Terraforming

One of the big projects in my new house, aside from the mountains of boxes still in the garage, is one I’ve joking called “Terraforming”, because it involves transforming a largely barren construction site to a garden space I’d want to spend time in. I started that project last week, and it’ll be partially continued during the lockdown. It would take weeks and months regardless, but if the lockdown goes on too long, it could delay most of the work until Spring.

This past Saturday, I bought a lawnmower, a 36V battery powered model with a brushless motor (Nigel would have approved). I wanted a battery powered mower because it’s cleaner (most of New Zealand’s electricity comes from renewable sources), and they tend to weigh less than petrol powered mowers, which are often all metal. And petrol mowers stink and are very loud when running.

I’d considered hiring a lawnmowing service, but in addition to the (admittedly small) ongoing cost, there was also the fact that this is a relatively small property (only 600 square metres, including the house), so it was manageable for me. I also knew my doctors would be pleased that I was doing it and getting some exercise.

However, I didn’t want to spend money on any lawnmower until the house in Auckland sold. That happened last Friday. My specific motivator for acting now—the day after the sale was final—was the impending lockdown. I knew that if I didn’t get one then, I’d have to wait, maybe for months. That would be a big problem because I wouldn’t have an alternative: I wouldn’t be able to go pick up someone else’s mower to do my lawns, and I knew that lawnmowing services would be suspended during the lockdown. Getting a mower was the only logical thing to do, and, fortunately, by then I’d thoroughly researched brands and models.

Saturday evening, I took the mower out back to make sure it worked—out back, even though the front needed mowing more desperately—so that if I had trouble, no one would see me struggle. I did have some trouble until I worked out the proper sequence of button pushing to get it to start.

I set the mower to its highest setting (because the lawn and weeds were so high), and then I tried a mowing just a little bit. It worked great so, with a “what the hell” attitude, I went ahead and mowed the entire back lawn. Took me maybe 20 minutes, and used about a quarter of the battery.

It rained all or part of the next two days, so I wasn’t able to mow the front lawn until Tuesday. Then I took the line trimmer we already had and went around the entire section. All up, maybe half an hour, and the lawnmower battery was again maybe a quarter used, though I had to change the line trimmer’s battery to the other one (they’re the same ones used in our drills, but I’d been using one in a drill, so it was mostly empty). All the batteries are now fully charged.

And that’s where I stopped, because aside from mowing, there’s only a little more that I can do.

The photo up top is a before and after shot of the back lawn: I took the “before” photo on February 18, at the height of the heat and lack of rain. The “after” photo is one I took yesterday, after temperatures cooled and we had some rain. As I continue to mow, it’ll thicken, but only so much.

Cracked Earth.

Part of the problem is that the developer sprayed grass seed onto bad soil (in the old days, apparently, they’d put down some good topsoil first, but not any more). That’s part of the reason that the soil cracked, as is easier to see in the photo at right.

The solution is to spread gypsum to help break up the soil, and I have a spray on version (to make it easier on me, I admit). That will help, but I’ll still need to sow some grass seed, something I can’t buy until the lockdown is over (because I forgot to get it before it started). I’ll also need to do some “weed and feed” thing to start killing off some of the weeks, but the two strongest ones won’t be affected.

One of the weeds is called paspalum (Paspalum dilatatu), a grass weed that’s very difficult to get rid of. Apparently, the only available herbicide is glyphosate, since the one that used to be available was based on arsenic (I’d rather not use either, actually). The problem with the weed, apart from the fact it takes over, is that some people are allergic to it (I don’t know why, but I know the plant can host a fungus that makes some grazing animals sick).

The other weed plant is kikuyu (Pennisetum clandestinum), a grass native to East Africa. It’s extremely hardy and drought tolerant, and its roots can hold soil, which is useful. On the other hand, it can crowd out or even kill other plants, including pasture grasses like rye grass. It, too, is very difficult to get rid of (and it doesn’t compost very well, either).

My lawn is filled with both weeds because the developer didn’t water the grass seed once sowed, and the weeds had a chance to take over. It’ll be a years-long project to get a better lawn, I think.

