I mentioned before that the people I bought my new-old house from were into landscaping that … well, could best be called chaotic (photos). While they completely neglected the house during their 15-year residence, they did a lot to the yard.
And a lot. And a lot. And a lot more. And then more on top of that. They built ornamental fences and archways and hanging gardens and benches and canopies and screens. And they put in ponds and fountains and birdhouses and … well, you name it. And they built a fence and hung stuff on it and nailed stuff to it. And they made “clever” use or old tires and washtubs and plumbing pipes.
And every time they ever went on a vacation or to the beach or to a garage sale, they brought back more stuff — make that capital-S Stuff — and added it to the tiny, tiny backyard. Broken toy ships, driftwood, sea shells, old teapots, several dozen air filters from heavy equipment that became plant stands, ashtrays, etc., etc. etc.
I think you’re getting the idea by now that there was a LOT of etc. in that yard. And we are talking about a tiny, tiny, itty-bitty space.
The initial effect was quirky and charming. But it didn’t take long to discover that everything had been badly done. It was all rotting and near collapse. Over the last two years, I knocked down, dragged out, and had hauled away roughly 16 pickup loads of trash. Some was from the house or the garage. But mostly it was pieces of that yard. Even after giving all the metal to a scrap dealer and a lot of the wood to folks with stoves, I’ve probably already spent close to $1,000 in landfill fees.
And still … the yard was like the Thing That Ate [Name the Mid-Sized City of Your Choice]. I’d sit out there and want to scream. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to make it better, since much of what was left involved Heavy Lifting and intelligent planning.
So I finally just bit the bullet. For the last two and a half days, a nice yard guy and his hardworking young person-of-dubious-citizenship-status assistant have had the run of that yard while I mostly hid inside.
This is what they tore out of there. After nearly two years of trash hauling.
We still have to tear down and replace the fence (which was sort of makeshift in the first place and is now falling over due to posts not cemented into the ground). And remove one, maybe two, trees. But that’ll be later. At least what’s inside the fence is now officially non-trash.
AND we’ve made space for a 20 x 24 raised-bed (eventual) veggie garden.
I think I’ll go out and roll in the nice, fresh, uncluttered MUD.
Wow…..that’s just a whole lotta stuff period…..too bad you didn’t find some buried treasure under all of that, at least to make it worth all the trouble…….
And good for you with the garden, I know you think you don’t have a green thumb but it’s worth attempting and learning how to…..
LOL, naturegirl — great minds. Every time I’ve worked out there I’ve thought, “Surely, with all this mess they left, there’s going to be a small buried bag of silver or some valuable antique among the junk. Surely …” Nope.
But on the subject of the garden, they did leave me one bit of “treasure” — some of the most gorgeous, lovingly maintained black soil you’d ever want to see. I’ve got LOTS of that to work with. Even I should be able to grow veggies with that.
With all that junk, better make sure no parts have been contaminated with stuff like oil.
Makes me feel better about my landscaping habits. Or lack thereof.
Maybe you should look into hugelculture (SP?), which is basically growing stuff on top of buried wood. Some German thing, hence the teutonic name, but there are those who swear by it.
Research this BEFORE they haul all that (potential) raw material to the dump.
The wood is supposed to act as a chemical storehouse for all the nutrients that would otherwise be washed away by irrigation, rain, etc.
It’s a shame you were denied, Claire…..
My Grandma use to say if you had good soil then anything would grow (proper water and sun, too, of course)….but she was in Ohio her whole life…..I haven’t figured out how to grow *sarcasm* good soil in high altitudes and sand yet…
Holy carp Batman! I hope haul-away was included in the job. It all looked so quirky picturesque in your original pictures. Wouldn’t you love to have the money the prior owners spent on all that stuff.
That’s depressing.
I’m looking at someone’s trash and noting that there’s a few things in there I wish I had…
…and that’s become normal for me.
herb — Thanks! I’m familiar with hugelculture but hadn’t thought of trying it. But in fact the guys already did throw some rotting wood in to fill a pair of old ponds. And since I’m going to build raised beds, some of the remaining old timbers might just be the exact thing needed to fill in the bottoms of those beds! Definitely have to be careful not to choose any that might have chemicals on them, though, as Jim B. says.
Wow! That is one big pile. I hope the EPA doesn’t raid you and declare the area a super fund site or something. With a pile like that you have to believe you have violated at least 3-4 Federal environmental laws all being multiple felonies with a mandatory 84 years in prison. You know how ludicrous that was to write? Too bad it is probably true in our modern free state.
Funny comment, Carl-Bear.
Then I thought about the “why” and was reminded of this: Family Net Worth Drops to Level of Early ’90s, Fed Says
http://lewrockwell.com/bonner/bonner556.html
… She did have some nice bricks, and some containers good to grow lettuce in, until she builds a raised bed.
Lettuce grows fast, is easy to grow, you just have to be a slave at watering it, or have an auto-timer system – or lots of rain – those are your days off.
Yard art seems to go from what realors call an “ecclectic art installation” to a “pile of trash” pretty darn quick once the owner/creator moves on.
You’re right about “one person’s trash …” As always when I put a heap of stuff outside the fence, neighbors have already been at the door asking for pieces of it. (Not to mention that at least one truckload already went off for metal salvage.) OTOH, those bricks, planters & such aren’t in as good a condition as they might look. Broken bricks. Cracked pots. Nearly all the wood is already rotting (clark — no problem growing lettuce in this climate; it’s just that everything that isn’t lettuce eventually dissolves into its component elements from the constant moisture 🙂 ).
