i was not wrong about the end of the pathway being a real booger.
but first today i went out and took the loppers and a cultivator with me to see if i could get the chunk of dead tree leaning against the maple tree to finish coming down. nope. it's wedged by the stump it came from and also gravity so i need a bigger lever to move it and i have to see if i have a t-post somewhere i can use. gotta be careful, don't want to get smooshed.
then i went back to where the bee hives normally are sitting but they are not there yet. i had the loppers so i could cut back some things that were growing across the gap in the trees we would use if we could drive back there with anything. there's another dead tree that fell across the road. and two others that fell sort of in the road, but i was able to get most of those two off the road. and then i finished lopping off what i wanted to get done. last time i was back there i noticed the dirt was piled up and grown over where others had dug it out to give them better drainage. i wish people would have actually said something to me more as i'd have mentioned that yes, we do need to drive through there at times to do maintenance... i haven't heard from the bee keeper or his guy.
and then i came back to the house and used the cultivator to pull plastic trash out of the ditch.
then i went back to work on the pathway out back and all the quackgrass but i also took some stinky joooce with me so i could put it down the groundhog hole and then i filled that in and packed the dirt down and then i put all sorts of rocks, sticks, stakes, poles, and anything else i could find to make it tougher for them to start up again. i also used some of the stinky joooce to scatter around so if the groundhog comes back it won't smell very nice for a while back there.
the good part is that the groundhog did not come in under the fence but the burrow it was starting was angled off to the side.
then i went back to work on what i really should have been out there to do to begin with which is dealing with the quackgrass and that end of the pathway. the grass was growing about 12 feet along the edge and under the various layers of black plastic and weed barrier we have under the gravel. which meant i had to move more gravel to get at more of the roots, but i'm sure i didn't get them all. i just hope i got enough of them so that they don't have an easy time of growing further. without any green parts showing those roots can't live that long under there... i hope...
any chunks of roots i could find plus more chunks from the garden end i'm clearing (again!) back there i would take and hold over the fence and let them drop down to where i'd put down the stinky stuff and all the other debris, and barriers to perhaps get something growing there again. and then towards the end i dropped some bigger clumps with more dirt on them to give at least some of those roots a chance to survive. rain in the forecast for tonight i think so something is likely to survive and grow. i probably will have to get back there and pile some big rocks in that area though... this is probably about the sixth time we've had groundhogs want to put a den there...
