In freezing water

 I had that meeting with Woodchuck about trimming only one blueberry bush a week (see previous post) and it dragging too far out. He agreed with me and on our most recent trip to the land he trimmed two of them. As with everything else there, it's a GD mess. Why can't we just have blueberry bushes to trim? No, we have to have blueberry bushes that have native but aggressive red twig dogwoods growing intermixed in them. To remedy the situation completely I suspect that we would have had to cut the branches of everything down to just a foot or two tall, then I would have had to treat the dogwood cuts and hope that I didn't contaminate the blueberry. As it is, he cut all branches of the blueberry to about shoulder height, and I cut the dogwood closer to the ground. I'll have to keep going back and cutting them and hope over time that they will die off and if not, I'll have to figure something else out.

We now have three blueberry bushes trimmed! Look at the pile of debris all around it!

To do this task of trimming the bushes though, we have to stand in freezing water. I don't have the insulators anymore for my boots and only wore a thin pair of socks. It didn't take long for my toes to become ice cold and painful! So much so that I had to stop working, get out of the water, and go sit down so my toes weren't touching my boots for a bit. Note to self to wear thicker socks next time. 

This area is very wet and marshy. The pond is beginning to leak over into the area, plus it's where the watershed starts. We are thinking that it will behave like other areas that we cleared and opened to the sun more....that it will become more dry over time. Especially when we fix the pond. Don't even want to talk about that project right now. 😒

I do think that I've figured out where to build the sunset viewing platform! With all of the trees, this is about as good of a view as we will get, unless we want to stand on the watershed and even then there are trees blocking the actual final moment of setting. So why not be comfortable? The platform will also be used for yoga, mediation, and probably for when I work on dream catcher frames and webs. 

We missed a trip to the land this past week due to a road trip to see our youngest son at college. We took him stuff from home that he requested and then took him and his girlfriend out for dinner at a Japanese Habachi place. That was a long day for two aging peeps...several hours driving and my right hip was really bothering me from all of the sitting. We will see him in a couple of weeks for their Spring break and again for them to pass thru on their way to a Comic-con. 

Everything else in life is just as crazy right now. Work, health, appointments. We are trying to buy the land to either side of us out there, which has not panned out yet. I'm saying prayers in the back of my head while trying to not focus in too much on it and distract myself from other things throughout the day. 

Our next trip out is tomorrow! Trimming more blueberry bushes while today, I need to remind Woodchuck that he's to be cutting down trees along our driveway here at home. With a bum shoulder, I can't tell if he's putting it off until he gets that checked out, or if he just isn't into the project. There are many days when I think we need able-bodied peeps to help us out, and there just isn't anyone. We were super lucky to get the help we did with the barn and even then had to give in and hire a crew to do the roof and finish the framing and hang the overhead doors. There are a lot of times when I wonder just what the hell we were thinking when we took all of this on! 😬

In other news, we got accepted into the new Spring show Halfway to Halloween that's being put on by the same people who put on the Fall show we do, Bizarre Bazaar. I'm so happy, and so stressed! better get to working on the art now since it's fallen to the wayside with everything else going on!