Still, at least the kikuyu stays green even in drought, so I don’t mind that one as much as the passpalum, so that’s the one I’ll concentrate on removing—when I get the chance. For now, regular mowing, cooler weather, and rain will all encourage what’s there—the kikuyu in particular—to thicken up. So, if this lockdown continues until winter, at least there will be less mud for the dogs to walk through.

One final aspect to the lawn project is that the ground was littered with a lot of rocks—and other things. The photo at left is of the first things I recovered: The rock and glass came from the lawn, the rock and bit of china came from the mulch. There were actually a lot of rocks in the lawn area, and I needed to remove the big ones so that the mower wouldn’t send a rock hurtling through a window, something that could become more likely as I gradually lower the height I have the mower set on.

So, clearing rocks in the soil was what I was doing in a photo (taken with my phone on timer) that I posted to Instagram yesterday:

View this post on Instagram

That’s me and my helpers starting work on transforming the yard from a construction site to something nice(r). NZ’s impending lockdown will interfere with that, of course. More on this project as it happens. 🙂

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Mar 24, 2020 at 9:16pm PDT

I was using a grabber thing to pick up the stones so I could put them in the black bucket-like thing, something I came up with so that I wouldn’t have to bend over to get the rocks or, worse still, get down on the ground and back up again, two very unpleasant options. I did this in both the front and back of the house. I have a use for the rocks I collected, but that’s for a totally different project I’ll talk about when I do it.

Right now, I only have the gypsum spray that I can do, that and regular mowing. The rest will have to wait until the lockdown is over, or possibly next Spring, if the lockdown goes on too long. Not the end of the world, obviously, but it would have been nice to work on building up the lawn during this forced quiet time.

I have one more big project to do outside while we’re on lockdown, then it’s just maintaining what I’ve done—fairly simple, since not much will be done before the lockdown ends, whenever that is. I guess I’ll have no excuse to avoid the mountains of boxes still in the garage, but I’m sure it won’t be hard to come up with some.

A weekend project

This weekend I took on another project, this time one I actually did myself. I also completed it. Yesterday, I assembled a compost bin (photo above) I bought three weeks ago. It, in turn, is part of a larger project, one I’m only just resuming. And there are stories for all of those parts.

When one has a house with a yard (often, even usually, called a garden in New Zealand), it means maintaining the gardens. Even when everything is mature and growing well, there’s still work to be done. I’be blogged several times about mowing my lawns, but there’s far more to do, since there was nothing here when I moved in. I called this larger project “terraforming” the un-landscaped property, and ultimately it will include planting the garden as well as landscaping work.

However, one ongoing project, aside from mowing the lawns, will be weed removal. Some of them I could poison, or I could use my preferred method of pouring boiling water on them (I prefer that because it’s safe for the dogs). Sometimes, though, the weeds either get away from me or they’re too stubborn for either of those methods, and pulling them out is the only solution.

However, once a weed is pulled out, where does it go? They can’t be thrown into the ordinary household rubbish, and hiring a service to collect garden waste is out of the question when I have so little garden waste. I could collect it and take it the waste transfer station, for a fee, and even they don’t necessarily accept all weeds.

The obvious solution, especially because I have such small needs, is a compost bin here at home. And that’s where this particular project began.

I knew I wanted one that rotated (to make it easy to turn the compost), and there are quite a few varieties on the market—horizontal, vertical, big and small. I knew I liked the horizontal ones, and I first thought about getting one like we had at our last house in Auckland (a photo of it is in a post from May, 2018). That bin is quite large, but its main drawback was that the hatch cover screws on and gets stuck: I hammered my fingers several times trying to get it open, and I also had trouble getting it back on and closed when I was done. It’s one redeeming quality was that it had wheels, making it easier to move around, but that was somewhat negated by the fact that when it was fully loaded, it was very heavy. It also only had one large chamber

I ruled that one out because of all its negatives, and because I decided I wanted one with two smaller chambers, rather than one large one. I was first drawn to expensive ones (as usual…), including one with two entirely separate chambers that rotated independently, and one with a sort of crank and ratchet system to help rotate the bin (because everything was plastic, I was dubious how long it would work).

