Chop

Just the one chop, not chop chop. It seems I am getting better at sitting still, a foreshadowing of my decrepitude I am afraid. I've been doing a bit of chop and drop in a most relaxed manner compared to my more normal manic assault.

I started with the slope planted in vinca yesterday. Today I chopped a couple other small areas. I say one chop, but I did spend four hours out there chopping and toting a few more buckets of rocks to the heiau.

My poor baby dwarf White Pine. Cost like fifty bucks I think. I planted it and forgot about it. The Deer-Tongue Grass, Dichanthelium clandestinum, that I hate proceeded to cover it and shade it out. By the time the drought arrived and I remembered it thinking it might want a drink of water, the grass had shaded it out and killed half of it.

White Pine is also susceptible to a white scale and they are on it now. It has some recovering to do. I hope it survives and grows out of its traumatic first year in the garden.

The baby Witch Hazels are not as tall as the Goldenrod yet. I have done a better job of giving them elbow room during the time of vegetation. Sunlight is a critical must for anything to do well in the wild cultivated gardens.

I chopped at the top of the driveway since there are crocus in there. The way this not winter is going, the crocus could begin to arrive at any time. This particular phase of the garden year has a very Western feel to it, like it doesn't even belong on top of a mountain in North Carolina. So be it.

There is nothing static about this garden. It changes completely from the time of vegetation to the barren time. My goal as the gardener was for the barren time not to be completely empty.

A few more rocks on the heiau. I'm getting it above the leaf litter. It is a little easier to see. I should probably blow the leaves off every year. Given the chance, nature will cover right over it in the blink of an eye.

I have this feeling the heiau is going to be a decade long project. The loose rocks are so far away now. I don't have the time or the energy for maniacal rock fetching. It can only rise slowly one bucket at a time.

Unless.......Somehow I need to encourage people to bring me rocks.