Ah, time to reduce the amount of dead and rotting wood on the block... and get rid of random bits of construction material at the same time. The old picket fence was an easy place to start... we have been talking to the neighbours about changing this for a colourbond fence or something similar... and the first step was to remove the sick tree that was right next to the fence... and, now I'm ripping out the fence. As you can see, hte wood was in pretty bad condition, and a whack or two with a hammer was more than enough to know the palings loose (and sometimes, just shatter them). I had to take some special care with the rusty nails that were sticking out everywhere.
So, many of the palings were in various conditions of decay and rot... but all of them weren't really performing their duties as a fence in any way at all! So, they joined a couple of sheets of laserlight, a corrugated iron sheet, various latticeworks... and all of it went straight to the tip. Seriously, I had been meaning to do this for ages... but there are really so many things to do around the place!
Meanwhile, we are making a good start on that new pile of mulch... I ended up spreading the last of the other pile out around the perimeter of the block. Which my wife said that she didn't want... after she had agreed to it earlier. Sigh... she thought I was talking about something else.... classic misunderstanding... and several hours of my time spreading out that mulch!
Meanwhile, it has been pretty rainy around here.. so, it does make the clay soil much easier to turn and to get the rocks out. Which meant that I could do this patch of ground in the rough time that it would normally take me to do half of that on a dry earth.
... and then, out the front corner... there have been regrowths of the passionfruit vines. I'd been mostly getting them whilst they were small, and the herbicide seemed pretty ineffective. So, back to just the physical option of trailing back through the root system and ripping as much of it out each time as possible. But there was this massive one that I had overlooked every time... and it was choking down a shrub and doing a good job of climbing up a tree! I had spent so much time looking for little shoots that I had completely missed this monster!
And finally, the stumps... there are quite a few around the house... from old fallen trees, to newer stumps where we had cut down smaller trees to allow a bit of space for things to actually grow. I had my mattock... and my new toy, the crow bar. And wow, the crow bar made pretty short work of the stumps that I had gotten stuck on.
... the crowbar is pretty heavy, but well balanced, so it was much easier to use than I had thought it would be! Yay!
... but I did cheat a little bit for some of the more stubborn stumps with long tap roots.
This cluster was going to be the last ones tackled for the day. I thought that the smaller one on the left would be the easy one... but I was mistaken.
... it was quite securely stuck in the ground... and the one on the right, whilst looking much bigger, was older and the wood snapped pretty easily. And most of the large roots ran parallel to the ground, which made for an easier uncovering and loosening.
After that first one was loose, the second one was much easier... the other one had had roots tangled up with this one, and with those gone, it was much easier to get the mattock and crowbar under and lift it loose.
... not the biggest one so far... and there are bigger ones to come, but a sizeable one! At least for a little guy like me!
... and we have ants starting to take root in the outer edges of the garden. Hopefully they will fight back the termites! I think they are supposed to be the natural predators.
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