In the end I went for a simpler one with a plastic divider between the two chambers. The packaging may provide a better idea how it works:

The bin before assembly. This is as close to an "unboxing" post as I'm likely to get. 

The idea is that you fill one side, then when it’s full, you let it sit to cook while you fill the other side. Then you empty the first side, and start over. The doors are interchangeable, and one has a “+” on it to indicate which side the new material goes in to. Meanwhile, you rotate the whole thing to keep turning the compost to help it cook faster.

The bin I got was probably the fiddliest thing I’ve ever put together: Not difficult, just fiddly. It had 54 screws (I’ve learned from experience that when I’m assembling something, it’s important to check all the pieces are there, and to count the screws provided to make sure there’s enough. There were).

The bin I got isn’t perfect: It doesn’t have wheels, which would be nice, and it doesn’t have any sort of locking pin to keep the opening on top. Our one in Auckland had both, though they were often very hard to use. I could probably improvise some sort of locking pin, but that’s not critical.

On the other hand, the plastic parts seem pretty robust, and them using locking nuts (rather than ordinary ones) made it quite easy to assemble by myself, in around an hour, which was including the time it took to count the parts and read the assembly instructions (another thing experience has taught me to do).

The next step is to pull a bunch of weeds and chuck them in the compost bin. Soon, I’ll spray the lawns with a “weed and feed” liquid that kills broadleaf weeds and fertilises the grass (I know lots of people who swear by it), and this will reduce the number of lawn weeds I’ll need to manually remove. Basically, I want to get the lawns established as well as I can before summer (though at the moment there are predictions of a cool, wet summer, so drought-like conditions may not be a problem this year).

It would help if the weather had cooperated so I could mow the lawns regularly, but the days have been too wet, too cold, or both. It’s now been a month since I mowed the back lawn, and it’s as long now as it was then, when it had a six week growth. The front lawn, meanwhile, has barely grown at all (it clearly needs the most work of the two): It’s been about three months since I last mowed it! On the other hand, the weeds in it are getting quite long, which is, again, why I needed the compost bin.

Now that I have the bin, I’ll have somewhere to put weeds when I pull them, and that means it’ll be somewhat easier for me to keep on top of the job, energy/stamina permitting, of course. At least now I don’t have the barrier of trying to figure out what to do with the weeds I pull out.

This weekend’s project was quite small by itself, but it’s an important part of the larger project to landscape the property and establish nice gardens. That’ll probably be the main project I talk about in the coming months. Right now, though, one more thing is checked off the list.

Update – September 7: Today I pulled the weeds in the rain garden out in front of the house (which really should be a story on its own), and that plus a few other rather large weeds from the front lawn that I also pulled filled half the new compost bin. Oops. As they start to wilt and break down, there will be more room in that half, but I thought that was funny. And typical.

Little work

Sometimes a little work deserves a little reward, and today was one of those days. When I shared the photo above on Instagram, I said:

Just finished mowing the back lawn (not the front because I wasn’t into it today). So, now a little treat: The last piece of fudge I made TWO WEEKS ago. I clearly have self-restraint. Don’t worry, this little snack isn’t as bad as it looks: The espresso is decaffeinated, so it’s healthy.

I’d planned on mowing the lawns today, but kept getting distracted—as I have most days during Lockdown, actually. By the time I got to it, it was mid-afternoon, so I only did the back lawn. By the time I finished, the shadows were getting longer, and it was a good time to stop. But, I wasn’t quite done, as I added in a comment:

I *could* add that I also cleaned the underside of the mower when I finished, because the grass is long and pretty damp (and I haven't done it in the previous three mows). It was good I did because the moisture made the cuttings clump into sort of grass turds. I could've mentioned that, too, but I didn't want to imply I'm industrious or anything. Lockdown has put that myth to bed!

The lawn is definitely thickening up, but it’s a long way from being a proper lawn. I figure if I keep at it, and don’t get too impatient, I’ll get it there eventually. It gives me something to do and a small amount of exercise, too.

Below is one more photo from today, showing the lawn as it looked when I was done mowing it (except doing the edges). For comparison, there are progress photos in my post “Terraforming”, however, this is a sort of “bonus photo”: Later this month, I plan on posting progress photos taken over four months. This photo is actually between two of them. Bonus!

