Fiskars brain fart

 I got these handy-dandy little clippers for dirt cheap and they are one of my favorite tools!

I use these when I am taking off the greenery from vines, like grape and bittersweet, but I also use them to prep the willow and for taking the white cedar clippings from the downed branches. I used them last for that very purpose......and then couldn't find them.

We just took down some small trees of our neighbors that were growing behind the house, as well as a honeysuckle, and they were all tangled up with a grapevine. I saw stars, more grapevine! I can make more wreaths! Or add to some I already have that aren't full enough! But that also meant untangling it, and oh my goodness, the amount of pollen coming off of them was insane! We had to wear protection to keep from breathing it in. 

And I couldn't for the life of me find my clippers!

I searched the house, the workshop, outside on the patio. Nothing. It drove me crazy for two days! And then, immediately after finishing up the work in back, after hauling 4 trailers of crap across town to the compost site, and coming in to shower, it hits me. A tote bag! I had already looked in my usual tote bag that I use when I go on the patio to work on projects and they weren't in there, but no! Wait! I remembered using a different tote bag with that one! I turned around and there was the tote bag and inside? My clippers.

Woodchuck walked in as I lifted up the elusive little sharp thingies and the look on his face was priceless. I guess that was the Universe's way of saying to me that I wasn't supposed to use that skanky grapevine out back 😂 What is one of your favorite tools?

Too people-y

 I have been on a self-imposed lockdown to my home this week. With gas prices at $5 a gallon and me not working outside of the home still, I have to make sure we have enough money to keep gas in Woodchuck's car to get back and forth to work. So I'm rationing mine. That might sound horrible, and yes I was sad to cancel seeing a friend and volunteering where I used to work, but I have been thoroughly enjoying my week alone and getting lots of art done!

We did have to make two trips to Das Zem this week. One was to pick up the pole saw (can I just say how annoying it can get some times when you've got supplies and tools at two different properties. When it's there, we need it here and when it's here, we need it there) and to stop by and introduce ourselves to the neighbors to the North of us. Nice young couple! They have their hands full with the property they bought, as well as two very large dogs, two little ones under the age of 5 and another on the way. Something about young couples nowadays that they want everything right away and don't want to wait for it. Kudos to them, but how exhausting.

But we did find out that the German Shepard that approached me on the land last week is theirs. They are thinking about installing an electric fence, and we let them know that we will be putting chemicals in the pond soon, so she needs to stay out. Not to mention that she was out in the road and people fly down that road! She was a very good girl and I don't want to see her get hurt! (even she wasn't a good girl, I wouldn't want to see her hurt!)

Then we had to drive out the next morning to meet with a local contractor who can help us excavate the ditch and pond. I will be meeting him out there again on a Friday in June and then soon after that the fire department will be coming out to burn the pile of trees and debris. Nice guy, asked a lot of questions and seemed genuinely interested in my point of view of the land. I have to say here though that both trips to the land, Woodchuck came across kind of sexist and I don't play that. I am not controlling, I am not demanding, I do not like him being a kind of "yes, dear" kind of guy. Do I have opinions too? Yep! Am I working my ass off out there to try and save the viable and native plant life? Yep! So don't turn that into something it's not, Woodchuck!

Woodchuck and I took a look at the front of the property and talked about how to tackle that. His go-to plan is just to take the tractor and brush hog and get rid of everything. My go-to is to observe what we have, go in by hand/chainsaw and clear out all of the crap and see what good stuff we are left with. Why wipe out all of the viable, native stuff that is established and can thrive with the crap stuff gone? It's a constant struggle to keep guiding him and also get a little of what I want in these situations.

I found some yellow salsify (yellow goatsbeard, Wild Oysterplant, etc.) growing at the front, which has taken me a long time to know that it wasn't just a huge dandelion, lol. Apparently, parts of it are edible, but no thanks. I did pluck off a couple of heads and put them in a large encyclopedia to see how they press and dry. I have seen these seed out to the size of a baseball before! So imagine a dandelion head on a plant about 4 foot or more high, and the head the size of a baseball and there you go. I pulled them because they aren't native and I've got enough shit out there that isn't native.

There were dozens and dozens of turkey vultures circling overhead! Luckily we never found anything dead. 😬

The bracken and sensitive ferns are popping back up everywhere! And tons of wild strawberry plants. Most don't seem to flower and produce, or if they do the wildlife get to them. Honestly, they are in such hard-to-get-to areas, they have an easier time getting them and I always want to share with the wildlife (except for the trash panda here at my house that keeps taking the jelly and orange halves I am leaving out for the orioles! Stop it, trash panda!)

We also had to <cough> walk around with the metal detector because *someone* lost a long, thick chain when he was taking down the fishing shack. We checked everywhere he said he had gone and we were not able to find it. We are hoping to run across it over time while we are out there working on other projects. His next project out there will be to get vents in the shipping container because nobody needs to be walking around high from the gas fumes after spending some time in there 😵 Hope he remembers to air it out really well first before sending the sparks flying cutting into the metal! 😬 Normally I bring that up to him just in case he doesn't think of it on his own, but he just told me last night that I am overbearing and demanding, sooooooooo don't want to be that and I will let him sink or swim. Have fun, babe! 💋

We are also starting some clean up here at our home in preparation for eventually putting it on the market. There is a tree line that the railroad owns and never cleans up (which is probably a good thing, because they would wipe out some good stuff too!), and it is full of crap and invasive plant species. I might have mentioned before that I have spent two seasons now trying to get rid of the garlic mustard, dames rocket, Tree of Heaven, honeysuckle, etc. On this day, we cut down a large honeysuckle.

                                                                                Before

                                                            During. Hello, Mr. Toad!

After the one honeysuckle (and 3 black locust sapling) removal. The majority of what you are looking at will be coming down as well. Sad to see the privacy go, but it's more important to get rid of the invasives and have this be a native habitat until and if the railroad decides that they want to do something with it.

Now there are lots and lots of Soloman's Seal! One of them is so tall, it's up to my chest (though admittedly, I am a very short person.)

                                    And also a lot of Sweet Sicily! (sorry, no image of that one).

Last night after Woodchuck got home from work, we worked on cutting down a corner of crap behind our house. It actually belongs to the neighbor behind us, but she doesn't want to take care of it because she's allergic to poison ivy. I saw only a couple of plants of it that could easily be avoided, but hey, it makes the property line look better for us. Didn't get a before picture, unfortunately! It was bad though! Honeysuckle, and grapevine was TERRIBLE.  And that grapevine was FULL of pollen. So much so that we had to wear something covering our noses and mouths. I'm already on my asthma inhaler the past three days from the pollen counts being so high! It's all piled up on her yard for right now. I guess we are going to remove it for her too. Aren't we nice?! And this after we paid several hundreds of dollars to have her rotten mature trees removed some years ago from her property but behind our house, and helped the guy cut them up, etc. You would never know what we do for and put with from our neighbors by what they think of us. 

But honestly, I don't give a fig anymore. I actually never really did. The only reason I ever got upset about how they feel about us is because 1) most of it isn't truthful. They think because I don't want to listen to 6 barking dogs at 6 a.m. and all day long just inches from my house, that I'm a dog hater. Couldn't be farther from the truth! I'm a irresponsible pet owner and neighbors who infringe on their neighbors hater! 2) We are respectful of them, we are quiet, before we do something we think about how that is going to affect them. And they don't reciprocate. But I'm the asshole. Or as Woodchuck texted last night "addshole", because he's got sausage fingers and had too much to drink.

Never a dull moment! 😜 I'm ready to for my invisible force field around my property now, thank you very much!

Results

 I know I keep saying it, but good grief these days are insanely busy and how is it already mid-May?! Time seems to be speeding up, no matter what I do to keep up with everything 😜 I know that everyone is feeling it, so I'm trying to be gentle with all along the journey! This post will include a few trips out to the land, because I'm behind again and don't want to try and keep track enough of it all to make individual blog posts about them, lol.

We have managed, even with Woodchuck's recent surgery, to get out to Das Zem a few days instead of just the once a week. Now with the better weather and longer daylight, we will be able to even go out for a few hours in the evenings after he gets off of work. Now with all of the invasive plants completely awake and taking over again, I need more time each week to battle them. So while my focus has been about those invasive plants, Woodchucks sights have been on continuing to prep the land and get various projects done.

We had a gentleman from Purdue come out and take a look at our pond. Indeed he feels the way that I do" the ditches are causing it to back up. Not only are they choked up with bushes, but also big chunks of wood. AND the front ditch, right where it meets the pond and over to the culvert, has a higher elevation. So the water is fighting the plant life and the height it has to travel. Woodchuck put the word out that he's looking for a local with an excavator, but so far we've heard nothing. So fixing the pond is on the back burner for now.

But that's ok, because there's a crap-ton of other stuff to get done!

I walked the front CRP and continued to pull honeysuckle while also looking for shrooms. It's that time of year here in Northwest Indiana. While I always go into the forest hoping to find treasures, it's never expected and I kind of feel like it has to be earned anyway. The forest will give me what it feels I am deserving of! I did learn about a fungus that I didn't know was edible, called Wood Ear. A dear friend of mine is always willing to share her knowledge with me! She got me a mushroom identification book for out in the field, but some times I struggle with even knowing where to start looking in the book to figure out what I've found. I don't think I could bring myself to eat this. 😝

Morel mushroom.

This was our first year trying the morels! I always gave them away in previous years, but now that we own this land, I think it's time that I start living off of it a bit more. It think I ended up gathering close to 3 pounds this year, mostly from Das Zem, but several mushrooms from our current home. I made mushroom and cheese pull apart bread, mushroom soup, lightly breaded and fried mushrooms, mushroom and onion quiche, scrambled eggs with mushrooms, dried some, froze some, and gifted some. I did try selling some at a market I did with my art, but had no takers. With not even 12 people coming by my booth in the 6 hours I was there, it's not too surprising, but even the ones that did stop by weren't interested. The forest doesn't want me to profit from it, apparently!

We made a rookie mistake and thought it would be fun to plant some onion bulbs and just forget about them for awhile. Now, looking back, I keep wondering how I could not have foreseen what happened to those onions. It's a wild, natural place, full of wild animals. I know this. And yet. We made a couple of rough rows and plopped them into the ground. Only to return next time to see that the Woodchuck ate them. Because, of course!

Not only are we well on our way with the home design, but also received another few deliveries of stone. Woodchuck spread some more out on the driveway to fill in the ruts from the delivery truck getting stuck in the mud, and then put some next to the shipping container and made a little stone area to put his tractor implements on. The house design has been finalized and now she's making up the blue prints. We also checked into the prices of a pole barn garage that we will put up ourselves, but the prices are too high right now.

                                        Woodchuck had to help get the truck out of the mud.

 I have to admit that I have had several panic attacks about that house design, namely the placement of the master bedroom and mudroom. I have learned that it's not going to be 100% perfect. That there were things we wanted that we just couldn't make work. Just like with the land and the removal of the trees, I'm afraid it is going to get done and then I'm going to have regrets or feel like I should have done something differently. EEK! So not enjoying this part of things and having to try and foresee an end result and finished product.

I am just in love with the land and everything that we find there! (well, except for the invasives). With all of the mud out there, it's easy to see who's been passing through.

Speaking of. We kept finding huge paw prints. We went back and forth if it was dog or coyote. If it was a coyote, which was what I was leaning towards, it would have been a huge one. Well, the "coyote" introduced itself the other day and scared the hell out of me! I was all alone in the first row of the second CRP and was working on pulling invasives and this beast came creeping up on me!

You can't tell from the picture, but this was a very big doggie! Had on a collar, but no tags. SO smart and sweet, and loved to play fetch with sticks! Non-stop fetch with sticks! And some times it would pick up a stick so long that when it ran past me, it would smack me in the ass with it. It was an excruciatingly hot day. Hot, humid, sunny.

I don't know who owns the dog, but I do know it's been on our land many, many times based off of the tracks that we find. It keep jumping in the main pond to cool off and then it would drink that water and start gagging from all of the crap in it. To say the doggie smelled bad was an understatement. 

We will need to figure out who owns it, because once we start working on the pond, they need to keep him out of it. There will be chemicals in it, it will be deeper, etc. It was also collapsing one of the banks on its way in and out of the water. Had my two boys been with me, they would have been absolutely terrified of the dog. I was so nervous initially that I made sure to have a can of pepper spray on me and my machete on hand until I knew the dog was kind. People really do take for granted how others will respond to their animals and how their animals will respond to others. I own 15 acres and should not have had to worry about something like this. It seems that I just can't get away from neighbors who infringe on the enjoyment of what we own. Woodchuck said we will go around soon and introduce ourselves to all of the neighbors and also try to see who owns the doggie. That dog stayed by my side the WHOLE day that I was there. I had to be quiet though. I learned that if I talked to it, that was sending it a signal that we could play fetch more. I had my hands full with work, and was doing it alone, and my shoulders can't handle throwing that much. I mean that dog played fetch for hours and was huffing and puffing and hot! Once we got to know each other a little though, I felt safe with it by my side. Woodchuck said if I walk out of the woods next with little birds on my shoulders who are helping me with my work, he's screwed. I mean, first the cat that I named Shadow McGhee and now this dog, which Woodchuck has named Sticks (I prefer Styx, but hey, whatever.). I could totally see little birds alighting on my shoulder!

I found a vine of Oriental Bittersweet wrapped around a tree and started the delicate operation of saving it (the tree). I decided it was as perfect a time as any to send a signal to the bittersweet elsewhere on the land that there's a new boss in town and this boss isn't going to tolerate them sticking around. So, I lit some Full Moon incense and made a wreath while standing there in my forest.

I told it to make sure to tell its friends that this is what happens to them when they come around. I found another one when we went out again and saved a young tulip popular...and made another wreath.

The past few times we've made it out to the land, we've been there for several hours and it doesn't feel like it. Woodchuck will track me down in the forest and I'm still on the hunt for shrooms and invasive plants to remove, so he'll go grab a nap somewhere while he waits for me to get to a point where I can call it done for the day. The more I am there, the harder it is to leave.

While out in the forest, I found several more patches of Lily of the Valley. I was getting too tired of bending over or squatting down to remove them, so eventually I just snipped off the flower stalks. It's too much for me to try and remove in one or two days, on my own. There is a native one, but I can't tell from the pictures online which one is which and there's a lot of debate about the two plants. From what I can tell, this one is the non-native one.😕

While I was out in the forest, Woodchuck was working with the tractor to remove the old shack down by the pond. We refer to it as the fishing shack, but the previous owners raised fowl in there. The only thing living in it now are mice and wasps, and a Woodchuck is living under it.

Before

And after......

I also harvested some willow before we left. I was all out of dream catcher frames and the new sprouts were coming up. 

So, Woodchuck did his rock pad for the tractor implements, took down the fishing shack, and disbursed more of the stone that was delivered (and tried once again to unclog the pipe in the second ditch). From home he's been in touch with the fire department about burning the downed trees, and the NRCS about the ingress/egress, as well as trying to track down someone with an excavator, and has been watching lumber prices so we know when we can order and get the ball rolling on the pole barn/garage.

I worked on removing honeysuckle, bittersweet, garlic mustard, and lily of the valley in the CRP's, as well as hunted shrooms. From home I've been in touch with the home designer about those plans. And we both went to a pond seminar the other evening. He's confident that he can handle it (the pond). I told him if he kicks the bucket before me, I'm letting that pond go. 😂 Leaking, algae, invasive plants, chemicals, kinds of fish and how many stock, to aerate or not (and the cost of running an electric aerator), and if so what kind, and possible fish kills and so on. That's a lot of time and money and a whole lot of possibilities out of our control! 

Things are certainly shaking up and in motion! Stay tuned!

Give me the machines!

 It feels like forever that we've been waiting for Spring to come, a true Spring. Here it is already May and I feel like we are still fighting the end of Winter. So many days of dreariness, of chilly or downright cold temps. The older I get the more impatient I get for warmer, sunnier days to take hold. But we can't wait for warmer temps to start on the land work, Mother E has her own clock and calendar that we need to follow. 

We headed to Das Zem this past Wednesday to start working on clearing up the ditches. I think Woodchuck is a little overwhelmed and scattered, and I am right there along with him. He thought we could use his new Brush Grubber to easily pull out the invasives overgrowing the ditch, but quite literally he got his ass handed to him. It was decided that I would be on the tractor, Ginny. It was decided for me, I might add. I get it, he didn't think I could handle the tension strength of the Brush Grubber and getting it on the branches, but we all know some previous emotions I've had about being on the tractor and a near miss of running him over because I had my foot on the gas, which is next to the break, but in between the back up and brake pedals. Tractors are confusing when you've only driven a car.

So we get started, and I'm doing really well I must say! But the bushes are much bigger and established than we expected and that Brush Grubber was no match for them, nor was our tractor. Nor was Woodchucks back! What ended up happening was each branch of the bush honeysuckle had to be pulled off on its own, with some of those having a dozen branches, it took awhile to just get a couple of them de-branched. Although I had a nice spot, it was bothering my newly fixed hip to have my leg out to the side, so I had to turn in the seat to be facing more of where my leg was going. I was still way more comfortable than Woodchuck though.

I should add here that earlier that morning he had about an hour long surgical procedure to remove a large cyst from the back of his head. As usual, the doctor said he had never seen one like that before. With 6 stitches in the back of his head, he was getting poked and prodded in the head, ears, face and neck by the bushes. I was waiting for it all to go horribly wrong and for him to bust those stitches open.....or fall down in the ditch. Luckily neither of those things happened. But after struggling with two bushes, we called it quits over here. It's clear that we will have to don waders and get down in the ditch, cut the branches off and treat the stumps. On to the next project!

We finally found what the Brush Grubber DID work well on. The line of bush honeysuckle lining the driveway and underneath the red maples. I forgot to get an after picture, but here's the before.

Here's what they looked like last year when all leafed out. To the very left of the picture. 👇

We headed up front and into the cold winds and poor Woodchuck looked like he was going to keel over. Bending over to attach the tool, then bending over to remove it, move the brush, and then attach the tool to the next bush. I offered many times to trade places, but he wasn't having it. When it got to the point where the piles were big and in the way and I thought he was going to collapse, I told him to take over on the tractor and move the brush to the burn area. I figured that he wouldn't argue with me then if I made it still about the work and not about him needing a break!

So while he made a couple of trips with the tractor, I walked around the area hand-pulling baby bushes and found this lovely, lone tulip that was *just* over the property line. Still beautiful to look at!

Once Woodchuck came back from dropping the piles of brush, we called it quits. My hip was tight and his back was hurting and we still needed to load up Pink to take her back home. No more 1.5 hours of push mowing! We don't have the physical stamina right now, nor the time.

 Some times I think we entered in to this being too old and injured and I keep pushing that thought away. We are worthy, we are deserving, we are capable. 💚 )O(