Sometimes, you work hard enough that even though the result is boring, you want people to see how hard you worked.
I’m trying to dress up the space in front of my front porch. Probably futile, because a) It’s in deep shade and b) It floods if the gutters overflow.
So what I have, essentially, are two strips of dirt right at the edge of the slab, under the eaves. All the nutrients have been leeched out, and the remaining clay has packed itself down to just short of sedimentary rock.
First thing to do, then was to dig out a nice deep trench. (Eight inch concrete block for scale; the light-colored band at the top of the slab shows the level of the dirt before I started digging.)
[More images below the fold.]
This is not all of the dirt. About 4 wheelbarrow loads filled in various depressions around the yard. The yellow handle is the pick-ax/mattock I had to use to break up the dirt, and hack out the roots. I could only dig out about two or three inches deep at a time.
Pile of dirt with pick ax
Not only was the dirt hard, but it was bound together with a dense network of roots from a nearby tree. Here’s the worst of the filthy things.
After I got tired of digging, I ran some water in to moisten the very dry clay at the bottom, and hosed down the edge of the slab. I think the concrete actually goes a bit deeper than what you see here.
Bottom edge of slab; wet dirt
I started re-filling with a good thick layer of sphagnum moss at the bottom, then alternated excavated dirt and moss, turning and moistening each layer. Back to front: moss, on top of excavated dirt, on top of moistened mix.
That’s about four days of work there, in one or two hours a day. That’s all my stamina and the heat (90+ for most of it) would allow, although by the last day I’d toughened up enough to do three or four hours.
Now I have to do the same thing on the other end of the porch. Gah.