I kind of miss the goats! It was fun having them around, eating and bleating. I think Jane liked them too, though by the end of the week she didn't pay them much mind. That's just how she is, a mellow girl.
Today we spent lots of time in the yard. In the morning Georg cut down saplings, he got them all except the really big choke cherry. It overhangs a phone line so it's going to have to come down in pieces. And I got to work pulling up ivy. There's so much of it! Though it doesn't seem as daunting with all the leaves gone.
We took a break for lunch at Nosh, and to see the duck race. We timed it perfectly: got to the race just as it was beginning. Afterwards we drove out to Hillsborough to pick up the truck, which we had left there at my office so there'd be room in the back for the goat trailer. I took the truck to Lowe's to get concrete blocks. We want to start a new woodpile and do it right this time: up on blocks and covered with a tarp so the wood won't rot. We picked out a spot near enough to be easy to get wood in cold weather, but not too close to the house. I also got a "double edged weed cutter" to help chop up the ivy, and couldn't resist a white euphorbia. I love euphorbia! And some birdseed, which we were almost out of.
By then it was the hottest part of the day so we took a rest break. I had stayed up really late last night watching Stalker by Tarkovsky, then was up even later thinking about it & trying to figure out what it meant. So I was glad for a nap. In late afternoon we went back out into the yard. Georg dug out most of the evil yucca which grows along the path to the big shed. I planted a rose we bought a year ago, which I had never gotten around to putting in the ground. It's a climbing noisette called "Mount Vernon." I planted it under our bedroom window; I hope it has a good fragrance!
I also did some more pulling up ivy, and then we both worked on cleaning up the old shed remnants. This part is kind of embarrassing. (And considering I posted "before" photos of our jungle of a yard, you know it takes a lot to embarrass me.) We used to have a small potting shed beside the house. It looked handmade, corrugated plastic over a wood frame. Gradually the wood frame rotted, and then a big limb fell on it, and the shed collapsed. We hauled it away to the dump, and most of the contents of it, but apparently not all. There was still some stuff -- empty flowerpots, bags with a little bit of soil, an old piece of downspout, some wooden stakes, that sort of thing -- which the ivy grew completely over. I sort of almost forgot it was there. Then the goats came and ate the ivy, and voila, all this stuff emerged!
Well we picked it all up, salvaged what we could and made a pile of the rest to go to the dump next week. The only thing left to move is a section of fallen picket fence which, again, had been completely covered by ivy and I had kind of forgotten was there. It's so overgrown with ivy that we'll have to cut the ivy away before we can move it. There was a gravel floor in the shed, and I think we're going to use the gravel under the trash bins, instead of mulch. It will be a pain to move the gravel, but on the bright side there probably won't be as much ivy in that spot. Plus, free gravel!
A sudden rainstorm put a stop to our work, and by then we were pretty beat anyway. We got cleaned up and went to that new George's Diner on Hillsborough. They were having some service issues, clearly due to just having opened, and the staff were so nice and so eager to please that I couldn't hold it against them. The hamburger was not as good as Cookout which is about a block away. Next time I will try the reuben. I am always searching for a good reuben.
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