Chop Chop!

The gardening is going forward! This time, I spent two afternoons reducing huge piles of branches to neatly separated piles of twigs and woods, and the green part into the compost.

Nothing had been done on the trees for around 20 years. Or at least it seemed like that. Fortunately, there's Geovanny, the husband of a good friend of mine. He's an accountant by trade, but pivoted to gardening a long time ago - it's his passion. And he always gets me good deals. 45$ to trim all the trees in the garden? Count me in!

He had started without me, so I wasn't able to take before/after pictures. But I swear that it's night and day difference! The amount of light that comes into the garden now is amazing. I just have to solve the watering problem - the hose I bought was 5m too short. So I'll probably buy an extension, another 5-6m plus a little connector. Shouldn't be too hard...

Here you can see the compost when starting out. He had already thrown some stuff in there, without sorting, so I pulled it all out so I could snap away all the leaves and green twigs. It's an interesting kind of work. Very meditative I must say. But also hard on the hand - it's not an every day movement for me, using the rose scissors so relentlessly.

I found many curious thing among the twigs, everywhere. Like thousands of these little bugs on the Tocte tree. Tocte is a little like walnut. And it seems like these critters absolutely love that kind of tree.

This is the Tocte. It's so much lighter now, and no more branches hanging to the neighbor who didn't like it. Tocte is great for coloring, I think it was lilac. But it also stains a lot, and the neighbor doesn't have grass like us, but bricks on the ground. I understand his nonconformity.

I never new that peach trees have their flowers right at the stem. Just like Cacao-Trees. Another thing that I found quite interesting. I hope the tree will sprout nicely and give us a lot of peaches, soon!

It's the one on the right. That is almost completely cut. But I'm sure it will sprout new twigs in no time. Next to it is the Chihualcan, a cool fruit. It got trimmed quite a bit as well, as the branches were getting too heave when loaded with fruit, almost bending to the ground.

This is the pile of branches when i was done. They'll sit there and dry up for a while, then we'll use them for campfires or the wood stove. I used them to cover up some stuff that Danny swears he's going to sue some day, like that kitchen sink. He won't.

The first compost is full. I just need to throw on some dirt. I already put some into the other, so it has a counterweight and doesn't bend the "fence" too much. It will need water, and it's not raining these days. So the mentioned hose is up on the top of the to do list. For tomorrow.

That's it! I'm glad I'm making progress in the garden, on all fronts. It's going to be so beautiful, at least as beautiful as my home garden, once I get the soil quality up. The light shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Thank you for reading and have a great day!