put out the hose to the back garden, watered a bit.
then on to fence maintenance. which i have to do each year to trim honeysuckle trees away from the fence and to fix what the deer tried to run over. i am making good progress. i hope tomorrow i can get a long run of the new roll of fence up to replace what the deer mangled. what they mangled will need to be rolled out flat and then worked on to make it stand back up again. some longer poles will help with that too, but i don't have that many so i gotta ration 'em...
while i was getting the mangled fence out of the way i took a few extra hours to explore the groundhog den site that it looked like they were trying to use again. well, no, there was a hole but it didn't go far so i filled it back in and made sure there were all sorts of pieces of wood pounded into the ground that it would have to chew through to get back to digging again. this method worked well when i closed it off before as it means they have to spend time chewing before they can do much digging and that means i have a better chance of catching them in the act before they dig much and make a bigger mess. i have some metal poles i can use to pound in places too which helps.
funny, we had some cactuses growing outside in pots and Mom didn't want to take care of them any more so i dumped the pots in a spot where the groundhogs/rabbits had dug a tunnel under the fence (i don't have it spread outwards along the ground, some year if i have to i will do this with other fencing). in the meantime i use chunks of old wood, rocks, etc. well i knew that this fence wasn't going to keep everything out and it doesn't but today i was doing the tree trimming and working on improving the control so critters can't dig under easily and there were those cactuses still alive. they were just on the surface and half the roots exposed. since the critters did not use that tunnel at all after dumping those cactuses there i took a chunk to put at the groundhog den place to discourage them from messing around there. i also have some rose bush trimmings to put there.
and while i was doing that i trimmed back some honeysuckle bushes and grape vines so they won't shade the grass along the ditch. i need that grass to grow there or we lose way too much dirt to the ditch flow. eventually i will need to do some restoration work along a few other parts as the soil is really going away too fast and it is due to mistakes made.
when you have an irrigation channel with grass growing along it you have to keep the trees, shrubs, grape vines or anything else from shading the grass. once the grass is gone the water will shift to where there is less friction to the flow and that means it will strip dirt from the sides and then things cave in and ... etc. i thought that at some point i would get a bunch of bails of straw and stake them down and then spread some dirt on top and new grass seed and let that new thing capture any sediment that flows down the ditch. there's a nice bit of sand i can rescue from the ditch itself from time to time and i should do this because i can just toss the sand up on the bank to be held by the grass but as of yet i don't do it because i need some wading boots. i don't trust walking in that ditch otherwise. chances of glass or rusty metal stuff/nails/screws... some small rocks. i need to get in there some year, but i don't think it will be this year...
as much as i like to play in water. not the time... the water does run clean and slightly brown with tannins. no idea how many farm contaminants in there. never had it tested. it runs off a few square miles. um, how's that for an aside?
ok, so i've made progress. the new fence will replace the mangled fence tomorrow and/or the next day and then i can see where that gets me as i can use that further along where we won't see it as much.
i'm going to be sure to put up some cloth strips in the fence this time to warn deer of new fencing going up if they might be running along and also using taller poles so the fence might get dented by a deer but it won't get bent over and mangled. as they say live and learn.
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