10-02-10. New Trees. We had a busy day today. We participated in the neighborhood garage sale this morning. We had about 4 tables worth of stuff, and most of it was gone by 10:00 am. I packed the remaining items in one box, and it was later picked up by a local thrift shop. We made about $90, cleaned out the garage, and have more room in the house. After the garage sale, I finished planting 2 more trees. Luckily, I didn't encounter any large chunks of concrete this time. The holes were actually relatively easy to dig. The two spruce trees make a huge difference in the look of our back yard. I realized that I had never taken a picture that shows the entire finished deck. You can also see the new red maple in the background between the 2 spruces. I'm also amazed at the corkscrew willow on the corner of the house. 2 years ago I stuck a cutting in the ground without any root system at all. Now, it is growing like crazy. I love our trees. Now I've got the bug to plant more.
10-01-10. Bucket of Nails. This was a last minute effort I took with the point-and-shoot Panasonic. It actually takes pretty good macro photos, but the harsh flash doesn't look so great. Photo tip of the day. In order to diffuse that harsh flash on small cameras, hold a white piece of paper a couple inches in front of the flash. This diffuses the light and reduces the glaring highlights and harsh shadows.
09-30-10. The reason why I'm tired and sore. I planted 2 out of our 4 new trees this afternoon. In the front yard, I wanted to replace a silver maple that hasn't grown a bit in 4 years. It always loses its leaves early, and the bark seems to have some sort of problem. It didn't take much to get the old tree out of the ground. I enlarged the hole, and planted a black gum in its place. The soil wasn't as bad as I thought...a mix of clay, gravel, topsoil, and a few big rocks. I kept the big rocks out of the backfill. Hopefully it will survive better than the silver maple. I planted a red maple in the back yard. It is a decent sized tree, so it need a relatively large hole. After scraping the turf and topsoil off, I immediately hit a large chunk of concrete. I uncovered as much as I could and tried prying it up with the crow bar. No luck. So I started pounding it with the sledgehammer. Luckily the concrete was fairly brittle, but it still took a lot of work getting it broken up. It was about 5 inches thick, and it was pretty much the exact same size and shape as the hole. You can't really get a sense of scale from this lousy last minute photo, but that large piece is about the size of a basketball. Beneath it is all the smaller pieces that I managed to break up. I got the tree in the ground, mulched, and watered before I ran out of daylight. I'm tired. I think I'll go to bed now.
