Author Archives: Mark P

The rain been coming down

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I wouldn’t ordinarily complain about rain, but come on, now, who’ll stop the rain? On Saturday I had just finished spreading topsoil over our bare front yard, hurrying to get it done before the rain started, and then the rain started. And it came down hard, an inch and a half’s worth in a little over an hour. The result was predictable.

In case you can’t see what happened, here’s a closer shot.

The rain washed big ruts into the yard, taking away the topsoil there and washing it deep into the woods. I thought I was finished with the topsoil, but I had to order another eight scoops on Monday. On my way back from the yard where they sell the topsoil, I stopped and bought nearly a ton of lime and fertilizer in 40-pound bags. On the way back home from the store, it started raining, and it rained hard. We got about two-thirds of an inch. I don’t think it made any new ruts, but it reaffirmed the ruts that were already there. And it made the ground so soggy I couldn’t get the topsoil delivered. It will still be too wet on Tuesday, the day of this post.

Right now there is a 20 percent chance of rain for Tuesday, down from an earlier predicted 80-percent chance. That higher chance has now moved to Wednesday and Thursday. I will probably have to have the topsoil dumped onto our concrete driveway if I want it any time soon.

Of course I have to spread 40 bags of lime and 5 bags of fertilizer sometime, and then hope it doesn’t wash away.

No wonder this is taking so long

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I fully expected to finish preparing the rest of our yard for seeding grass earlier this year than I did for the smaller section I did last year. That’s not happening. I knew the area was larger, and I knew it would take more preparation, but still, I thought, I would start earlier and finish earlier.

I finished preparing the smaller section last year somewhere around June 12. It’s now June 21 and I’m not done. I had two loads of topsoil delivered last year, one with a large truck and one with a smaller truck, for a total of about 21 front-end-loader scoops. Each scoop is somewhere around a cubic yard. I kept underestimating how much topsoil it would take to cover the remaining area this year. I finally ended up getting five loads, all with the larger truck. The truck can carry 12 scoops, although they cut back to 10 scoops for the last two loads because the truck’s transmission was overheating coming up the mountain.

Once the load is dumped in the yard, I use our faithful Mule to haul it around.

mule_topsoil

This was taking so long that I decided I needed to quantify things. After all, I am a scientist. So Leah and I measured the irregularly-shaped area I’m working in and got around 11,730 square feet. That’s a little more than a quarter of an acre. The area I did last year is around 3850 square feet, which is almost exactly a third the size. No wonder this is taking so long.

I have had around 56 scoops of topsoil delivered, which we’re calling 56 cubic yards. The Mule’s dump bed carries just about three-tenths of a cubic yard, which calculates out to about 187 Mule loads of topsoil. I load each Mule trip with a shovel, and unload it the same way, tossing it out to get uniform coverage. No wonder this is taking so long.

It has been quite hot and humid for the entire time I have been working in the yard. I don’t get started until around 10:30 or 11 (the dogs have to have their morning walk). I break for lunch around 12 and then head back out around 1 pm and work long enough to make sure I’m shoveling topsoil during the hottest part of the day.

I took a rain day on Thursday. We got almost 3 tenths of an inch, just enough to make it too messy to work. There is a 60-percent chance of rain for Friday, the day of this post, and an 80-percent chance for Saturday, at least so far. The rain ended by around noon on Thursday, so the ground might be dry enough to work on Friday, at least until it starts raining again.

I have just under one truckload of topsoil left to spread. I can do that in a day if rain doesn’t cut the day short. Then I have to spread fertilizer and limestone. I had our local county agent send off a sample of our “soil”, so I know how much I need: 15 pounds of fertilizer per 1000 square feet, and 135 pounds of limestone per 1000 square feet. To save you the calculation, that’s about 176 pounds of fertilizer (5 40-lb bags) and about 1583 pounds, or three-quarters of a ton, of limestone (40 40-lb bags). All of that will be loaded into my truck by hand, and then unloaded by hand. Then I will spread it with a broadcast spreader. Then I will rent a big tiller and till the whole thing. Then I will spread the Zoysia seed. Then I will sprinkle at far less than the recommended watering rate (we’re on a well on a mountain and I want to have enough well water left to make iced tea), and hope for rain.

This is going to take a long time.

After the storm

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Up here on the mountain we have had very little rain for almost a month. The air has been very hot and humid. Walking the dogs down to the end of the driveway is enough to soak my shirt with sweat. But we have watched on the radar as strong storms surround us but generally do not give us any rain. Last Saturday a strong storm moved across town. It was visible from our front porch, but we got no rain. After the storm, the clouds were dramatic and colorful.

These formations look almost like cumulus mammatus (although some of them might, in the imaginations of some people, look like another anatomical feature). I am not certain they would qualify as cumulus mammatus because their size seems somewhat small for that. This image was taken with my iPhone.

I took this image with my Olympus camera.

Both of these images were taken towards the east, with the setting sun illuminating the underside of the storm clouds. The sunset light reflected from the clouds gave the whole world a warm, golden glow.

