Answers

 As time continues to fly by, we are now making preparations to pick up our youngest from college in about a week and a half and have a list of projects he can work on to keep him busy while looking for seasonal work. We decided to rent a truck to help haul his stuff, since neither of the cars are feeling well this year and I think it would be too much on my car to pull a trailer that far. Hubby finally got the flooring done in the his bedroom and it's been approved by Pierogi the Cat....who supervises all indoor projects around here. We sent a picture of the finished room to the boy, and he greatly appreciated it!

I continue to sloth create.....which is a term I just made up and means that I may go days at a time without touching a project, or when I do, I may just spend a few moments on it. I did finally realize though that when I rush these things, I am producing versus creating. And producing goes against my grain. I recently had a meeting at an art vendor space opening up, but it was not a good match for me. I admit that I cried a few tears when I left the building (which is WAY old and WAY beautiful!), because trying to find a place for yourself in the world can stab the heart at times. But I let myself feel the feels and then moved right along. Keeping to my beliefs about the guidelines I will follow for selling my pieces will eventually work out in my favor. As of right now though, we have no shows due to work schedules and no Etsy sales for several months. I refuse to define my success by these traditional means though. I have a few pieces of cross-stitch to eventually get framed. 👇

Woodchuck finished two benches on the land...one on the watershed for resting when we are walking or working out there (it is removable, not a permanent structure), and one on the path of non-government contract land between the watershed and back CRP forest. They are super comfy and we watched the eclipse from one of them! 👇

We have been impatiently waiting for spring peepers and frogs and to see fish, oh my! Nothing yet though. What a sight to see spiders on the surface and bubbles under. 😎👇

As we were sitting and waiting for the eclipse to happen, I noticed a tree on the watershed that I hadn't before. I ungracefully crossed the logs over the ditch and began taking pictures of it...only to find out later that it is the dreaded Callery Pear! We cut it down and treated the stump and found a smaller one next to it that we did the same with. It will most likely sprout again, since Spring is the time that the sap is flowing upwards in trees and the herbicide doesn't make it down into the roots like it needs to kill it off. But I wanted to catch it early and it's now on our radar to check it again this Fall. 👇

I have had to rethink what I take into the woods to get work done, and how I get it in there. Because of the amount of things I take in and the weight of them, limb debris on the ground, and areas of standing water and mud, pulling the work cart is too much for me. So I just walk carrying a large contractor size garbage bag draped through the strap of my back pack, loppers, a chainsaw, a hand trowel, and herbicide. The hard part about that is the frequent setting down and picking up of it all. But again, I am one person handling invasives on over 15 acres and I am constantly trying to find ways to make the process more comfortable for me. 👇

While down on my knees digging out Lily of the Valley, I accidently disturbed this beautiful Nursey Web Spider. She was very docile and let me move her on her leaf off to the side of me so I didn't accidentally harm her. Once I was done, I put her back in the same spot I originally saw her in. 👇

So far I can really see a difference in the amount of LOV and garlic mustard and dames rocket that I am finding in the forest. I am hoping the numbers remain low, but we are early in the season yet. The LOV pierce right through the leaf litter to find life in the light! I am always surprised by how deep their root systems go, and the suckers that they send off. Now that I am an invasive/non-native plant fighter, I see plants in a completely different way now.👇

The bittersweet is waking up again and I have a large area of it next to the shipping container. Once again I am overwhelmed at all of the invasives exploding at the same time! 👇

We stopped after work recently to work on a project of hubby's (the theme continues of me helping him but not vice versa), and we took a walk to sit on his bench, listen to the birds, and watch the sun start to sink. 👇

I am seeing so many maple saplings in the forest! It's one of the reasons I am doing what I am doing. To give these hardwoods a chance to mature and have the forest be healthy again. 😍👇

I am reminded with each trip how it feels like the entire Cosmos is held in this place. 💖👇

But while I am spending so much time and energy taking care of the land and working so hard to make our future plans happen, I am also trying to take care of myself. Some times no matter what I do, I struggle physically, but I figure it has to be helping something. I am officially just over one year out from the massive allergic reaction to the tetanus booster and resulting SIRVA in my left arm (the one that I had the shoulder surgery on.) It no longer feels like it's being slammed in a car door every day, all day; but I do still have some side effects. I continue to working to get it, and my other issues, under control. I'm grateful for any amount of feeling better! 👇

I find many reminders that I am not alone in my journey even when there is nobody else standing on my path. 🪶💚

And Mother E reveals gifts along the way of my work. I know She appreciates all that I am doing to help her and the creatures, and to honor my ancestors and how they cared for the lands. 

