It was a beautiful fall weekend, and we got a lot of things done outside.  The backyard’s overgrown, messy flowerbed is no more:  after Tina transplanted all perennials worth saving to other flowerbeds and moved all the scattered large stones to the future stone wall, Jeff pulled out most of the tree-stumps with the tractor and then used his grader to level the ground.  Only two stumps could not be removed – one of the Magnolia trees is planted between them and they will now anchor a much smaller flowerbed.  After Jeff raked the space smooth, Tina spread grass seed over the bare ground.  Not sure it will still grow this fall, but it was worth a try, since the seed was left over from the spring planting in front of the house. We then removed the round turtle pen and mowed off the weeds (the turtle – being a desert creature – had to be moved inside for the winter).   

Tina also pulled out the dead annuals – since we had a pretty hard frost earlier this week, not much is left from any of them.   All this cleaning up certainly made the compost pile a lot bigger.  Jeff shut off all the outside water spigots, and we put away the water hoses before they freeze and crack. Mowed the backyard and the “orchard” one last time this fall, which made everything look rather clean 🙂

Jeff plowed and disked another acre, getting ready to spread hard fescue grass later this week.  This will be our next acre of ground ready for planting blackberries in the spring.  We’ll make rows for the berry plants right before planing, but this type of grass should not spread into the rows and should only have to be mowed a few times a year.  Hoping that plowing and disking will destroy any weeds (and poison ivy vines) that were present in what used to be a hay field.