Dude, who even knows.
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When I talk about “yards” of topsoil that is a cubic yard, about half a ton.
Okay, put out three more yards and drank a gallon of milk about it. Minimum of 15 left.
Okay, three more yards today. I’ve totally got the best pitching motion now, I stand beside the bed facing towards the center of the hood, and with my outside arm on the handle and inside arm choked by the head i canoe-paddle through the topsoil, tossing it behind.
Helped the fencing crew (a brother + sister team) and put 3 yards of topsoil down behind the retaining dam of Strawberry Ridge today.
Alright, drawing on further experience how and where to unload I managed to spread out a yard and a half of topsoil today and don’t feel half wiped. Key is figuring how to use torso twisting. To build up specific areas along the fence I’ve had an interim “transfer to garden cart” step, with this done and spillage along the way building up Strawberry Ridge I’ll be able to back up and just pitch it directly out of the bed to where it’s going (and then next load back up onto that and compress it with Darwin’s weight).
Could get up to 6 yards a day that way, which is nice because it’s been somewhere between 3.5 and 5 yards since I said there were a minimum of 6 left and there are now a minimum of 10 left.
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Now that they’re all fully trimmed and growth won’t make problems worse, and I added good piles of mulch around the bases (with a layer of bark nuggets on top that will over years decay into the base for more bark nuggets), seeing huge returns on watering trees in terms of summer growth, though I’m sure the relatively cool and moist year helps.
Makes some bushes I’d been trying to trim tight real leggy, though, so hold off on that.
Okay, distributed another yard of topsoil, focusing on by where the fence is getting replaced on Wednesday, then took the mattock and got the rest of the lower backyard bamboo from the Yard Task Updates. Not in pain or sore anymore, but God I’m wiped.
Okay, today I relied more heavily on my left hand to push the short pitching shovel from choked up by the head while the right pulled from the handle (& vice versa), that avoided aggravating my recent issues and even if it started to aggravate the left shoulder it was in an at-the-time dull “hey, that’s enough” way that then faded with rest rather than fire two hours after for days.
Got a yard since last time when I said as few as 6 left and yeah, as few as 5 left now. At least before leaving it to settle & be rained on for a season, after which it’ll need at least 2.5 more.
Between the better motion and experience on where to unload and how to shift the load around as the bed empties, much faster today, but one yard + var. sidequests still took up a full day of work (and further efficiency will likely keep pace with earlier sunsets), so I’ll probably only get 1.5s on Saturdays when I won’t be active before the yard closes noon Sunday.
Looking good!
Okay got a new yard of topsoil and did some very minor distribution and leveling of yesterday’s, in looking for something strenuous to do that wouldn’t aggravate the stitch in my back I used the new mattock to take out maybe 20% of the remaining lower backyard bamboo.
That exhausted me, but in how well my core was holding up even exhausted AND favoring the back I’m appreciating how fucking strong it’s getting, curious what it’s gonna look like when the rest of the fat melts off over the next year. “Oh I’m suddenly getting thin for no reason” was already so dumb you could only just “sure~”, so “and I’m actually gonna be kinda ripped” is just more of the same.
Gotta plan some stuff for the fence to tell the contractor by tomorrow. I was gonna get one gate with over-height posts so that when I tile the roof in Japanese style of authenticity to be determined I could use some tiles and set up a small matching gate roof, but I’m realizing I have to make decisions about specific height and crossbar now. My mind’s still recovering in terms of how many factors I can account for how many steps ahead in a way that makes planning hard, so I’m gonna have to take some graph paper and draw things in a way that concretizes them tonight.
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Alright, last few days as the anxiety disappeared actually very productive in terms of small projects; I could do things “right in front of me” and the next one from there in a way that actually admitted a good deal of mental work in conceiving of a possible next project, so if there was like anything I had put any thought to in the area…
So the bedroom and sitting part of the front room are much more pleasantly cleaned, the garage is now lined up for final go-through, the kitchen is like one activity station away from being tidied, I’m back to excavating the ramp from upper to lower backyard so I don’t have to clamber or walk barrows around, Im in the process of pipe-strapping a flagpole mount outside my front door and swapping in a new fan switch unit with a replacement pull-chain, some other stuff too.
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