Back in the summer of 1979 our eldest daughter, Trum, announced she wanted to be married in the garden the following June. Thank heavens she gave us a year to get ready! We'd just had a bulldozer scrape two feet of soil off the backyard in order to replace the sills of the house, buried underground and rotting. It looked like we'd torn up a city street - pipes to the oil tank and the gas tank, electric lines and water lines to the barn and the shed, all exposed.
Once we'd buried them deeper and seeded the lawn, we were left with a raw edge around the perimeter that varied from two feet to about five where the land rose up toward the barns. Our solution was to build a retaining wall of railroad ties. We got permission to take the ties that had been replaced on the track in town. They'd been rolled down into a swamp, but somehow we (even Trum's future spouse got into the act) muscled them up to the track, loaded them onto a railroad dolly, trundled them up to the road and the truck. These ties were the real thing, not the weak little substitutes sold in nurseries. The one we put on the grain scale weighted 210 pounds!
Everything looked great for the wedding, but twenty years later the retaining wall began to lean precariously. Hank had constructed it with "dead men," ties that went straight back into the bank, but by 2000 the dead men were rotting. Last year it was obvious the wall would probably give up completely by summer's end, so we called a few stone masons and got estimates on a stone wall to replace it.
Ouch! What a lot of money! But look at the picture - it was worth it. John Bascetta built the wall, a very talented guy who brought his own stones. Before we went to Italy, however, Hank took the tractor out to the back pastures, dragging home a bunch of real donics on the stone boat for the foundation, plus a few really flat ones for the wall itself. Then he ripped out the old wall tie by tie. Sad to say, hardly any of them were worth salvaging for other projects.
My job was a lot harder than Hank's. All he had to do was manipulate the tractor and its bucket. I had to face the bank behind the wall. When we built the first wall I planted myrtle on the bank, not a bright choice as that sunny slope preferred to grow grass rather than shade-loving myrtle. Soon we had far more grass than myrtle, so even though we could ill-afford them, we bought two rhododendrons to plant on the bank in hopes of shading out the grass.
Meanwhile, the acebia vine growing on the barn at the top of the bank was busy sneaking its long tendrils down beneath the myrtle, and the ivy growing under the apple tree beside the barn was doing the same. Every summer I'd look at this conglomeration of ground covers and know the day would come when I'd have to do something about it. The day came when John started building the wall.
After much thought I decided I would get rid of every single invader - ivy, acebia, myrtle and grass - plant a few more rhododendrons and mulch the entire bank. If you'll recall, in my last column I said I loved weeding, but this project could hardly be considered weeding. Over the years the invading army of ivy and acebia had infiltrated the area to such a degree that they'd not only conquered the myrtle, they were assaulting the rhododendrons. The ivy roots were bigger around then my thumb and were on their way to China. I'd killed the acebia vine several years ago, but all too many tendrils had escaped my poison and their roots were headed for Timbuktu.
Fortunately Trum was here at the time or I might have never tackled this project. Trum has inherited the weed gene. She loves to weed. In fact, now that I think of it, she probably got a double dose, as her paternal grandmother Mosie loved to weed as well. Together we attacked the bank. Every day we dug and pulled, ripped and snipped, filling the garden cart with vines and roots a half-dozen times. When Trum left three days later, however, we'd hardly made a dent.
That was early June. With the help of two grandsons, I kept at it, and this past week I was ready to lay a weed barrier cloth on the area in preparation for the mulch. I bought four baby rhododendrons and planted them. As you can see from the photo, there's still lots to do besides laying mulch. The big pile of dirt Hank removed for the wall's foundation must be taken away and both that lawn and the one below the wall need to be repaired, but I couldn't resist writing about this not-quite-finished project.