I can't help but smile when I see fresh, native life emerging. I shook hands with this darling Poplar leaf and welcomed it to Das Zem. 

 Now for the answers! On our most recent trip out to the land, we had a meeting with a pool/landscaping company that has an employee who also deals with ponds, ditches, etc. The flooding on the back ditch and pond, as well as the dysfunction in the ditch flowing out of the pond continues to worsen. Hubby finally agreed to have someone access the situation, and boy are we glad he did! Our problems are numerous, but also, we learned that we can control the water level in the pond by creating a dam situation. Our minds were blown, that was never even on our radar as an option or how to even go about it! He said when we are in drought season, use that dam to keep the water in the pond. He also said not to put minnows in it, and what did Woodchuck put in it last year? Yep. Minnows. 😣

We started the tour at the very beginning of the ditch where it goes under the main road, next to and behind the house next door, and then to our pond and ditches that are on our land. Issue #1). It turns out that some kids a couple of houses down put rocks down in the ditch to create a waterfall kind of effect, and narrowed the water pathway at the culvert to less than an inch wide. Hubby stopped over and explained that while it was beautiful, it's creating flooding on our land and the rocks need to be removed. Issue #2) the neighbor next door bulldozed his back yard, and filled in the ditch while also putting in a culver pipe. He did this for safety of not having anyone fall in the ditch and to also extend the yard space. But the professional found several issues with that as well. The culvert pipe was one size too small, and he could tell from sink holes in the yard that the pipe isn't level. Issue #3, now on our land, is we are having issues with our culvert pipe coming off of the ditch. It's the one that got a little crushed during excavating and hubby had to go down in the ditch to get the water flowing again. 

And then the back ditch, where the most recent flooding is going on. He recommends digging out the land on the crossover, letting the water go directly into the pond, then laying new culvert piping, etc. I took notes, but honestly, I think we are in a position on this one where we need to hire the professionals. We are hoping to have a quote within a weeks time and then can decide how to proceed.

I'm in the position now of trying to decide where to put my income? Towards tuition, or towards getting this fixed? I am actually hoping that the boy can find good Summer work to  build up his money to pay for his final semester of college. He graduates this December!!! With FAFSA being confusing, glitchy, and no help at all, I am sure that we will be paying full tuition again. I am working 45-50 hours a week, but at $12 (not including tips), it wipes me out every month to pay the tuition bill. I have been trying to sell my unwanted belongings on eBay and FB Marketplace, but it would be even more helpful to be able to sell the art! It would bring in money, free up space in the workshop, and be less to move when that time comes. Help a girl out, would you? Take a look at what's available, share us....it's free for you and would help us get noticed. TIA. www.soapwoodartstudio.etsy.com

We have to forego our usual weekly trip out there next week due to weather and needing to making some road trips, so we have decided to make a couple of trips out after work on nice days to utilize the longer day light. My goal on those shorter time frames is to walk the forest quickly looking for garlic mustard, which is flowering right now. The honeysuckle and LOV can wait another week until my next long day. I can completely relate to farmers now and the rush of the season and utilizing as much daylight as possible! I am hoping that all of my hard work now will enable me to one day relax on the land more and enjoy the fruits of my labor. But for now, I have to keep wearing the BadAss Nature Girl cape. 

It finally happened....but now what?!

 Just when we think we have something under control, we find out quickly that don't know shit. I didn't think that we'd had a lot of precipitation, or at least here at our home we didn't. But when we showed up to the land yesterday, it was very evident by the puddles everywhere, including the driveway right when you turn in off the road, that it had rained a lot. As Woodchuck got the supplies ready for the day, I walked over to see if the blueberry bushes were budding and was shocked by how much water there was around them again. It's a wet area to begin with because of the leaky South side of the pond, but holy cow! The pond completely overflowed into it this time. We are loosing land at a very fast pace to the water. The only upside to looking at this area today was that I got to see a hawk nearby, sitting in a tree.

As we walked to where we would be working on projects (him on a wooden bench and me pulling garlic mustard from the forest) the water issue became even worse. The North side of the pond has holes in the land, where the water is undercutting and the slumping is becoming worse. It's also a risky endeavor to stand on the bank too near the water, as it's very unstable. Slumping ponds are no joke. But the worst was when we rounded the bend of the pond.....

The back ditch finally did it. It overflowed. This is an issue for various reasons: 1) The intersection of land allows us to access the back pathway that runs between the back ditch and the 2nd CRP forest. We had to bypass this part and walk thru the forest to the area where he would be working, and this was so flooded that it was even heading into the forest. 2) This area also leads to the ingress/egress of the watershed, which was supposed to have remained drivable for the government to have access. At this point, it's barely even walkable. 