Oh, also about half that pile is already set to be salvaged for burning in stoves and thanks to herb’s suggestion I’m going to bring some of it back into the yard for the bottoms of the raised beds.
Mic — Your ambitions for my criminal case are much greater than my own. I was only hoping the feds would come haul all that trash away for me as “evidence” that an illegal alien probably worked on my property. But superfund site … yeah …
I feel your pain Claire. The previous owner of my house must have been a maniac depressive I figure. He’d start out on all these projects and then abandon them halfway through. When I got it the house and yard were full of medium to large size home improvement and landscaping projects in various stages of completion, none finished. Koi ponds, decks, sunken tubs, a volley ball court, and a DIY sprinkler system. Too bad about all those tires. Around here the state requires a $7 @ landfill surcharge when you bring em in.
If some of those tires were in decent shape, and you were so inclined, I’d suggest this:
http://thegoatcheeselady.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/resilience-tire-flowers/
I love what this family is doing with old tires!
@Clark, 6:57AM: More depressing. I wasn’t being — intentionally –funny. Nor political. Just broke.
I reuse/recycle a lot of stuff. I salvage objects for raw materials to build new stuff. Many because I can’t afford to buy anything but food. And I build the planters and arbors etc. from trash.
Claire: I’ve salvaged old wood (pallets, etc.) to burn for heat. I can always use scrap metal (to build stuff, not just to sell; wish I could find some 16/14 ga. sheet steel that wasn’t half rusted away). That blue barrel plastic is handy stuff (and what I spotted first), and the short plastic trash can, if it’ll hold together, would make another good planter (likely better than some of what I’m using now). I could even find a use for the old tires, but I already have more on hand than I’m currently using.
All I’ve ever done to get rid of junk is to set it out by the curb, and it magically disappears-everything from cat-pee soaked chunks of carpet to a 15 year old lawnmower that the piston had came out the side of the block . One’s man’s trash is another’s treasure, I guess.
Making goat skirts out of used tires! Now that’s creative.
Claire, there’s a book called “Resiliant Gardening”, and the author did a lot of experimenting specifically to find veggies that would grow in the “northwet” with a minimum of attention. Might be worth checking for it in the library?
Here’s an example of what I do with scrounged trash:
Mold & deckle for paper-making
http://carlbussjaeger.blogspot.com/2012/06/project-mold-deckle.html
Carl-Bear — That’s pretty wonderful. I didn’t realize you’d written a BHM article on papermaking (or if I knew, I forgot — sorry). Link? And better yet any link that shows photos of your paper.
While I’m in tremendous sympathy with the whole idea of scrounging, Dumpster diving, and related pursuits, right now I have to laugh at any suggestion that I salvage and re-use any of that crap from my backward (except for rotting wood that will get buried in veggie beds). First of all, it’s crap. Second, it’s been in my backyard, eating holes in my brain, for far too long. Third, even useful stuff is mere clutter until you actually use it. Fourth, I never want to see another garden-related tchotschke as long as I live here. Nevermore! I am, of course, welcoming salvage by any neighbor
Claire: I wrote a few articles for BHM: paper-making (had pictures of some samples), brewing mead, sundials (that one was a stealth math/geometry educational bit for homeschoolers). I don’t know if BHM has any of them online, but you should be able to find plenty of copies by websearching on my name and article topic; like I said: widely pirated (when I was fighting with the Benners for rights to my novel, I tried sending takedown notices to as many of the file-hosters I could find, to establish a pattern of protecting my copyrights; most blew me off).
I may have some old paper samples around here that survived moves and living out of my truck; I’ll try to dig ’em up and post pix on my blog. My schtick was making paper from grasses and other materials. I generally didn’t pulp existing paper and recycle that, since I was experimenting with new stuff.
I wasn’t suggesting that _you_ keep and reuse all that stuff. If you can’t make use of it, or lack the time and energy to deal with it on top of everything else, then it _is_ trash. For you (worse: rotting wood laying around draws termites). I was only talking about what _I_ could do with some of that. And even I only spotted a few item in the pic that I’d bother with.
Oh, my word! This makes me feel so much better about the new, old house we just bought. The outside is beautiful — three acres, a creek, a big pond, woods, a pasture — but the previous occupants allowed not only their three dogs and two cats full access to the house, but evidently the goat was allowed in as well. We have a lot of floors to sand …
Carl-Bear —
“I wasn’t suggesting that _you_ keep and reuse all that stuff. If you can’t make use of it, or lack the time and energy to deal with it on top of everything else, then it _is_ trash. For you (worse: rotting wood laying around draws termites). I was only talking about what _I_ could do with some of that. And even I only spotted a few item in the pic that I’d bother with.”
Don’t worry. I didn’t think you were suggesting that I keep all that stuff. It’s just that there were a number of comments suggesting things that could be done with parts of it, and although I understand, every time I’d read one of those I’d inwardly groan, “Not me! Not now! Not with this load of trash.”
Would love to see the papers you made …
Julie — OY VEY! The goat, too …? The rest, though, does sound magnificent.
Claire: “Would love to see the papers you made …”
Here you go. Not much left, and not my best work.
http://carlbussjaeger.blogspot.com/2012/06/i-mentioned-that-id-found-some-old-card.html
Beautiful papers, Carl-Bear. Never mind that they’re more primitive than the ones that may have gone to friends. Handmade paper is simply beautiful — simply because it’s handmade paper.
I know how to make paper, but I’ve never done it. I suppose if I ever start a bucket list, that’s one of the things that’ll be on it.