Mossing Around
Jan. 7th, 2011 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeYesterday's weather was beautiful: bright and sunny and clear. The snow finished melting from the roof of Lisa's father's house. (By which I mean the house in which he lives, not the old family homestead with the Last Dangerous Roof. I work in his house when I'm up here, and have taken over his dining area for the duration of my stay.) The north roof of his house has a lot of moss on it. Lisa took the opportunity of a clear day and a lack of snow on the roof to go up there to try and do something about it. Unlike the old house and the Last Dangerous Roof, she doesn't need a safety harness; this house has a much more sensibly-pitched roof on which you just need grippy shoes. She scraped the larger pieces of moss from the roof. I handed her tools and supplies when needed but otherwise stayed well back, not wanting to be hit with flying bits of moss as she flung them to the ground. Then she spread what we had left of moss-control solution on the roof. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of the zinc-copper solution remaining, so we'll need to go get some more. The local hardware store doesn't carry it and we need to go to the farm-supply store in Stayton to get more.
Mid-day today, before the rain returned, we took several barrow-loads of gravel to apply to the worst muddy bits on the path across the property between Lisa's father's house and the old house in front of which her trailer sits, and then several more loads of wood chips to the medium-problem areas, particularly those where Lisa wants to be able to run the lawnmower this summer without sending gravel flying about.
Several years ago, Lisa's father bought a load of wood chips, not knowing that the falling of the two trees last year would supply us with a vast amount of the stuff. Lisa's first idea today was that we use the purchased wood chips because the pile is in a place she'd like to clear away. We pitched in to the fine-grain chips, but after hauling one load, it became clear that the pile of chips had sat out so long that they had turned into decent quality soil instead and would not be appropriate. I ended up pouring some of the denser-grade chips from last year's tree projects over the top of the one load of chip-soil I'd already dropped, and Lisa raked most of the chip-soil away. ("I could use some grass seed," she said, and now knows where she'll get material should we start trying to fill holes in the outer field.)
There's now about fifteen or twenty meters of the cross-property path covered with coarse-grade wood chips, and about the same amount near the old house paved with gravel, although I did need to lay down a new load of gravel on the path I graveled last year as the gravel tends to sink and the soil tends to rise.
Mid-day today, before the rain returned, we took several barrow-loads of gravel to apply to the worst muddy bits on the path across the property between Lisa's father's house and the old house in front of which her trailer sits, and then several more loads of wood chips to the medium-problem areas, particularly those where Lisa wants to be able to run the lawnmower this summer without sending gravel flying about.
Several years ago, Lisa's father bought a load of wood chips, not knowing that the falling of the two trees last year would supply us with a vast amount of the stuff. Lisa's first idea today was that we use the purchased wood chips because the pile is in a place she'd like to clear away. We pitched in to the fine-grain chips, but after hauling one load, it became clear that the pile of chips had sat out so long that they had turned into decent quality soil instead and would not be appropriate. I ended up pouring some of the denser-grade chips from last year's tree projects over the top of the one load of chip-soil I'd already dropped, and Lisa raked most of the chip-soil away. ("I could use some grass seed," she said, and now knows where she'll get material should we start trying to fill holes in the outer field.)
There's now about fifteen or twenty meters of the cross-property path covered with coarse-grade wood chips, and about the same amount near the old house paved with gravel, although I did need to lay down a new load of gravel on the path I graveled last year as the gravel tends to sink and the soil tends to rise.