If you remember from the last posting, we put up a screen to keep debris from blocking the drainage tubes. That screen is now nearly completely under water....that's about 2 foot of water. We can't see any blockage on our end, and we can see water flowing FROM the pond in the front ditches. We don't know what to do next other than put bigger drainage tubes in, but I think we just need to admit that we don't know what we are doing and call in the professionals for this issue, as well as the pond slumping. I have to admit that I was proud of myself! I didn't freak out or panic like I would have when we first bought the land. It's an issue that needs to be dealt with and Woodchuck refuses to listen to me and spend the money to finally get the issue under control professionally. He'd rather keep spending the money on stocking the pond and losing the land. At some point he'll regret that and I'm just standing back and letting things happen. 

We went our separate ways. I have several acres of forest to take care of alone, he can handle his own stuff for now without me. The garlic mustard popped up a couple of weeks ago and is developing quickly with this wet weather we are having. Although my back was killing me from work a couple of days prior, I slapped on some pain rub and crawled around on the forest floor. 

For now, a lot is concentrated in a small portion of the forest. Once I get this pulled, I can start walking the whole forest and looking for stray plants and taking care of the honeysuckle farther in. I picked two garbage bags full on this day and I was rewarded by Mother Nature with so many moments of wonder and intrigue! I nearly cried, what an honor to witness all that I do there! Sandhill cranes flying over! A huge migrating flock of red-winged blackbirds! A tiny chattering squirrel up in the trees! The biggest red worm I've ever seen that startled me coming vertical out of the ground!

While Woodchuck took no notice of my work, I went to look at his before we left. While my back felt much better because I grounded, his felt worse because we was bent over building a couple of benches. I keep planting the seed with him that we should try and utilize as much of the fallen trees as we can. Keeps costs down and honors the spirit of what we had to remove. I think he's doing a great job!

It's not quite finished yet, but will the next time we go out there. I got to sit on it and it's quite comfortable! He was able to get two benches out of one tree length. This one will stay here, looking across the ditch to the watershed, and the other one will go on the watershed. We cannot have permanent structures out there, so as long as he feels we can easily remove it when necessary, we can go ahead with having one out there. He's looking to build a picnic table too, as we have access to lots of wood pallets but I've yet to get him to jump on grabbing them and start building things. We just found out our youngest will be coming home for the Summer in about a month and I'm hoping with that extra set of hands, he'll start jumping on things then. I'll have my hands full moving forward now with keeping up on the invasives in the forest, and we still have to finish girdling the trees in said forest now that we have them all marked. 

The concrete contractor has had to back out of showing up twice now, but is hoping to be there this week or next at the latest. Woodchuck and I will be heading to a Home Expo this Saturday that's being held locally so we can start gathering contact info for companies and seeing some trends that we'd like to incorporate into the house. We thought for a split second about temporarily abandoning the idea of building and just buying the house next to the land that is up for sale. But it's a lick 'em, stick 'em and it's WAY out of our price range. For now we will move ahead as planned.

Woodchuck is still trying to finish the new floor upstairs in our youngest sons room. Funny how what used to take us a couple of days can now take a month. Getting down on the floor is hard for him now and he won't let me help. The main floor is laid, he has to lay it down in the closet and then put quarter round throughout. Pierogi is the Supervisor and she approves so far of the work that's done, but walks him up there everyday and meows her disapproval that it's not done yet. He has one month and one day to get it finished and I am sure she will remind him every day.

I have slowly been getting back in to working on art projects as I continue to clean out, sort, and pack up! I finished another cross-stitch project, and started another Third Eye Fox dream catcher. It felt weird, almost wrong, to be working on things again. It had been several months, but I stopped to re-evaluate, to heal, to drop any false energy that others had projected on to me. I turned my Light inwards, I cried a lot (SO MUCH), I came into myself more, and continue the journey. So many great things on this path, and so many more dreams to come true. 💜

The rat pattern is by Lindsay Swearingen, and I have other patterns of hers I'll be working on!

This was the first, and so far the only, Third Eye Fox dream catcher I made. I have several of these, and bear frames, to use up. Time to put myself back out in to the world little by little. 🦊 You can find ready-to-ship works by me and Woodchuck in our Etsy shop: www.soapwoodartstudio.etsy.com

Spring has Sprung Projects

 It's funny how with each season, we have projects pop up that are closely tied to the weather. And I was thinking yesterday how now my life will ruled by the seasons, as windows of opportunity only stay open for so long in nature. Even after owning the land for almost 3 years now, I don't quite feel like I have a system or routine down for making sure I am utilizing the time window accurately. I'll get there though! It's hard some times to get my projects, and Woodchucks to fit in at the same time.

