I feel like I can say with reasonable confidence that my fabulous Mother’s Day would be most people’s idea of hell. It was a beautiful day…a bit cooler than usual and I decided to go bushwacking….or bamboowacking to be more precise.
I can’t plant anything new because of water restrictions (no irrigation allowed), so it’s a great time to tend to what you have. There is a jungle of bamboo just beyond the new retaining walls and it looks as though no one has taken any notice of it in the 33 years since it was planted.
After our 16 inches of rain, I started seeing tons of new culms appear and knew these new volunteers needed attention. They couldn’t thrive if I didn’t enter the jungle and clear out all the dead wood and weeds competing for water and nutrients. With the ground still so soft and moist, it is the perfect time to pull weeds and weed trees by the roots. Garden dorks know how incredibly satisfying this can be.
There’s a lot more dead than alive in there…..
So there’s my jungle…I have a saw and I know how to use it.
I salvaged quite a few good canes for future use…maybe treehouse or compost pile? Either way, I had to save them for something. The rest….to the curb….
I knew it had to be in here somewhere since I always saw them fly into the jungle…..
A cardinal nest with an egg…I was very careful to leave it undisturbed…I can get the dead canes supporting the nest later after the egg has hatched.
Now these new culms have air circulating around them, and after I feed and mulch them, I think they will be beautiful. For the first time, we can walk back there and I think the back end of the treehouse will put you right into the “bamboo forest” with a new path leading to the trail.
So what made the cuts, scrapes and getting slapped in the face by bamboo so fun? I had company….The Minors actually HELPED me by dragging giant bamboo canes down to the road for a little while, or would hang out playing on the walls and talking to me. I LOVE it when we are all outside together. The CC was with us too working on his own project…..
Remember the old lattice under the front deck/entrance?
Looky….
The CC ripped some of our old salvaged deck boards straight down the middle and attached them with some stainless steel screws we had leftover from the mailbox project. We have plenty of deck stain on hand, which brings the total cost of this wall to a whopping $0!!!
That’s what I call an amazing (and frugal) Mother’s Day.