This is a tutorial; a ‘how-to’ if you will (or even if you won’t, it’s still a how-to). The subject is something I have just been learing about: Landscaping.

First you’ll need tools. Start with a regular shovel, a hand-shovel, a snow shovel, a broom, a tarp, a rake, and a leatherman (one with pruning shears, a knife, a saw, a shovel, some kind of pokey thing, scissors and a rake. Yes, I said a rake).

The following are directions for planting small trees in an existing rock bed:

1. Move rocks so that you have a hole all the way down to the plastic that’s approximately 20 inches in diameter
2. Pick up all the stray rocks that have rolled into your hole
3. Pick up the rocks that rolled into the hole while you were picking those up
4. Pick up the new rocks that rolled into the hole
5. Pick up a couple more rocks (that rolled into the hole)
6. Step out of the hole
7. Pick up the rocks that fell in the hole as a result of you stepping out
8. Cut the plastic away from the hole so you can dig deeper
9. Pick up the rocks that fell into the hole
10. Spread the tarp out nearby to put the dirt on to so you can transport it to another location
11. Begin digging, using the following steps:
    1. Get a shovel ful of dirt
    2. Put the dirt on the tarp
    3. Remove the rocks that fel in the hole
    4. Repeat steps 1-3 (taking breaks to haul the dirt away before it gets too heavy) until the hole is a few inches deeper than the pot the tree is in
12. Dump in ‘good dirt’ (apparently normal dirt isn’t good enough), until the hole is about 4 inches shallower than the pot the tree is in
13. Grab a few of the rocks that fell in
14. Remove the tree (and the dirt connected to it) from the pot
15. “Tickle the roots” (Don’t ask)
16. Place the tree in the hole, making sure that the ‘good’ side is facing the right direction
17. Ignore the rocks that fell in, reasoning that they’re going to get buried anyways
18. Begin filling the rest of the hole with good dirt
19. Realize that once some good dirt is spilled on the rocks, there is no cleaning it up
20. Try being more careful
21. Fail
22. Finish building up the good dirt so that there’s a 4 inch tall hump of dirt built up to the trunk of the tree
23. Push the rocks back in a little, so the hump of new dirt looks like it’s supposed to be there
24. Remove the rocks that went too far
25. Repeat the whole process 5 more times
26. Take a short shower and head to the hot tub to relax

After step 26 there, you start to not hate landscaping as much… breifly. You know, used to wish I could have a yard that looks like the one I’m working on, but today… I got over it.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Babblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.