One of the things we had to do was work on the back ditch.....again. I have to admit that if it was only me, I would probably overhaul, redo, or completely wipe out that pond to help eliminate the ditches too. They really are a pain to deal with, BUT we did find out recently that it's the county that should be keeping up with them and we need to call them in to start doing that. I can handle the back ditch, but the front ditch is much deeper and we don't have the equipment to deal with it. But then I see things like Hooded Merganser ducks and Blue Herons on the pond, and it's worth a little extra work!

The back ditch filled up to the brim again with water, and once again the tubes are getting covered in leaf and branch debris. So we made a little screen to go in front of the tubes that will hopefully help this situation. We had all of the supplies to make one, so it cost us nothing. We walked away to do other things and went to check on it and could see that the water level had gone down a little bit! 

                                                                        Before 👆

                                                                    The screen idea ☝

                   I would have liked for the screen to be a but lower, but for now it will do! ☝

                                          And just like that the water level started going down. ☝

Because we are finding evidence of people coming on to our land and into our forest, we are stepping up markers even more. No trespassing signs, boundary markers, purple paint, trail cams, etc. But I wasn't comfortable anymore leaving the NIPSCO access path wide open. Thus far I could only see deer tracks on it, but best not to let this go too long and then someone eventually does utilize it. 

So I wanted to go with the idea of a brush fence. I had only seen pictures of them, but have always been fascinated by them! We certainly have a lot of brush we could use, I thought to myself! Woodchuck was on board with the idea, though wasn't sure how to make it happen. You can do them a couple of ways from what I was able to find. You can lay the brush in between t-posts, or you can sort of weave it. It's not something we will be seeing, and nobody else has a view of it except for a few moments when they drive past and if they glance over. I wanted something natural, and that blended in to the surroundings. 

Woodchuck nixed the idea of using the brush we had and opted instead to cut down the majority of the willow at the pond edge. Normally I would this for dream catchers, but since I haven't been working on art, there's a surplus and they can get out of control easily.

                            There is so much sand here, it's like having a path up at the lake! 

We still weren't sure how many t-posts we were going to need. I was thinking 5-7 and we didn't have that many, so we stopped and bought a couple. The project ran us $12.

I opted to keep it simple for us and just lay the willow in between the posts instead of weaving them.

                                                            The deer can still get around it

                                        I actually really like it!!! Serves its purpose and looks natural

We check on it each time we go to the land, and it will be interesting to see how it weathers, how long it holds up, etc. 

Woodchuck needed to work on the tractor, clear out the shipping container, and move everything from the barn to it....because we are getting the concrete poured in the barn in within the next month or so! He opted to get it done after we built it and we met with the guy he is hiring to do it and got the quote. So that's another BIG project that can be ticked off the list! ✅

While he did that, I headed into the back forest to keep working on garlic mustard removal. I couldn't find the patch right away, even though I had dropped a pin on the Avenza map, but that was partially because I was distracted by all of the honeysuckle popping up and the grapevines that I had spray painted to indicate they needed cut. So I worked on all of that along the way. As long as I was working on something, every little bit counts. I'm hoping now that we are nearly three years in, I won't get as overwhelmed anymore. I actually forgot that March is the best month to work on the watershed. Ah well. At least we cut some AO and MFR out there before the April 1st deadline. 

It was really nice, actually, sitting on the forest floor. I saw so many spiders, heard so many birds, and of course took up the battle again against invasive plants.

The garlic mustard battle continues. This is my second time at this spot this year, and there's still more to pull. I can only imagine what I will find farther in to the forest.

Looking out of the forest behind me. It wasn't a horrible day, and honestly, anytime I can be outside it's a good day.

My office for the morning. I'm amazed at many different things you will find on the forest floors.

Including these red velvet mites! How honored am I to be able to see them in such a vast space!

                    But again I also saw garbage in my woods. That is three times in a row now. 😢

We are also still juggling home stuff too. Hubby wanted to surprise our youngest with new flooring. It's a small room, so it was more about finding the time to get it done than anything else. We moved everything out and Woodchuck plans on doing a box a day on the days he works on it (went with laminate this time!). Luckily we have some time before the boy comes home again. It was fun reminiscing about how it was 22-ish years ago that we put the flooring down. Time flies by so fast. I raised my kids in this house and there will be certain things that will be hard to let go, but I am looking forward to the next chapter!

                                                    Goodbye, peel and stick flooring!
 

