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Sichuan

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Sichuan
 
@sichuan • 8 years ago
Well, I just ordered an abundance of flowers, bushes and trees. I'll add them to what I already have growing. I bought an Earthwise electric tiller to get the ground ready around the sides of the house. It's not the best tiller but it will till to a depth of 10 inches, which should be sufficient for new stock. I'm having a few cubic yards of topsoil, compost and peat delivered to work into the soil along with a large pile of leaf compost that is about a year old. I'll have to reduce the soil ph on one side of the house from 7.0 to 5.5 for the Rhododendrons but otherwise the 7.0 ph for the remainder of the property should be OK. Most of the trees will be planted in the front, rear and side yards but a few of the dwarf trees will be placed close to the house.

I'm currently removing the lower branches of six huge, very old Oak trees , up to 25 feet above ground level, to allow more sunlight to fall on the property so that I can have a greener lawn and to get rid of all the moss that has invaded. My wife kept telling me "You're 66 years old. You shouldn't be cutting these tree limbs". She became irritated when I started laughing. Never mind the fact that I spent years building, demolishing and maintaining industrial smokestacks to a height of 1400 feet, climbing them, working off interior and exterior scaffolds, rappelling down them and working from Bosun chairs. Anyway, I relented and decided to have a tree service company remove some of the higher branches and thin out the middle and top of the trees. I have two chainsaws and a pole chainsaw but there are so many branches on these old trees that it's really not safe for me to get in there and cut them, even with the safety harnesses and safety lines I use. Age, to some extent, may indeed be a state of mind but if I did fall from high up in a tree once I hit the ground I imagine my bones would be in pieces and I'd look like roadkill. The Oaks are about 100 feet tall. Hopefully, I'll have time to finish the Oak trees and till the soil next to the house before everything is delivered. Once I get all the flowers, bushes and trees planted I'll tear into the rear yard with the tiller, tilling appx. three or four hundred square feet a day and reseeding it with new grass seed. The rear yard is around 15,000 sq. ft. so it will take me awhile. I usually spend most of my time outside in good weather. I don't have a green thumb but I do the best I can.

The flowers, bushes and trees I have coming are several Dwarf Josee Reblooming Lilac bushes, several red, white and pink Astilbe, several Green & White, Golden Green and Richland Gold Hostas, several White Feather Hostas, several Freeland Blue, Bella Deep Rose and White Alba Prunella, 15 Dwarf Jumbo Burning bushes, several Polar Night Rhododendrons, several Gladiolus plants, 4 dozen shade loving perennials for under some of the Oak trees, 2 Royal Japanese Cherry trees, a Yoshino Cherry Tree, a Weeping Cherry tree, 2 Magnolia trees, 2 Dwarf Hydrangea trees, 2 Dwarf Korean Lilac trees, a Blue Chinese Wisteria tree, a Japanese Lilac tree, an Aristocrat Flowering Pear tree, 2 Red Flowering Dogwood trees and a Kousa Dogwood tree. All the trees are four to five year stock so they'll be healthy and well started. They'll already be four to five feet tall when I receive them.

Perhaps I'll have some nice pictures to show next year.