Sadly, though, there won’t be more fudge any time soon. That’s for the best.

Related: “Lockdown activities”, my post about making the fudge.

A mostly complete project

Considering how much time we have while stuck at home under lockdown, there should be plenty of time to do a lot of projects around the house. There’s a lot of time to be filled, after all. Nevertheless, some of us with so little to do still manage to do very little. Not necessarily for lack of trying, though.

I had a few projects I planned to get done during the lockdown, and did most of them. I added some, too. One of my “big projects” around the house was to put stones in a sort of “trough” between the driveway and the footpath leading to the front door (before and “after” photo is above). Naturally, there’s a story to that.

When I first saw the house, the trough was empty, and the lawns non-existent (the real estate photos had grass photoshopped where the lawns should be, but I saw the house before I ever saw those photos). When I bought the house, the builder offered to put either bark or white stones into the trough, and I wasn’t keen on either.

The problem with bark is that it has to be topped up all the time (and cats, um, like to visit bark…), but I didn’t want that, anyway: I wanted stones. That was so that if anyone accidentally drove onto it, they wouldn’t sink into the trough. Also, the trough is right next to where a car would be parked, and I knew that it would take a little care when getting out of a car to avoid falling into the trough, something I quickly confirmed when I moved in. In other words, I wanted stones, something resilient, but very low maintenance. Just not white stones.

Since the house is white, and at the time the concrete of the driveway and the footpath was new and quite white, too, I felt white stones would be too bright. So I decided I wanted grey river stones, and I also decided to take care of it myself to make sure I got exactly what I wanted.

After the house in Auckland sold, I started getting ready to take care of that among other projects—mere days, it turned out, before New Zealand went under lockdown, so my preparations turned out to be a bit rushed.

I bought the initial bags of base course stones on the Saturday before lockdown, but I could see where we were headed, so I went back out on Monday and bought more, along with bags of the grey river stones I wanted because I was afraid I wouldn’t get a chance to get them before lockdown.

Almost as soon as I got the bags of rocks home I worried that I hadn’t gotten enough—but there was no way to get any more: It was already too late. Partly because of that, I kept putting the project off.

Until yesterday.

First job was to put weed mat underneath, and I had an attack of the stupids, the sort most people would never admit. But, I’m not most people.

The weed mat package said it was 1.83 metres wide by 5 metres long. I pulled it out so I could pre-cut it to the correct width for the trough. “This is not 1.8 metres,” I thought to myself. I cut four pieces to get me started, and went out to place it.

I used some short galvanised nails to secure it; normally very long metal staple-like things are used, but I was concerned there might be a drain under there somewhere, and didn’t want to risk poking a hole in it. I got one piece secured at the far end, then another next to that, but when I started to put the third piece into place, I noticed something: It was folded over. It turned out that, unfolded, it really was 1.83 metres wide. Oops.

I re-laid out the second that third pieces (but not the first), which meant the fourth fitted perfectly. Part one of the project was successfully completed—ultimately.

The washed ex-lawn rocks.

The next job was to put in the base course of stones, but first I had a task to complete. A month ago today, I wrote about “terraforming” the section, and mentioned picking up rocks in the grass, some of which turned out to be bits of concrete from the construction of the house. I washed them off (so I wouldn’t introduce any dirt), then put them into the trough first (in the middle photo above, which also shows the weed mat I'd put in place). I then poured the bags of base course stones into the trough and levelled it off, more or less. It turned out that while I probably could have used a bag or two more, it was pretty good—good enough that I decided to go ahead and put on the bags of river stones.

When I emptied the third bag of river stones, I realised I had two or three bags too few (right photo up top, which also shows the base course at the bottom): The trough is filled from the top, and will gradually slide down the slope, but that will leave the top kind of skimpy.

The top portion of the trough,

more or less what it'll look like

when it's done.

From Tuesday I should be able order more stones, though I’m not sure if it’ll be delivered or if I have to pick it up. In any case, doing the project so close to the end of lockdown means it won’t have to sit unfinished for too long. Still, it’s mostly done, and I can at least see that I’m happy with my choices.