Mild weather, a peaceful existence, and hitting the ground running

 It's been on my mind to write, but I had no idea that it had been over two months since I'd done so 😮 The fact that it's mid-March is even more mind-blowing! Time is going by so fast! But with a new year and mild weather, we have to make use of every moment we can and we have been very, very busy people.

I am back to work at a new job that I started after the first of the year. Full-time, actually slightly more than 40 hours a week. I enjoy it, though struggle at times with the physicality of it  and the negativity of a co-worker that I have to work alongside with in tight quarters. I have already cried there, but am hoping that is out of my system now and I can learn how to deal with certain people in a way that shuts them down without being me rude, and keeps me from crying anymore.

Some days were too cold and/or wet to really want to work at the land, so we'd go and walk around instead and talk about our plans for future projects once the weather broke, and our retirement dreams.

As soon as we could though, we started working on the big burn pile that has been our nemesis for the past few years. The plan now is to tear the big pile apart, move the tree stumps to the edges, and create smaller piles for burning. We can also knock the dirt off along the way, as many things were stacked/piled (not by us) with all of the dirt still on them and that was making a fire hard to catch. 

I ran the tractor while he hooked the chain up to trunks and larger trees. This thing kills my back because I'm so small and get jostled around a lot. 👆

Quite the mess! But given the lack of good help we've hired, and that it's one day a week that we can get here to work on this, the best plan we have is to chip away at it and get it into manageable piles for ourselves. ☝

                        The new fire pit that is filled and ready, with extra logs stacked next to it.

                    We end each trip with a walk and sat on a log here to enjoy the sunshine and view.

                                        I looked down and saw flicker feathers right at my feet.

It's always fascinating to me to see evidence of animal activity, and I envision what life is like for them there. Are we making it easier? Harder on them? Having no impact at all? What do they think of all of noise we make? 

                                                 

We are alternating working on the burn pile and other projects, or nothing else would get done. We worked on the front tree line, cutting out honeysuckle, autumn olive and bittersweet. I found many hazelnuts up there, as well as many on other areas of the property as well! 👆

On one of our walks on the watershed last year, I spotted what looked like a hornets nest on one of the small oaks. I decided to venture over to it, and it was massive! Don't worry, it was abandoned long before we get near it. That's Woodchucks hand for size scale. 😲

Occasionally we'll get a bug up our ass to hit stores and start getting an idea of things we want in the new house. I had the idea to put small/narrow windows on the walls under the kitchen cabinets to let in more light on the counters. Woodchuck likes the idea of glass block instead. 

This is the kind of stove/oven he would like for the kitchen, though something slightly bigger.

I'm thinking a very, very pale yellow wall with a light gray cabinet in the kitchen. I like that color "flurry". There will also be splashes of a deep honey mustard yellow accent color here and there!

Once we were back at the land, it was my turn to try and start a fire. Woodchuck was having NO luck. He wants to force it. I work with the elements. And there you have a fire. 

                                    But there's always time to go and find the pussy willows 😍

And another project we finished was marking the trees in the second CRP for girdling. These trigger spray handles are the BEST thing and really save arthritic hands/fingers (though I do think I might have used more paint than I would have without it). 

We also went into the forest to pull some white pine saplings to transplant. I found my patch of crowsfoot/groundcedar and it's getting bigger and spreading!  

We have tried selling these white pines for $5 each, but got no takers and we need them out of the forest.

So we transplanted them back to the edge of the prairie where we did this before, but the saplings were much smaller and didn't take too well to the spot. With the house next door newly remodeled and soon to be rented out, we need some privacy! With us not living there for another year or two, it gives these littles time to grow while we think of other ideas (I am a huge fan of woven branch fencing but Woodchuck is not). This view is looking towards the classified forest (that we don't own).

This view is looking towards the road, and you can see the house next door and how it looks directly towards our prairie. We'll be back again next week to continue working the burn pile as well as do a couple of things on the watershed before we are limited with the window of April 1-October 1 being off limits.

We needed a break and went to a big discount warehouse South of us. It was his idea and I found way too much that I liked! Like these chairs!!!! SQUEE. I bought the owl one for the new house. He begged me not to put it in the living room, so I will put it in whatever tiny space becomes mine.

I also found a replacement for these old, nasty plastic drawers organizers that I always cut myself on.

                                                                Bamboo organizers!

                                                                    Much, much better! 

Goals, peeps. Goals. I'm exhausted, some times going to bed at 7 p.m., sometimes sleeping for 12 hours. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and am keeping my focus on the bright, positive future. One that we have begun to create and will continue to fine tune. We manifest, we create, and we will live in harmony with the land and in peace and love. 💚☮