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Does this thing still work?
May. 22nd, 2011 04:48 pmI'm aching in bits I didn't realise I had.
I blame the flies.
We've been infested with fruitflies for days now, and part of one causal chain is that our compost bin (modo redux) was in the back yard just a couple of metres away from the French windows. Didn't matter much last year, as the French windows weren't, and the back door that isn't any more didn't get left open, but now the little fuckers swarmed outside and straight inside whenever the doors were opened.
Something had to be done, and logistically that could only be modo relocation to the back of the yard by the bike tent.
This position is right in front of the (ancient, disintegrating) back fence, and our back neighbour, who put up a nice new fence behind ours last year, is happy to share theirs with us; seemed sensible, then, to tear down that part at least of our old fence before shifting the compost. However, between the yard proper and the line of our old fence was a remnant of the old stepped border: whoever slabbed the yard, decades ago, didn't want to split slabs and filled in the gap round one side and the back with slabs embedded deep in the ground but standing maybe 15cm proud, with their outside gap filled with hardcore topped with concrete. Most of that's gone, opened up and filled with soil at the side, and opened right up by a slab width (the bordering slabs moved out) for ¾ of the back. That last job was done, poorly, by my tenant while we were down Brissle way, with the side border slabs extending into the new back bed, and the slabs closing the bed on the other side being too short.
So, my plan was to take up the redundant back slabs, concrete cap, and hardcore; reassign vertical slabbing so everything actually fits; use the remaining bits of vertical slab horizontally to fill in the gap opened between our yard and our neighbour's fence; and (finally) move the compost bin and its throbbing contents to their new location on the newly laid slabbing.
It's all done now, and I've used muscles in the process that haven't been fired up, probably, since I dug the pnod in our old back garden 6 or 7 years ago. Extracting concrete slabs embedded 20cm in the ground armed only with a crowbar and a trowel, and with no real possibility to dig down beside, took a deal of doing. A fair deal. Particularly the one with a BFO rose bush growing right over it.
Tearing down the remainder of the old fence can await another day.
I blame the flies.
We've been infested with fruitflies for days now, and part of one causal chain is that our compost bin (modo redux) was in the back yard just a couple of metres away from the French windows. Didn't matter much last year, as the French windows weren't, and the back door that isn't any more didn't get left open, but now the little fuckers swarmed outside and straight inside whenever the doors were opened.
Something had to be done, and logistically that could only be modo relocation to the back of the yard by the bike tent.
This position is right in front of the (ancient, disintegrating) back fence, and our back neighbour, who put up a nice new fence behind ours last year, is happy to share theirs with us; seemed sensible, then, to tear down that part at least of our old fence before shifting the compost. However, between the yard proper and the line of our old fence was a remnant of the old stepped border: whoever slabbed the yard, decades ago, didn't want to split slabs and filled in the gap round one side and the back with slabs embedded deep in the ground but standing maybe 15cm proud, with their outside gap filled with hardcore topped with concrete. Most of that's gone, opened up and filled with soil at the side, and opened right up by a slab width (the bordering slabs moved out) for ¾ of the back. That last job was done, poorly, by my tenant while we were down Brissle way, with the side border slabs extending into the new back bed, and the slabs closing the bed on the other side being too short.
So, my plan was to take up the redundant back slabs, concrete cap, and hardcore; reassign vertical slabbing so everything actually fits; use the remaining bits of vertical slab horizontally to fill in the gap opened between our yard and our neighbour's fence; and (finally) move the compost bin and its throbbing contents to their new location on the newly laid slabbing.
It's all done now, and I've used muscles in the process that haven't been fired up, probably, since I dug the pnod in our old back garden 6 or 7 years ago. Extracting concrete slabs embedded 20cm in the ground armed only with a crowbar and a trowel, and with no real possibility to dig down beside, took a deal of doing. A fair deal. Particularly the one with a BFO rose bush growing right over it.
Tearing down the remainder of the old fence can await another day.
