Finally working outside again

It has been difficult getting things done at work since I was off so much because of my dad. I still haven't been able to work much in the garden, but I finally did get to work outside this weekend. Instead of working in the garden though, my family and I worked in the woods behind our yard. We had to do this because during the week when I was going back and forth to the hospice unit, the electric company decided that they needed to upgrade the power lines that go through there. They had some of our trees cut down and many more trees trimmed. Unfortunately they left ALL of the debris for us to deal with. We finally started cleaning it up.

I used the chainsaw to cut the big pieces to be split later and cut up the limbs to carry out. My wife and daughters also carried out limbs and smaller logs. What made this difficult is that the whole wooded area is a pretty steep hill and the downed trees are at the bottom, next to the creek. We planned to use our chipper/shredder to mulch up all of the branches, but we discovered that we have a lot of branches that are too big for it.

Plan B is that we need to burn much of it. We used to have a small fire ring behind the garden, but that disappeared with the garden expansion this year. We were tired of dragging out wood anyway, so we decided to carry up rocks from the creek instead - much easier, right?

After a great deal of effort, we had enough rocks to make a bigger new fire ring. We dug out a hole and built the ring. I concreted the rocks together, so this ring is a bit more permanent than our last one.

You can see the garden in the background of the above picture.

Now we just need to wait for the drought and the burn ban to end so we can have our first official camp fire in it. I can just taste the marshmallows! We still have a lot of work to do with the woods, as well as many other outdoor projects. I need to finish building the deck railings and the pergola.

As for the garden, I want to build new compost bins and cold frames and fence the garden in. Before all of that, I need to plant garlic and Kenny's Potato Onions.

Good thing we built that fire ring. To get everything done this fall, I will be needing it to stay warm because by the time I finish everything, there will be snow on the ground!