The giant ugly pile of dirt produced by Peter’s excavation of the fishpond site is gone. Gone, gone, gone, and every ounce of it shifted by my own two hands, bucketful by bucketful. (If I have a couple of minutes to rub together later in the day, I’m tempted to weigh a sample bucketful and then estimate the total tonnage moved.) All that dirt is now a flowerbed which extends the rockery over to the wire fence on the east side of the property. (Itself to be replaced shortly by a reed or woven-withy fence.)<\/p>\n
I decline to publish before-and-after pictures, mostly because the “after” still needs a lot of work. I need more plants (going over to the big nursery in Johnstown over the weekend ot pick up some more buddleia, and [if I can find it] a white lilac), and I need to spray Pathclear or a similar weedkiller all over the gravel in front of the house to prepare it for the truckload of washed pebbles that are going to go down in a week or so. After that<\/em> I’ll post a picture.<\/p>\n Now back to work, where (in one universe) a hero is about to have an unsettling encounter with a dragon’s blood and (in another) alien wizards are mall-crawling in a shopping center in the New York suburbs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The giant ugly pile of dirt produced by Peter’s excavation of the fishpond site is gone. Gone, gone, gone, and every ounce of it shifted by my own two hands,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n