Out with the old, in with new garden space...

So I tried to give away the jungle gym/swing set – first to the neighbors on the block club email list. One neighbor stopped by to check it out, but it was too big, and too big a task for them to take it apart and reassemble it. Little did I know how right they were.

It was a nice dry Fall day. Perfect for leaf chopping.
I spread compost from the composter and refiled it
with chopped leaves. plus dressed most beds
with chopped leaves too.

Then I tried Facebook. A couple people took interest, but no takers there. It is old. And it would be a lot of work to carefully disassemble and reassemble elsewhere.

So it was up to me to do the tear-down. And I vastly underestimated how much work it would be. I tried to save as much lumber for future projects as I could. The whole thing was put together with screws. Rusty, stripped screws that had been there for the 13 years we've been in the house – in  addition to how many years it was here before us – probably another ten or more.

After futzing for a bout an hour-and-a-half with trying to unscrew the thing, and only getting about a dozen screws out (of hundreds), I decided it would be much faster with the chainsaw. And it was. I still tried to save as much wood as possible – it's mostly 2"x6" planks of pressure-treated wood, with a few 4"x4"s and 2"x4"s thrown in. But with a chainsaw and circular saw, I had the thing down in just a few hours.

All while doing this, I also raked up the leaves and chopped them with the mower to fill up the composter, as well as spread them on the garden beds. I had enough leaves to fill up three composter. And there's plenty more that have fallen in the last week. Though it's wet now. Not good for choppin'. I was tired and sore from head to toe by the time the day was over with.

But now I have an additional garden area to work with – the equivalent of a third of the back yard is now available for new projects. In a small urban yard, that's significant. I already have plans, which I'll post in the next few days.

In the back towards the fence is a patch of pachysandra. That'll remain.

I now have stacks of marginally good lumber to use on other projects. Finding a place to keep it all over teh winter is the hard part.