The thumb is out

OK, finally I managed to do most of the things that I had postponed for a while. First a picture that I missed in my previous post:

The after picture of the compost bins

Since last year, every time there is rain or snow I keep slipping on the tiles on the ground. It really is dangerous and every time I slip I think to myself "Gotta do something about that soon, but first let me just.." and walk off to whatever I was going to do.
Now finally I got a couple of sacks of pebbles and poured over the slippery.

NOT slippery when wet

It feels great, and I get a nice and cozy sound when I walk on them. The next thing to do was to get rid of the hanamizu tree in order to extend the bed near the kitchen. OF course, as soon as I had finished cutting the main part off and was about to dig out the root, it started to rain.

This sucker has some deep roots

But I had decided that the thumb was out and I was going to do this rain or shine. So there I stood in more and more sticky mud and kept digging away and cutting off roots. The roots I cut off I dug out separately, and then went back to the main roots again.
This went on for a couple of hours and the rain stopped a couple of times and started again. I had to take a break and eat. Once I was done eating it was too dark to continue.
Next day was less rainy but the mud was still yucky. I managed to dig deep enough to finally be able to move the tree a bit if I put all my weight and might on it. So I stopped digging and started kicking the tree and for each kick it got looser. I missed a couple of kicks of course but managed miraculously not to fall on my butt in the mud. Then I started pushing with my hands again, and the trunk was real wet so a slid a couple of times and my force made me fall really hard onto the trunk with my chest while standing. Ouch! But the end was near and panting I put the shovel under the root system and stood on top of it while pushing the tree away. How can such a small tree have so huge and powerful roots?
In the end the roots were unearthed. My hands were super shaky when I took this picture.

Too heavy to lift though so I cut it into smaller bits before moving it away

With the tree out of the way, I could make an extension of the bed. Hooray!!

New bed seen from the kitchen

View from the north bed

The things that look like gravestones in the background of the last picture are concrete blocks I got to stabilize the backyard upper slope and have a wider bed there to work with. I just put the blocks where I thought they should go up against the fence, but didn't dig them in yet.
Here is a summary of the garden now, seen from the second floor window:

Lower part

Upper part

The next day I took an hour to dig the concrete blocks in the backyard. Now I can rest for a few days.

Naturally Inspector Tora was there right away to check what has changed

Oh, I also put up more tunnels :)