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The last planter is going to kill me, I think. This is the hill on which hope dies.
I finally got it completely de-planted and de-trashed yesterday, and this morning I discovered that it had been just randomly built on top of an existing tree ring made out of concrete quarter-circles that they half-excavated, gave up on, and then just kind of... left. These types of tree rings actually have an appropriate size that they're meant to be used for--the edge angles are unforgiving, and they don't form a circle if you use too many or too few. So the pre-existing planter's gaps had just been filled in with random bricks and masonry, and I really don't know what they were thinking.
Everything had to come out, though. I tore it all down, tried to level the dirt a bit, and started over. Where I landed meant doing something about this oak sapling stump that's been trying to resurrect itself for ten years like some sort of weird necromantic dryad. Digging it out actually didn't take that long? And was immensely satisfying. With nothing else in the way I could just dig, lever, dig, lever, etc. until all the smaller roots had been severed and the bigger roots had been pried up, and viola, no more oak tree! The new shovel I bought when I started putting in the pitchapple and cocoplum and silver buttonwood is probably the most effective $35 I've spent in the past year.
The reassembled tree ring is significantly smaller than the pre-existing planter was, but I managed to budge it around so it's more or less in line with the planters I put in last week. I had another set of the concrete tree ring quarters after breaking down a grapefruit tree that was dying when I moved in and finally gave up the ghost a year or so later, plus all the random brickwork from the old planter, and I've managed a smaller-but-deeper structure that can still work for what I wanted. I'd really prefer not half-assing it now, but I'm at a level of done that doesn't support more random trips to Home Depot, and it's good enough for now. I don't know if it will work for anything else, but hope springs eternal.
But I'm still recovering from the cold I came down with a few days after Christmas, and while my strength is more or less back, my stamina is still in the toilet, which means I want to hop in a time machine and go yell at whoever half-assed this in the first place. Ugh.
At least the musical note clerodendrums are blooming! They're definitely as advertised, and also A+ would purchase again little plants!
I finally got it completely de-planted and de-trashed yesterday, and this morning I discovered that it had been just randomly built on top of an existing tree ring made out of concrete quarter-circles that they half-excavated, gave up on, and then just kind of... left. These types of tree rings actually have an appropriate size that they're meant to be used for--the edge angles are unforgiving, and they don't form a circle if you use too many or too few. So the pre-existing planter's gaps had just been filled in with random bricks and masonry, and I really don't know what they were thinking.
Everything had to come out, though. I tore it all down, tried to level the dirt a bit, and started over. Where I landed meant doing something about this oak sapling stump that's been trying to resurrect itself for ten years like some sort of weird necromantic dryad. Digging it out actually didn't take that long? And was immensely satisfying. With nothing else in the way I could just dig, lever, dig, lever, etc. until all the smaller roots had been severed and the bigger roots had been pried up, and viola, no more oak tree! The new shovel I bought when I started putting in the pitchapple and cocoplum and silver buttonwood is probably the most effective $35 I've spent in the past year.
The reassembled tree ring is significantly smaller than the pre-existing planter was, but I managed to budge it around so it's more or less in line with the planters I put in last week. I had another set of the concrete tree ring quarters after breaking down a grapefruit tree that was dying when I moved in and finally gave up the ghost a year or so later, plus all the random brickwork from the old planter, and I've managed a smaller-but-deeper structure that can still work for what I wanted. I'd really prefer not half-assing it now, but I'm at a level of done that doesn't support more random trips to Home Depot, and it's good enough for now. I don't know if it will work for anything else, but hope springs eternal.
But I'm still recovering from the cold I came down with a few days after Christmas, and while my strength is more or less back, my stamina is still in the toilet, which means I want to hop in a time machine and go yell at whoever half-assed this in the first place. Ugh.
At least the musical note clerodendrums are blooming! They're definitely as advertised, and also A+ would purchase again little plants!
