…oh my aching back, knees, arms…

Did a ton of the work on the hugelkultur bed – luckily for me, there are well-rotted trees in our patch of untended forest at the end of the yard, because otherwise I’d think we have too much green wood for this to work very well.

At any rate, I’ve stripped off the sod from the 10′ × 12′ area of the bed, taken off the top layer of topsoil (it all degrades down to clay/sand below that), and started laying in the woodpile.
At the bottom is the freshest green wood – all casualties of the autumn storm that did so much damage. The upper layer is rotten logs that were lying in the forest area for several years – I’ll also be adding the rotting cherry logs that were once circling the pond area.
Next week, the inverted sod goes back on, and I’ll top it off with several inches of forest topsoil – it’s as black as chocolate brownies, and gorgeous.

But for now, I’m just a pile of pulled muscles and sunburn. Weird to feel so happy, but I suppose that’s just gardening. :-)

Here’s a very good link explaining hugelkultur & how it works: I prefer not to offer my own interpretation of it, since I’m a completely-raw newbie & would probably cause confusion. Richsoil.org – Hugelkultur

And another link, from the guy who started it all (Sepp Holzer):
http://www.krameterhof.at/pdf/presse/permaculture-pm68.pdf