Another lockdown project is (mostly) complete. Something else to (mostly) check off my To Do List, Lockdown Edition. It’s true that with so little to do, I’ve managed to do very little, and so, there are still some other projects waiting. With at least two weeks at Alert Level 3 (“Lockdown Lite”) ahead of us, I just might get a little done on those other projects, too. Maybe.

Moving on mowing

The back lawn as it looked after
I mowed it this past Saturday.

It’s fair to say that looking after a house is a lot of work. There’s the usual stuff—keeping the place clean and tidy, taking the rubbish out, etc.—and there are also inevitably repairs and maintenance. People with some land around their house also have to look after it. This can take some getting used to.

Nigel and I always had property that needed to be looked after, and sometimes I did a better job of that than other times. We had two houses with lawns, and we had a lawn mowing service take care of both. In our last house, I was lobbying Nigel for us to get a mower, but he balked at the idea, mostly out of a legitimate concern that I might not do it often enough. My main reason for wanting to do that was that I knew the regular exercise would be good for me, but it was also partly because it cost us to have it mowed every time, and I realised that in the long run we’d do better mowing it ourselves. Nigel pointed out how long it would take us to reach the break-even point, especially because we both wanted a battery-powered model rather than a traditional petrol one. It didn’t help that our neighbours had a lot of problems with the one they bought. So, we never got one.

When I moved into my current house, I decided to get a lawn mower (a different battery-powered brand than our neighbours tried), as I wrote about at the time (I included a photo of the mower in a post some time later). Since then, this lawn mowing thing has mostly been as I hoped it would be, and not (often) as Nigel feared it would.

After moving in this house, I’m pretty sure that the only time I’ve closed the Exercise Ring on my watch was when I mowed the lawns—in fact, it’s so unusual that I mention it most times. So, I know it’s good for me. What I didn’t realise at the start was how therapeutic mowing a lawn is, inducing a kind of zen-like productive time that includes physical activity. I last mowed lawns when I was in my late teens or early 20s, so if I found it therapeutic back then, I’d long forgotten it.

I mentioned closing my Exercise Ring on Sept. 25.

However, my track record was not perfect, sometimes taking too long between mows of the lawns, the back lawn in particular (overall, it grows faster and thicker than the front lawn, though it’s patchy, too). This is what Nigel was afraid would happen, though I think he imagined the lawns looking far worse than they did here, though maybe they were exactly like he thought they'd look. In any case, and in my defence, winter is a difficult time to mow lawns in Hamilton with a lot of rain and occasional frosty cold snaps. On the other, other hand, I could and should have planned better for winter mowing. I know now; next winter should be better.

Mowing the lawns is such a basic thing, something other people do without even thinking about it. But, as I said, I haven’t done it in some four decades, so it’s almost new to me. I’ve found that I often don’t feel motivated to do it, but I always feel good once I get started and I have a huge sense of accomplishment when I’m done. That’s reason enough right there.

I still have to spray the lawns with a gypsum spray to help break up the and loosen the clay soil, and since it needs to be watered-in, I’m waiting for a rainy day, for a change. Then in a couple weeks I’ll spray the weed and feed which should help deal with most of the weeds as well as fertilise the actual lawn. I’ll even re-seed the areas that are still too empty.

Basically, I’m trying to get the lawns ready for summer, in case it’s a normal hot and dry one: Getting the lawns thicker and better able to absorb water will make them healthier overall.

To help get there, I’ve been mowing regularly, slowly lowering the height of the mower. I mowed the back lawn on Saturday (the front one didn’t need it), lowering the mower height from last the previous week. The end of this week, I plan on mowing both lawns (depending on the weather), lowering the level once more, then that should be the height I’ll use to mow the lawns roughly every other week (depending on weather and how fast it grows because of the weather).

By this time next year, my initial efforts at “terraforming” my property will all be complete, and my lawns should be looking really good. I hope. At any rate, I get something out of it and I’ll even hit the break-even point in a few months. I’d classify this as a success, and I know that Nigel would too, though maybe not out loud.

Looking after a house and yard is a lot of work, and this can take some getting used to. I’m well on the way to getting the hang of it.