April Vacation Projects

I completed a number of my projects on my list during April Vacation. Much of the list was yard maintenance. I had a few large trees that fell in the front yard over the winter to cut up and the vast amounts of leaves that I never raked during the fall, and there were a few gardening chores; turn the compost, spread charcoal on the garden, etc.

I also had a number of landscaping projects on my list. I have been building a split rail fence around the front yard to the left of the driveway. I'm going to plant apple trees along the inside perimeter and have a bunch of wildflowers. I also want to landscape the front house area and make it more of a perennial garden and gateway to the backyard, where our patio, fire pit and pool are.

"The corner" project This is the front corner of the house, where I focused my attentions. I dug up 4 big lilac bushes and planted them along the front and constructed a gate and fence to close off the backyard. I built the retaining wall 3 years ago, and the stone stairway last year. The bottom stone is over 1400lbs. I also built the first sections of the split rail fence last fall and the arbor gateway.

I'm going to plant wisteria or honeysuckle and climbing roses at the arbor and some shrubs and perennial flowers along the fence. I want to plant various types of thyme along the top of the retaining wall and flowers along the bottom. There's also going to be a flagstone walkway to the upper gate.

Here is the backside of the gate. Everything is hand-hewn. I used my broadax and wedges and maul to split out planks from a cottonwood and cross beams from some red oak. I know cottonwood isn't a good wood and the planks came out pretty rough, but I was looking for something already rustic looking, the planks had cool grains and I had a 20" diameter tree that fell this winter. I split fence rails with a maul and wedges and cut the post holes with a maul chisel, brace & bit and carpenters axe.

 

This project is kind of like my giant model airplane. Sure, I could use a chainsaw, or buy wood, but I'm doing everything the old fashioned - circa 1830's way.