Burn Pile Gone!

There is a square at the back of my property that has been an eyesore since I moved in. There had been a shed there once, and the ground was dead. It was framed with some old, rotted wood, and the packed dirt in the middle was in need of something to occupy the space. I intended to seed it and make it grass, but it was a depressed area and needed dirt to raise it first. I just never got around to it.

It's quite amazing what happens in nature if you don't do something.

My ex had been using the area as a "burn pile", where he stacked all the branches and trunks of trees he cut down, including a sumac and two mulberries. The haphazard pile of tree debris prevented me from filling it and grassing it in, and odd things started growing there between the dead branches, some of which grew over my head last summer. There were two trees growing up through the debris last year, and this year they were so tall, they were above the power lines. I knew they had to come down.

An image of the pile last summer.

This is a mulberry that just appeared last year, with five big, thick branches coming up from the dirt, right against the neighbor's dilapidated fence. There's a part of the fence being held up by the mulberry in this picture. I hated that tree. This spring I decided to get rid of it and take it back before things started growing again. I had no idea what an undertaking that would prove to be.

It took weeks to clear the dead stuff away, which filled four of the large, 30-gallon lawn waste bags. 

It was particularly difficult as I had only a jigsaw as a power tool, and a hand saw. As I dragged branches and trunks across the lawn to break them down into smaller pieces, I discovered a pile in the back.

You can imagine my fury when I got to the back and found a pile of furniture, furniture I recognized as junk pieces my ex had in his apartment before he moved in with me. This is where he chose to dispose of unwanted furniture, a pile he always said we should start burning in a fire pit. When I reminded him we did not have a fire pit and there was a no-burning law in our town, he said we'd put it in the grill instead of coals. Nope, not acceptable, I'm not cooking food over mystery wood that could be full of chemicals or bugs or all kinds of things I didn't want in my food. Little did I know, the pile of things to burn grew, as I continued insisting we will not burn any of it.

So, there it was.  His junk.

When I looked closely, I realized it was a dining table (legs removed), a complete headboard and footboard, and a cheap computer desk made of composite wood and veneer. Was he really going to burn this? The dining room table was half metal!

Each week I filled my garbage bin with pieces. Thankfully it's just me in the house and I may generate one kitchen bag of garbage a week, leaving the remaining bin for anything else. I filled that bin to overflowing for a full month.

Yesterday I got started cutting down the two trees in the hole, and the mulberry a few feet away. All I had was a jigsaw, which I used to cut off all the smaller branches from the main ones, and then sawed the main trunks in segments with a bow saw until I got to the base. My arms were screaming. I wasn't sure I could do anything else, but I soldiered on.

Once the junk and trees were gone, I got to work on the hole. First I put down the plastic weed barrier, then a layer of newspaper on top, just in case, and finally dirt. It took more bags of dirt than I could count. I started with 7, found 4 more elsewhere, bought 10 more, and before I knew it I'd put 840 pounds of dirt in there and it wasn't enough. I just kept adding, returning to Home Depot over and over, sure I had enough and finding out I hadn't. Finally it was full, so I planted the tiny little white hydrangea in the middle of it. I grew up with a snowball bush in my yard, always loving the spherical blooms of white each spring, until my mom decided to trim it back, way back, and it never grew again. Now I have my own snowball bush.

By then I was so physically exhausted I dragged my arms and feet into the house and stood in the shower until I felt like I might be clean again.

Today, clean and invigorated, I walked back to see my little snowball bush, looking good, and the clear back yard I hadn't seen since moving in. What a relief! Now, if my neighbors replace that ugly fence, I'll be much happier again.

Now I have a stack of branches and trunks to get rid of.