59. Ryecroft + Landscaping

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Henry Ryecroft

Actual rain is falling from the sky. This is our first proper storm since, I think, early April. I remember that rain because I was working outside all day the first weekend of Cherry Blossom Festival. Now it's the weekend following Fleet Week and the City is finally getting a good washing. 

The past week I've been thinking again about Henry Ryecroft, and this change in the weather brings him to mind again. The change of seasons. From now on we will be descending into winter. My greening work is done for the year. Despite a perverse urge to rev up my workouts, to get back to where I was on a couple exercises I've backed off of because of wrist problems last year at this time, I'm trying to ease off the exercise just a bit. To lay fallow, as it were, and give my body time to recover. (Though while this sounds sensible, I've come through the summer in such good shape it seems a bit silly.) I'm thinking I will limit myself to twice a week until the new year and then ramp up again.

Thinking of Henry Ryecroft, something else struck me, his attitude toward his health problems. And presumably this was true of George Gissing as well. Where as today we do battle with illness, he retreated to the countryside to try to enjoy what time remained. Today this would be a startling act for anyone not destitute or deranged. And yet who really enjoys those battles in and out of hospitals? I suppose enough people win to make it seem worth the effort, but I wonder.

Landscaping

I'm now learning a great deal about landscaping with gravel. We just want a thick layer of something in the back to prevent weeds from growing there. The ideal solution seems to be something called decomposed granite (DG). The one landscaper I've managed to get here to look at the site suggested it, and I've since studied up. If you pack it down, it almost resembles paving. The landscaper recommended five inches of the stuff to cover all the roots and vines down there. 

The problem is that bags of the stuff are quite heavy (over 40 lbs) and since that landscaper never got back to me with the estimate he promised, it looks like I may have to do this myself. An alternative is red lava, which is under 30 lbs for the same volume and cheaper as well. 

A great option would be 60 bags of the red lava as a base which would then be topped off with 57 bags of DG. This would give most of the advantages of the nearly solid (weed blocking) power of the DG but with a much lighter in weight (and cost) alternative underneath, where it shouldn't make much difference. 

There are several other options: pea gravel, and a general purpose gravel that is even cheaper but still heavy. Just thinking about my back and our budget, the thought of simply having 80-100 bags of red lava delivered rather appeals to me. If it turns out that isn't quite doing what we want, we can always add a layer of DG sometime in the future.

And I just now discovered I can first put down a heavy duty tarp for under $50. So maybe just 80 bags of lava rock? I just want to get past this so I can finish up the damn painting.

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