Filling Up Time While Waiting On Spring

 

We continue to get warm spring days in the middle of February which leaves me a bit confused as to what to do. I don't want to start a huge outside project with snow and cold still very much possible. Starting an inside project with spring possibly around the corner doesn't make a lot of sense either. So I cast my eyes around and decided to tackle this corner of our property beneath the deck out back.

Long term I want to remove the concrete and the deck above and pour a larger patio with a somewhat enclosed 3 season room above. But that is probably still a ways off. Until then though, I would like to neaten this area up. 

The hose real and hoses are from the farm. I would like to replace the always flat rubber tires on it with solid rubber tires and then use that for our garden since the only spigot I have outside is on the far side of the house as the garden. Behind that is a temporary cabinet I built to hold our gas cooktop while we were remodeling the kitchen 5 years ago. I wanted to get rid of it as soon as the new kitchen was functioning but my mother-in-law drug it out back to use and it is about rotted apart. I will call our waste management company next week, haul it to the curb and be gone with it before she returns later this spring. Behind that covered in a black tarp, the neat one on the right, is my tiller, waiting to be used soon. On the left side of this photo is an old planter box we attempted to grow things in. It didn't work well since it was in the shady for 9 months of the year. I'm going to empty out the soil and salvage/dispose of the wood. 

Behind that is really the object I want to tackle first though. When we first bought this property, my brother and I cut down around a dozen trees and turned them into firewood for our fireplace steps behind me when I took this picture. Back then it filled up that entire bay, concrete to deck joists. What is left is under the sad remains of the tarp I bought new way back then but it more like a lace doily these days. The tarp doesn't keep the wood dry anymore and I no longer wish to keep that much piled up against my house and underneath my deck.

So I am going to build a firewood rack to keep it dry that will sit up against the house where the hose reel and the the former gas cooktop cabinet are sitting. I have plenty of wood that I can cut up to fill it up and I'm sizing it to hold about two or three years worth of wood instead of the 11+ years we did the first time. 

Just a note for the curious about the wood planter in the far background with the white glass enclosed box with a flower in it in the far background near the stairs from the deck. That is my mother-in-law's prayer garden that she keeps up. When she is here, the flower is replaced by a status of Mary in that white glass enclosed box that I built for her to keep it dry. Since it isn't actually underneath the deck and gets enough moisture and sunlight and fills up and weird corner between the retaining wall and the patio, it will stay for now.

Perhaps by the time I get all this stuff fixed up, spring will be here and we can start in on the new garden which I'm sure will keep up busy this spring.