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