Gone! Gitti!

Actually, it should have been gone a long time ago. Y'all remember the lovely storage shed at the end of the garden. It was truly a hideous piece of work, and I longed to have it gone, but I figured I ought to at least become a bit better acquainted with the landlord before I went demolishing buildings. Later on I got his permission and started the job, but the contents of the shed made it at least a two or even three-man job. Large hunks of heavy rusted obsolete metal machinery, boxes of ceramic tiles and the worst - several lengths of very heavy multi-ply well hose (i.e. for pumping water up out of wells). Cracked and half rotten but very very heavy and unwieldy. And of course, many humongous gray European house spiders. If you're squeamish, you might just leave that link untouched. My arachnophobia has waned considerably in recent years but these things still give me a slight case of the willies, probably due to the really filthy places they inhabit. The weather turned bad and it sat through much of the winter. The post "Going Going..." below shows the intermediate stage.

I got the metal taken away by the local hurdacı (the guy who collects scrap metal). I have two temporary housemates and decided I should take advantage of their presence to get the hose out of there. Luckily they got into it, and after we got it emptied (which still took nearly 2 hours), they wanted to go ahead and take it all down. Yay! Since it seemed that the heavy 4x6 inch supports were attched to the rock wall in the back, we went ahead and started taking off the remaining siding, all good resinous pine which makes very good kindling for a wood stove! But when the last of the siding came off, it became clear that not only were the supports not attached to the wall, they weren't even really attached to the ground, and the whole thing began leaning. My main concern was that if it fell outward it could damage the railing, and if it fell forward, it would snap the peach tree and possibly the pomegranate tree on the right. Just as I said "let's think about how to deal with this safely," it became apparent that it was not going to wait. I yelled "get back" but my housemate, who was standing right behind me, either didn't hear or didn't understand, so I just pushed him back and managed to escape the collapsing building with little more than a bruise on my shoulder. It was a damn good thing I wasn't still inside. What it did was fall in a twisted way, missing the pomegranate and bending the peach without breaking it, though it got a couple scrapes on its bark.

So we started ripping it apart, and just as we were pulling off the roof, the hurdacı happened back by like a hızır, the Islamic more-or-less equivalent of a deus ex machina. He was happy to take the sheeting off our hands. With me ripping and Omid and Mehdi working like a bucket brigade either stacking or storing the wood, it didn't take long. Here's the new view of the garden. It would be even better if the huge hideous apartment building next door were gone...but I'm not quite up to tackling that one.

The space is interesting, there is some of the natural rock of the hillside still there. I'll have to get all the built-up dirt off it before I can see just what I have, but it seems a good candidate for a small water feature, perhaps a small raised pool with water cascading over the rock. Here are a couple pictures of the area after I pruned the extraneous whips off the wisteria. It had really gone to town here, and I'm still taking up the thick runners that were the source of the whips that had invaded the entire garden before I arrived. There's a great multi-branched knot of flowring growth just above the corner though; that will definitely stay! There was an unexpected fringe benefit: The leaves falling from the wisteria over God-knows-how-many years had built up on the roof and slipped behind and into the shed; and become a bounty of wonderful leaf mold. I've piled up a good 3 bushels worth, and there are undoubtedly one or two more to follow. Just the thing the soil in this garden needs the most! Now to find something to do with the big hunks of marble...

I decided a good meal was in order so we headed to Çengelköy for a fish dinner. Here are my two willing helpers, without whom there would still be half of an ugly shed in my garden!

Upcoming posts: Snails and Slugs; and Turkey's Iris Dilemma.

Özetleyim...

Korkunç depo nihayet tarihe kavuştu! Gerçi daha önce de olmalıydı fakat içindeki çok ağır kuyu hortumları ile hurdadan dolayı tek başıma yapamıyordum. Hurdayı hurdacılara götürttüm, fakat bahçeme hortumcular sokmam...:) Ev arkadaşım askerdeyken iki İranlı arkadaş evde kalıyor, ve gençliklerinden faydalandım. Hortumlar çürük ve çatlamış olduğu halde yine çok ağırdı. Onlardan başka ambalajı çürümüş olan binlerce fayans vardı, bir eski tuvalet, paslı kutularda çoktan sertleşmiş boya ve (neden?) bir koli çürüyen ingilizce kitapları vardı. Hem de bol bol kocaman gri örümcek. Araknofobim son yıllarda epeyce dinmiş, ne var ki "Avrupa ev örümceği" olarak bildiğim bu iri yaratıklar hala beni biraz tiksindiriyor, belki de hep en kirli yerlerin sakinleri olduğundan. (Kolayca tiksinirseniz o linke tıklamazsanız iyi olur.) Neyse, herşeyi götürmemiz yaklaşık 2 saat sürdü, hala bol enerjimiz olduğu için yıkıma devam etmeye karar verdik. Suntalarını söktükten sonra başka herhangi bir desteği olmadığını gördük, tehlike bir şekilde eğilmeye başlamıştıı. "Bunu halletmek için güvenli bir yol bulalım" diye düşünürken, düşünmemi belkemeyeceği belli oldu. Direk arkamda duran arkadaşa "çekil!" diye bağırdım fakat ya anlamamış ya da duymamış, o yüzden onu da geri iterek kaçtım, sadece bir omuzuma hafif vurdu. İçerde olsaydım çok daha kötü olacaktı kuşkusuz. Yine de en ideal şekilde düştü, ne korkuluğa ne de nar ağacına herhangi bir zarar gelmedi.

Hemen parçalamaya başladık, tam çatısını sökerken, mahallemizin hurdacısı hızır gibi rastgeldi. Üçümüz çalışırken iş fazla sürmedi. Alan ilginç, doğal kaya var köşede. Hala yapılacak çok temizleme kaldı. Ben yeni gelince bütün bahçeye işgal etmiş olan mor salkımın merkezi burasıymış, ana dalını bıraktım, yere süren kalın fidelerini söküyorum. Beklenmeyen bir hazine de bulduk: Yıllarca düşen mor salkım yaprakları hem binanın arkasına hem de içine birikip çürümüştü, yaklaşık bir metreküp olağanüstü güzel humus toprağına dönüşmüştü. Bahçemin toprağının en çok ihtiyacı olduğu şey işte!