So here's a pile of 26 bales stuffed into a 45 degree corner. It's brome grass, by the way. I've never used brome before and when the trailor drove up I thought, uht-oh, they brought straw. It is very course grass. No progress on a cover for it, but the rain predicted for overnight did not occur.

I used one of those on an isolated vegetable bed three times. I just cut the cover into thirds and it was the perfect size to use one piece per year, however, it was a mess by the end of each growing season. It deteriorated into small shreds. It was not much different than those blue tarps that people use for temporary cover of a leaky roof.

It already has rained on the hay four times and it is deteriorating fast. It is brome, which I've never used before. Coarse as it is, I thought it might stand up to weather about like straw, but it is already clumping together and giving off clouds of spores when I try to spread it. My husband went ahead and bought one of those cheap tarps, grey rather than blue and yesterday we put it on the pile I want to save. However, seeing how fast it is rotting, there is no way it will last a couple of years. In fact, I think in the spots where I'm spreading it, I'll need to reapply more before the end of the growing season.

Here are some bales laid out for the fruit tree planting grid. I spread one bale per planting spot so that the critters of the soil will beginto go to work on the hay and soften and enrich the soil. As we can, we will also bring buckets of chipped wood, some of it partly composted, from a nearby city compost facility. Wood mulches are supposed to introduce fungi that tree roots benefit from. Our "trees" are currently a bowl of peach, nectarine and plum pits that we just finished eating or dehydrating.