TerrieMiller.com

I’ve been slogging away at projects in the back yard, trying to transform it into a permaculture paradise. It’s been slow going, and sometimes it seems less than rewarding.

One project has been to try to use sheet mulching to reclaim a part of the yard that was quickly being taken over by blackberries. Finding cardboard was easy (the town cardboard recycling dropoff is just down the street!) But the wood chip mulch that I wanted was a problem…we don’t have a truck, and to buy a load and have it delivered would have cost almost $300. Definitely not in the budget!

I decided to make do, and covered the area with a thick layer of straw.

Much too thick, as it turns out. The straw on top of the cardboard became slippery; Laika couldn’t run in her yard anymore. So I changed course.

On Monday I added a new garden bed on top of the sheet mulch, and then rearranged the straw so that it covered the entire yard. It was weeds and dirt anyway…when the rains come this fall (if they come), the straw would begin to decompose and I could seed it with a cover crop that would have a better chance of taking hold. In the meantime, I watered the entire yard heavily, hoping to settle the straw and get the new bed off to a good start.

It was making do the best I could with what I had. We’d just live with the straw for a few months and see what happens.

The next morning, I took Laika over to the Laguna preserve for her walk. The sound of heavy equipment annoyed me, but as we got to the corner and I saw the tree company trucks, my mood improved.

After our walk, I went back to the corner and talked to the foreman with the tree company; they were throwing branches into the chipper with gusto now. And he seemed to agree that dumping his truck on our yard just down the street was a better idea than eating up fuel to haul it to the dump and pay to dispose of it there.

So we have a beautiful FREE pile of wood chips in our front yard, that Steve and I have been distributing in the back yard one wheelbarrow load at a time.

It’s amazing. Had they arrived any earlier, I’d be stuck preparing the yard before I could use them. As it turns out, I’d finished all the preparation for it the day before, and then they just showed up.

Yup, we’re doing a-bun-dance around here…

Update: the chips are down!