The Gardener's Diary Archive: Closing up for the season, October 18, 2015

After some pruning and tending, it's a much hardier camper now:

The back yard, as a whole, is the pride of my year's work. It was a right mess, being out of sight in the long years the house sat empty. This is last fall. Just to the right of the oak in the center is the Mother Compost pile- the first one I started; to its right is a twiggery I started with all the limbs I cleared and broke up, and to far right is the start of The Great Wall of Compost:

 The twiggery got moved around to the woodyard laid into a side yard spot as it was reclaimed, making it all closer to the fireplace on cold nights:

On the left is the execution of an idea I saw on Facebook: take two cinder blocks and four longish pieces of wood, and you can stack a lot of of kindling! The lot drops off behind the woodpile, so you can't see the relocated backyard twiggery or several stacks of scrap lumber from the summer deck rebuilding project.

So here's the backyard now, with some of the storm windfall I haven't gotten to yet; the unfinished deck, the repainted and restored garden shed, and- much reduced in size, Mother Computer to the right of the center oak:

This was that first compost pile in February:

Mother Compost turned, in just eleven months into this loamy pile today:

I moved it today, around behind the shed, next to the potting table I've built. Six wheelbarrow loads!

The next two months will be mulching, as we have six great oaks on the lot: