Contractor day!

 It was finally time, it was finally here! The day to meet with the guy that will be helping us to put in the driveway, grade certain areas of the land, prep the front CRP for building, and clear a small patch of trees for the ingress/egress path. This person was a co-worker of hubby's, who then went to school to start his own excavating business. I have heard about him for years, he asked hubby a long time ago if I could be his bookkeeper (hubby said no), and our youngest even worked for him for a very short amount of time a couple of Summers ago, but I had never met him.

We got to Das Zem early so we could get some work done before meeting with him. The guys mowed while I continued to pull honeysuckle from the front CRP and tag some native plants that I found out along the prairie. My spidey senses were tingling in the front CRP and I knew the direction I was to go, and that I would find something there. I found lots of honeysuckle saplings, but also evidence of creatures. This pile seemed fairly fresh. Coyote?

I also found lots of various fungi and mushrooms! They are some of my favorite to photograph.

I open myself while walking in nature. I try to stay as quiet as possible, so I can hear everything. The birds, the different sounds underfoot, the leaves of the Poplars in the winds (so heavenly!). But I also open myself to the sights! What a glorious place to be in!

I found not only garbage to pick up, and honeysuckle to pull, but also more bones. Specifically, a skull. My clue was the smell of death. Although this was no longer containing anything to give off of that smell, it's nature's way of communicating to me in a way that I will understand that there is something there that I am to find. I may eventually find more! That smell could very well be something that is rotting that I haven't run across yet. Bird species unknown, but it's larger than most I've gathered along the way.

The Hexenknochenjager is alive and well still! Some may see this as creepy, but I see them as gifts!

Once the contractor showed up, it was time to walk the front CRP again. I cannot tell you how many times Woodchuck and I have walked it, marked trees, measured, etc. So many so that we have confused ourselves along the way. The contractor wanted to know if we wanted to remeasure or go off of how we had it? My motto? Always double-check us. And I'm glad that we did because some adjustments were made! I have to be honest that I cannot envision what it will look like once it is thinned out. That's part of the reason that I am not a sculptor or carver. My mind just can't see in dimensions if my eyes can't see it.

I really trust the skills and ideas of this contractor. Not only did he remember specifics from walking the land with hubby months ago, but he could envision how the land would look after taking the trees down. I also like that he was on the same page that I was, that we chip away and see what we think along the way and not just go in and bulldoze it all down. We can always start small and take more down, but once something is gone, it's gone. I don't want to have any regrets with this land and what I do to it.

So originally he thought he would be able to get on it in September or October, but said recently that he might be able to get there sooner. Somehow, even with the setback of the delivery of the tractor for how long, we are managing to stay on track as far as the timeline goes for what we wanted to get done this year. I cannot believe we are nearly into Fall already and once Winter comes, our time at the land will be less. But I have to focus right now so that I don't get overwhelmed. Fall will bring the chance to really hit some of the invasives, so I want to stay steady on the things I am working on leading up to that. 

Like harvesting elderberries for the first time in my life! Had I had the time this last day we were out, I would have grabbed them then because apparently you can ripen them after picking them if they are nearly ripe. The birds can have some too, of course! And I did check the blueberries on this last visit, and they were all gone now. But I found something new that I hadn't seen before right next to them!

I believe this 👆 is a silky dogwood (also goes by others names)! It's funny how all of the things that I thought would be nice to have on a piece of property, I am finding here. A flowering dogwood is on the classified forest that butts up to our land and I was kind of sad about that not being ours. Now I have this! I will need to tag it though so that nobody mistakes them for blueberries. They seem to have fruited immediately after the blueberries, not at the same time, but still, they look too similar to uneducated eyes and being right in the mix of those blueberries might be too confusing for some to know the difference. 

So our lists are made for the next trip out and we are expecting the delivery of a drone in time for that next trip! It's about the only way right now that we can see what is growing on the Watershed Preserve. I just hope I don't tank it down somewhere and have to go out there for it. 😖 This time it will be without our youngest son, as he went back to college this past week. So many mixed emotions for us all, and this land is already working Its magick on him. He loves working it and getting his hands dirty. Only time will tell where our futures will land us, but in my own way I am manifesting all that I can along the way. 💚