Fill Dirt Wanted But Just a Little Bit...

A few months before my mom passed she was still pretty spry. She could hardly see and had recently had a surgery but with the aid of a cane she walked around the yard and I shot two short videos of her pointing out various plants that grew in her yard, what they were, who gave them to her and where they came from. Back in the old days plants in your yard were not bought at the store. You took a cutting from a plant your friend had, put it in a pot and nursed it along till it had roots good enough to be transplanted into the yard and survive. It's kind of something people did before cell phones. I later tried to make some more oral history recordings with my mom but I guess nothing interested her like the plants because she dismissed it as unimportant. 

I can recall where many of the plants in my yard came from also. There's the ones my mom gave me, a tree here and there that was a prize for taking a used up Christmas tree to the recycle, the two oaks Darwin brought from Austin, the rain lilies from Cathy's old Houston house grown by her mom, some I dug at the lake or in the woods and more. I don't remember when this oak tree that disrupted my water pipe from the meter to the house came from. It has not always been here. It grew on my watch of this property. I don't know if I should blame the tree or the long forgotten workman that ran the pipe away from the house instead of using a direct path and then angled back in an unexpected way and when the tree came along it embroiled the pipe in it's roots.     

I had the plumbers out for a little repair of the aerobic septic system which took all of 15 minutes to complete. I had already noticed this leak before their arrival and began digging but like I say, things with the water pipe were not as expected. The tree roots were just too big and too many and the pipe path too screwy so after a lot of digging and root cutting this over the ground path is what we settled on. I was warned that a reroute would be expensive. I asked will this be ok as a permanent solution? As long as it does not freeze. 

I figure I have at least 5 months to prepare against that possibility. I'm looking for fill dirt. 

This tree makes one end of a flower bed that in spring grows wild onions I sometimes cook with, blubs, an azalea and a gardenia that a home health patient gave me. A tallow tree that was a volunteer grows on the other end and there is a holly tree growing out a crack in the roots of it that can't be separated but tallows usually don't live so long and maybe I can wait it out to enjoy the holly. There are no other ones around here. 

Before all these trees were here and this was a pretty sunny area I planted tomatoes in a raised bed along here. Best ones I ever grew. I remember it was the year the Chernobyl reactor in Russia blew. Big old red tomatoes that makes me wonder if the radiation had anything to do with it. I don't use that spot anymore because it's too shady and I like me some shade. My tomatoes have been fair this year. I have some big bushy plants with lots of blooms but not much fruit. Maybe they can hang on till the next blast which also might help the pipe to not freeze.