Not all work

This last weekend was a national holiday.  Over the weekend I was thinking back to when my kids were little.   We used to spend time playing in and around the creek that runs through our yard.   These days I will go down to the creek now and then to check on how fast (or not) it is running.  Or just walking through it on my way to the pasture on the other side.  I'd like to be able to drive across.

I want a crossing here.

 This weekend I decided to play.  Well sort of.  We have a wanna-be low water crossing.  It is not cut away enough  on the other side so it silts up.  I mean it's always muddy.  I decided to try to build a sluice to drain the water from the area where we want to cross and where the silt is the worse on the other side.  I didn’t really think I could do much good.  I was just playing around.   We can drive around to my neighbor's place and go through their yard to get to my pasture on the other side of the creek.  They don't mind but it sure would be nice to cross right here.
 

 too muddy to drive through

When you cross the water it is into silty mud.  Just walking you sink in.  I had a friend last year try to bring a bale of hay through the crossing with a tractor.  He almost got stuck in this mud.  Really stuck.  BAD!  The rest of the bales he brought to me by coming around the long way through my neighbor's yard.

 way too muddy

This spring I had another neighbor go across the creek to the pasture through this crossing to help us fight a run away fire in the pastures.  He made it across only because he has a big 4 wheel drive truck with big tires.  I would like it to be easier to cross.  I'd like to be able to drive one of my trucks across.  When he left he went around through the neighbor's yard, too.  He didn't want to try to cross again.  He didn't get stuck the first time but he didn't want to force his luck.

sluice draining water

 Using a wide toothed rake I dragged gravel down creek making a small ditch.  On Saturday and Sunday I walked down to the crossing about 10 times each day.  Spent about 10 minutes each time dragging gravel, letting the flowing water help me break loose more rocks to make the ditch deeper.  Water level came down pretty good.  

You can just see a couple of pieces of driftwood on the left in the picture above where the water level was before the sluice was built.  Starting on last Monday I've been walking down to the crossing each morning with the rake, trying to deepen the ditch a little more.  It is slowly bringing down the water level so that the silt can dry out.    We'll watch over the next couple of weeks to see if I can end up with a good crossing.

Gardening section  (see fine print at bottom of this post)

It requires a shovel

So that’s my play around time from last weekend.  Since then I have been re shaping some garden beds  The above picture is an example.  The beds at the bottom of this picture are where the high tunnel was when I first built it.  This last spring I moved the tunnel to where it is now.  It rolls on pipe.  Next Spring I’ll pull it back over these beds where it started.   When I first built the beds for inside the high tunnel I made the pathways less than 2 feet wide.  Using the boards for holding the raised beds made it seem like it was too crowded when I was down on my knees in the path working.   So now that the tunnel is moved out of the way I cut down the two outer beds to enlarge the pathways making them 2 feet 4 inches wide.  It feels more comfortable to me.  This picture shows re-sizing in process.  Now the board sides are back up and the beds are ready to plant.   I'll include a picture of plantings in the next post

disclainmer:

All gardening techniques, methods, and labor described in any posting of this blog are presented strictly to make you laugh and smile.  Any educational value you attribute to any of this is solely the result of your overactive imagination and my excellent story telling skills.  Do not try this at home, unless you know what you are doing.  Any use, misuse, or non use of the contents of this blog is your responsibility, but I would love to hear about it, especially if it's funny. Hopefully this blog will leave us both laughing.  I know it makes me laugh and one out of two ain't bad.  Remember:  You have got to make your own luck. . . and I'll take luck over skill any day. Now go read another post.