The heat has finally hit. I feel I may have jinxed it with my last post! It was 30* yesterday and 37* today. I guess I should enjoy it while I can, it is supposed to be back down to the mid-20’s by the middle of the week. There is no enjoying the heat though once it is over 30*. The only exception is that with the heat, the vegetables should once again have a big growth and more ripening.

Before the heat hit, K managed to do some work on our main path. Now that the second wall is pretty much complete, K has been able to start determining how he would like to finish off the path so that it is prepared for doing the cement. This path is our main way in and out of the back 3/4 of our yard, so it is going to get lots of traffic and I am ready for it to be nice and solid.

We are going to have a lot of earth to move once again. We want the path to come up almost to the top of the newest (downhill) wall. This will help us make the slope a little less extreme and spread the decline…or incline depending which way you are walking…over a larger area.

The corner portion of the wall that we built will become a bit of a landing, allowing space for us to turn the wheelbarrow cart around. We just have to finish filling the short section that runs perpendicular to the path. It should only take us an hour, max, but we are going to wait until later this week when it is just a touch cooler. I hate feeling like I am under a laser beam when I am trying to do work like that. I will just end up rushing it and then regret the half-assed job I did later. Better to know my heat limit and just wait until the cooler weather that is expected.

Part of the back filling came because we had this old junk pile in the back of the yard. It was rocks, spare fencing material, odds and ends that we collected when digging up sections, and garbage that had somehow accumulated. K was preparing to get started on digging the next section for our next wall, but had to deal with that pile first.

Because of the rocks that were there, he decided to start using them behind the wall we just built. This should help with drainage, but also the amount of dirt we will have to move to back-fill. While I was at work, he managed to get halfway up the path filled with rocks, and had started moving dirt over the rocks as well. The path ended up quite a bit wider than we expected, which is great. I don’t want a narrow little path that we will need to bring supplies up and down, so it worked out.

We still need to fill behind our other wall as well. Before we get to that, I want to add a little wall into the large area between our first rock walls and our first long path wall because I feel it is too wide right now to be a nice garden. I would rather add a level in there so that we aren’t growing on a slope (losing our water), and I don’t have to try and garden on a slope. If we create two beds, I can add stepping stones to get in and out, and plan the plants accordingly.

There will eventually be a wall of some sort that goes up from the path wall to our arch as well because we plan to add some stairs along there for easier access to that top section. Those will come later when we start building the walls for the tomato section. I think the stairs will lead to a path that will take us over to the top terrace of the tomatoes, but we won’t really know until we start on that side. We can’t do that until we have completed this side. Dominoes, I tell ya! We have to line everything up and get things done in order, otherwise we will find ourselves in some trouble.

Back to the path. For now, we get the path completed, and the beds on that side ready for spring planting. I am going to tear out the raised beds this fall because I am very much ready for my privacy trellis and permanent beds along the back. I don’t want to look at plywood anymore. That will be my first spring project, so I want to get rid of all the raised beds (strawberries, 2 vegetable beds and the potato towers), so that I can prep the area this fall for a build as soon as the snow melts in the spring.

Once that is built, it will give us more privacy in that back area. I would hope that we pave the path this fall, but if not, then we will do both the path and the privacy trellis as our priorities in the spring time. K has a fantastic idea for the path, which I think will really fit with our vision for our yard. To describe it, it will fan out at the end with the “bricks” or pattern that we decide to use become sparse and almost disappearing into the grass. We want it to look like the landscaping blends together. I think it will be a beautiful way to transition into the yard.

So much to do. Because we have been able to do so much and keep the momentum going, I really don’t want to slow down because of the heat. I’m hoping we continue to have cooler weather that will allow us to get more done in the fall than we expected to!