Gardening is a wide (excuse the expression) field.

Apart from the digging and raking, the planting and watering, the weeding, picking, harvesting, and taking pleasure in the resulting beauty of the garden, one must care for the land.

I learned this after a rainy spring had washed a gully down one steep side of the property. Roots and rocks lay exposed, and above it, our new lawn would be next.

How could I stop the erosion?

By chance, the new owners of a small store had just removed a tall privet hedge from their front yard. The shrubs were stacked by the road, waiting to be taken to the dump.

“May I have those bushes?” I asked.

“Sure! Why do you want them?” asked one of the owners.

“I’ll use them to stop a bank from washing away,” I replied.

It took a couple of trips to cart off the privet and throw it down the hill. That would stem the downward rush of muddy soil.

I was pleased at this beginning, and mentioned it to our dinner guests that night.

“I can bring over an old mattress for you,” a guest offered.

Woops! I didn’t want the place to look like an old dump. I thanked Elsie anyway. I wanted more plant-based filler to hold the slope.

If I could, I would have pushed small tree trunks horizontally into the bank, but it wasn’t possible. However, one late afternoon, across the road I noticed workers for a tree company using a new gadget (a wood chipper) to reduce pruned branches from the trees they had been trimming.

“What are you going to do with the chips?” I asked.

“We’ll take them to the dump.”

“You wouldn’t need to do that. Why not pile them over at my house? I could use them.”

When all the wood was chipped, the men emptied their truckload at the top of my slope.

Every day, I shoveled chips downhill, over the privet. That filled the gully over the dry summer. I could have used grass clippings, but they were adding to the lawn.

Autumn brought fallen leaves to rake onto the slope. As long as I lived in that house, the gully received seasonal plant-based donations as it was filled in.

I welcome such stories from readers. Why not send yours in, care of this newspaper?

Email your stories to news@boothbayregister.com.