Hello Everyone!
Leftover espresso, Ye ole supplies, So much shovel work, The hugel mound grows & A few terracing thoughts!
Alright, I have been up for a few hours now reading stuff online... and enjoying the silence as much as I can while sipping on last night's leftover espresso. Which is kind of funny, because after making it late in the afternoon yesterday... I promptly fell asleep without drinking a sip of it even though it had a clump of strawberry ice cream in it.
I was simply too worn out by that point in the day to do anything else... and especially so due to eating an entire pizza so fast that the food comma was nearly instant. It was really nice of someone to help me get some pizzas and groceries... because like the old saying goes 'my bellybutton was kissing my backbone' when it comes to feeling hungry.
Having also been drinking my backup flavored (gross) coffee for several days now... was not exactly leaving me in the best of moods either... so I also got some better coffee. It really is amazing how long that one bag of flavored coffee has lasted as a backup supply... and I guess that it shows just how much I truly dislike flavored coffee.
The only thing that I did not stock up on (and probably should have) is drinking water which means I will need to keep rationing what I have and try to avoid getting too sweaty while working outdoors. That last bit is much easier said than done, because it has been getting blistering hot out during the times that it is not overcast... and more often than not... I break a sweat just walking up the hill in the shade.
Anyways, at some point in the afternoon (long before getting some much needed supplies) I hiked up to the driveway area... and started working on the hugel mound terrace again. Working on that project (and in that area) was not quite as grueling as it has been lately... due to things drying up a good bit and the overcast sky made it where it was not insufferably hot.
For the most part, all that I did was get one shovelful of 'dirt' at a time from the pile behind the building, walk along the slope to the terrace... and plop it onto the logs that I previously laid down inside of it. About every third or fourth shovelful, the shovel would get too much clay clumped on it... and I would bang it on one of the terrace stakes (and sometimes logs) to knock all the clay off.
Once I got enough 'dirt' covering a section of the logs, I then walked on the entire area and was extra meticulous with squishing (and gently stomping) the 'dirt' into any crevices that I could. Since the terraces themselves are the main 'water runoff control devices' I was not concerned with recreating their exact same slope during the hugel mound construction... and the 'mound' itself is concave... and basically slopes towards its center which is where I want the water to go.
Per usual it is all an experiment, so we will see how that part of things works out in the long run... and if it seems like too much water is pooling in the 'belly' of it... then I can always add more dirt to correct the scenario. As things stand now, I got the entire first layer of dirt applied to the hugel mound... and it is ready for the next phase of its construction.
All that I really have to do now is gather up a bunch of the leaves from that big sweet gum that I felled behind the building... and layer them over all the 'dirt' that comprises the hugel mound. I am also going to rake up a bunch of 'brown' leaves and layer them over everything... before adding a new layer of soil to 'seal' everything into the mound.
The only things that will be left to do after all of that is accomplished, is to transplant a bunch of my potted plants onto/into the mound... and fill all the empty spaces in with plugs of native vegetation. I am still uncertain on where I will get all the plugs of topsoil/vegetation from... and in the end I might wind up getting just one or two plugs from various areas... instead of digging up a bunch of plugs from one area.
Something that I am slightly concerned about is that below the hugel mound terrace I have yet to construct a terrace... or even lay down a log (or logs) to act as a retaining wall and/or water diversion device. In a nutshell, the 'weir' that creates the hugel mound terrace is rather 'porous' and I do not want to lose a bunch of my hard work by it getting washed away downhill.
Thus far I have not seen too much trouble in that regard... but when it does happen (because it will) I need to have something in place to catch all the soil that gets washed away. I did not mention it before... but the very top 'terrace' (the one above the hugel mound) is just one poplar log that I staked in place... and then let the soil that got washed away by surface runoff uphill of it fill it in... saving me a good bit of shoveling which is what I want to do with the bottom terrace also.
Well, I have meandered on here long enough for now... and need to wrap this up before the sun gets up over the horizon. Now that I am all full of calories I best use them to their utmost outdoors while I still have them. I hope that folks are doing well. Ciao for now.