¦ There was a lot of pine in this area at one time.The wood sitting on top in this pic is pitch pine/fat lighterā¦youāll find it sometimes in forest where a pine has fallen and the sap concentrates in part of the logā¦with this, the tree fell in the water and the lack of oxygen essentially preserved itā¦these pieces are really heavy for their size. Itās great for starting fires, not that weāll need it for that any time soonā¦
Figured I would post an update. Itās been a couple of years in the making, but Iāve finally reclaimed a good portion of our property that was previously pretty much unusableā¦
Beforeā¦
Afterā¦
I added a fire pit, an outdoor cooking area and some fruit treesā¦now weāve got some extra usable space.
