Hugelkultur

In late October we got our first snowfall. Little did I know that would spark a winter of dreaded illness in many ways for me and my house. I think the key was that we got sick initially, and this compromised our immunity for the rest of the winter. On average me or the little brownbear were sick every 2 weeks since October.

That first snowfall my parents were in town. My mom and I went to buy some marked-down shrubs and tulips which I dug through the snow to plant the following week. Great.

My father helped me to prune the neglected apple tree. It seemed to result in pruning almost the whole thing. Looking at my yard on the left it seems like we have a lot of open space. In fact it looks more like the picture on the right.

See all the wires? The one from our house to our garage (the garage is to the left of the car) is actually almost reachable by a tall person. The electrician said we could "hang from it" if we wanted meaning it isn't dangerous to touch. But you see how difficult it is to have an apple tree or anything in the yard? Pergolas, even a deck, is too close to the wires.

So the answer is complicated. We are going to put an addition on the house where the existing little ramshackle patio is in the picture to the left of the apple tree. It will give us a second bath since our basement bath is truly inaccessible for those with legs and a head. It will maybe give us a bigger eating area which means our official dining room can remain extra space for brownbear to have his toys. It may also provide a laundry area that isn't in the aforementioned basement and in a perfect world, a bit of a mudroom that will really be just a bench and closet. But that's pushing it.


After pruning the apple tree to almost nothing by making sure most of the branches dangerously close to electrical were taken care of (ALL THE BRANCHES) we had a ton of branches on the snowy ground. My dad thought I was a little nuts to be freezing my hands sawing all the branches into neat little uniform pieces. And then told me matter-of-factly "not my problem" when I explained that I essentially had a yard full of demo-ed tree. So I figured out that you can pile up branches and leave them to rot. Of course you can, duh. It's just a bit ugly and time-consuming if you're in a small area and want things to happen quicker. So I found out that hugelkultur exists where you can dig the pile into the ground and plant on it.

That was the point. To tell you what Hugelkultur was. And now you know a bunch of other random stuff too.