I grabbed a radar image off my phone to show what seems to happen to us these days.

A strong storm was moving slowly towards us, but it split, kind of like the Red Sea, and passed us by to the north and south. The pushpin shows the location of our house. We got a slight drizzle, hardly enough to dampen the ground.

The same weather app shows an 80-percent chance of rain for Thursday, the day Saturday. But we’ve seen those percentages change as the date approaches.

Frolicking adolescent armadillos

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I have written about our relatively recently arrived armadillos before. They have made themselves at home here in northwest Georgia in the last few years. We never saw armadillos when I was growing up here. The animal they remind me of the most is the possum. They both seem slow and a little dense, which I think accounts for the most noticeable sign of their presence here — dead armadillos in the road.

There are other signs of the armadillo’s presence, the most significant of which is the holes they dig while looking for food. I used to see holes in our old yard, and I see them along Fouche Gap Road when I walk the dogs.

The most noticeable sign of their actual presence, as opposed to their former presence, is the sounds they make while rooting around in the undergrowth. I sometimes hear squirrels and deer, but their noises are distinctly different from the armadillo, mainly because armadillos seem to show no fear of humans or dogs. Squirrels and deer run; armadillos keep rooting around, apparently oblivious to everything around them.

Zeke, Sam and I happened to notice some armadillo noises a few days ago when we walked down Flouche Gap Road into Texas Valley. We couldn’t see anything, but the dogs were very interested. I was pretty sure it was an armadillo because whatever it was just kept on making noise.

A few days later we saw them in the same place. That set the dogs off, of course. Here they are homing in on one of them.

The armadillo is almost hidden just above the white stripe at the edge of the road, right where Sam’s ears are pointed. I couldn’t get a better shot while keeping the dogs under control.

Zeke has a history with adolescent armadillos. I posted about that episode four years ago almost to the day. In that case, Zeke managed to break away from me and quickly dispatch one. The armadillo’s fearless behavior is consistent with the reason given for their spread into the southeastern US, that is, they have no natural predators here. Except for Zeke.

Wikipedia says that our armadillos, the nine-banded variety, usually have four offspring. (Wayne, whose used to comment here occasionally and whose blog Niches I still miss, also said they usually have four offspring.) When we saw the young armadillos four years ago, there were two. I am pretty sure there were two this time as well. These acted like the unfortunate one of four years ago; they showed absolutely no fear of me or the dogs. Like those of four years ago, these were frolicking around like puppies. Fortunately for them, Zeke has gotten old enough that he didn’t break his collar to get to them.

How brown was our yard

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Last summer I managed to get part of our front yard prepared and seeded with grass. By the end of the summer we had a partially green front yard. I am now working on the rest of the front yard, and it’s a hard slog.

This is what the prepared yard looked like last year. I used this image in a post when I was working on it.

You can see a few spots where I had to spread some dirt to fill in the gullies washed by a year’s worth of rain, but the rest is generally the way it was when I started the process. Behind the Mule is the area where I’m working now. It was not graded smooth and a lot of weeds and small trees had sprouted. It was even worse this year.

I started early in the spring by burning as much of the growth as I could. Then I sprayed glyphosate several times to kill as much as I could. When most of the green had turned brown, I started skimming the surface and digging some out by the roots with a shovel. This was a long, arduous process that could have been done in a day by a piece of machinery.

Once all of that was done, the front part of the yard was bare but very rough and uneven. I don’t particularly care whether it has a nice, smooth, rounded profile, but it needs to be even so the lawn mower doesn’t dip and scalp the grass. So I made this. This is a combination scarifier-grader. It’s an eight-foot, pressure treated 6X6 and an eight-foot 2X6. I cut both in half. I drove 10 8-inch spikes through the front 6X6 and turned the second 6X6 45 degrees. Then I put two big eye-bolts through the front part and attached the rig to the Mule with a chain. Then I dragged it around in circles for a while.

What I hoped would happen is that the spikes, which protrude about two and a half inches, would break up the surface soil, and then the second 6X6 would spread it out evenly, hopefully filling in low points. What I feared is that the spikes would either bend or be driven back up, and that the ground would be so hard the spikes would barely scratch the surface. In the end, it was a little of both. The spikes bent a little but stayed in place, and in some places they barely scratched the surface. But overall, it did what I wanted.

It’s hard to tell from this photo, but the front part of the yard is rolling but pretty smooth. There are a few places that have hard dirt but most of the area has a couple of inches of find, ground-up dirt that should work well when I till in about three inches of topsoil, which is now stored in the two piles you can see. There are also a few low spots I need to fill, but not too many.

So, my home-made grader worked out well. Now all I have to do is spread the topsoil using the trusty Mule and a shovel, till it, spread fertilizer, sow seed, roll it, sprinkle it, and hope for the best.

Of course I’m simplifying this account, because there is an area to the side of the house that I still have to work on. I won’t be able to use my scarifier-grader because the slope is too great, so I’ll have to do that part entirely by hand. But I’m going to finish the front of the yard first so it will have a chance to germinate.

Oh, and we need rain.