Land Grab, Part Two

Before

I just love "before" and "after" pictures, so it's hard to resist telling the story that way. So: here they are. Picture 1 shows the land cleared of most of the building supplies (one afternoon's job) and awaiting removal of vegetation. Keep an eye on that scrufty deciduous tree in the middle of the shot: that's a good way to orient yourself in these two pictures. It's a buckthorn bush, but it's about as close to picturesque as anything in the back quarter of the yard gets. (The one behind and to the left is a black walnut. I once thought that despite their notoriety at discouraging all other growth around them, these trees were rare and wonderful. They are, in fact, fast-growing and rather common in the yard, since the neighbor has a tree of nut-bearing age and the squirrels distribute its fruit freely. Even though Black walnut is as legitimate a tree as has volunteered itself in this wasteland of buckthorn, seedling elm with no hope for the future, and otherwise vining/suckering woody growth, it may have to go if I am after arable soil...)

After

    Picture two is the "after" shot, perhaps better described as an "aftermath" shot. (Not, thank goodness, because there was math involved. Although I did have to successfully subtract 2' from the 22' plan to accommodate the fact that otherwise the hugelberm would have been in the way at the top edge. So, that makes the final result 35' X20', right? See, my computational abilities are improving weekly.) There's that buckthorn, center, looking charmingly like a little shade tree. Birds like to perch in it and watch my progress. The sparrows and a male cardinal seem particularly interested in my activities, not just in the worms and grubs exposed by the digging.
     What the picture doesn't show is that the hugelberm is now twice as big. Most of what needed to be pulled from the ground was roots, many 1/2" in diameter: a network of bittersweet (bright orange), Virginia creeper (black with white lenticular spots and mercifully shallow-rooted), grape (shreddy brown bark even underground and roots that branch and cling and shan't be split by shovel tip nor leverage) and blackberry (here to stay 'til the bitter end, by God.) Did I mention goutweed and goldenrod? They stabilized the surface and gave it the innocent appearance of sod, until I tried to push a shovel in and couldn't. Then there was that predictable line of rocks, running on a diagonal at the soil surface in this shot. This area  might have encompass the original owner's masterful drainage plan, as the pattern of large stones, once unearthed, leads in the general downslope direction of several buried culverts. However, there was no evidence of any gravel around them, and the rocks only went one or two wide and one deep - so hopefully I haven't just inadvertently changed the underground flow of water too badly. A single-use flashbulb ca. 1950s, a Victorian furniture caster and a portion of rose-painted china also found their way to this spot. Without enough supporting objects to suggest this was an actual rubbish heap, it leads me to wonder how household objects become such a scattered archeology. Was the flashbulb exploded right there during some long-forgotten but photo-worthy family event? Where is the rest of that piece of furnishing? There are always ghosts in the soil when you dig on long-populated ground.
     I had hoped, up to this point in the blogosphere, to share some new revelation with my readers and fellow land-clearers regarding returning land to arability the Easy Way... or at least, the way not requiring machinery. Well, as it happens, the only keys as far as I can tell are persistence, brute labor, and caffeine. There is no easy way. Maybe if I had a year, I might have gone for a slash-and-burn approach to kill off all the surface roots and stumps and return their nutrients to the soil as wood ash. That would have had to have been accomplished in secret, as slash-burns are illegal in this residential community. Then I would have followed with a smother crop of oats and field peas, let it thrive all summer until frost, and planted something big and sprawling like squash here next year while the soil settled back into its pre-invasion form. Would the roots have remained? I'd put money on bittersweet and blackberry surviving such treatment. Because I lack for time, I have to apply brute force to expedite the clearing process. The project took longer than the first and larger section took, patly because of roots and partly because the soil was heavy, sticky and wet, clinging to my feet, the shovel, the rocks, and giving roots plenty of purchase. Really, I should have stayed off it for another week or two, but once weeds start active growth, stripping sod becomes much, much harder.
    It is done, now. The rocks shown here have left this morning with the Patient Spouse, and will soon become part of the fill behind or inside of a stone wall he's building somewhere in Connecticut. (That's right: we catch-and-release those pesky stones, too - not just woodchucks.) I have the honor - at least, it feels like an honor — of having sustained a real, identifiable sports injury in the process as well: what the Mathematician and Sox GM-to-Be calls "a strained oblique." That puts me on the DL, though not, apparently, when it comes to making meals, vacuuming, putting up window screens, tending six teenage hens and weeding out curly dock and creeping Charlie from the vegetable garden. It's just that my baseball career has been sidelined for the moment. Too bad... I could really use the extra income. Bloom!