Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 4 - Pathway

The five (give or take) stages of making path at Ajishima Park: 1) cut up the sod with my new favorite tool "the mattock!" 2) and then dig up the dirt and move it elsewhere, 3) then bring stone and sand from elsewhere to the path and compact it, 4) then cover it with cardboard, 5) then line it with logs and fill it with wood chips!

Things progressed quickly once I reached a spot where the old path was.

I could skip the back breaking steps 1-3 and go right to the fun stuff, 4-5...

Sod transplant in the foreground and also to the left of the outside curve of the path...

I had been planning this whole process for quite some time. I even thought of the best place to make the wood chips. The center of everything made sense for the chip pile as it would be the most centrally located spot for loading up wheelbarrel-fulls and delivering them to the path. Also, as the chips sit there in a heap, they will start to compost and that will make for an even livelier material to add to the path, as all the little bugs and such will continue to munch on the chips and poop out fertilizer for all the plants and trees to be put in around the path. From this pileof wood chips, nutrients will also leach into the ground below, which will be come the central point of the food forest / forest garden of the park. So the longer it takes me to finish the path, the more the chips decompose and the better the fertilizer they become for the path and the central forest bed. Talk about 'small and slow solutions!'

The cut up sod is great to cover up and fill in the old path (once the stone and sand are removed), and with little more effort than dropping it into place it will repopulate that barren area with lots of luscious green herbage. My new favorite word in Japanese is "shiba fu" (芝生) which means: lawn, turf, sod. It's fun to say even more fun to cut up with my mattock. Shiba-fu. Shiba-fu to you too!