Yo' mama!

 As we turned another Mothers Day around the Sun, I continued to be uncomfortable with holidays. Any holidays. Lots of thoughts, emotions, and usually always some family drama that hangs over the day like a black cloud. And I can't help but to feel what I am missing out on, though am always grateful for the wonderful memories of celebrating holidays at my Grandparents house! 💖But I made the short trip to my mother house the week before Mothers Day so that I could see my sister and her family, give my mom and sister their birthday gifts, and so I could pretend to be normal for a day.

My nieces were antsy and needed to get outside, and even though it was cold and windy, I am down to always try and be in nature! There's a small tree area at the corner of my mothers lot, and I thought it would be fun to go mushroom hunting and then show the girls if I was able to find one...which I was not able to. My step-dad said he's never found any mushroom over there! But I did find some GM, because of course. I tried to convince them to put some in their pasta sauce for dinner, but they weren't having it 😂👇

I also found a white-margined beetle and it was one of those moments where I did not have my phone (rare!) and had to run back to the house to get it and then find the exact flower that the beetle was on again! 👇

They have a volunteer Elderberry growing and didn't know it because they just mow it down each week. 👇

I wish they'd dig out this MFR. Some times people see a pretty flower and just want to keep the plant for that reason, not caring about whether it's a good plant for the local eco-system or not. Of course, they didn't know the i.d. of it until I told them, but the invasives aren't on everyone's radar. See those feathery, frilly phalanges? Great way to tell if it's a MFR (multi-flora rose). 👇

But they had some Spring Beauties that he said have been there for years! Those are good 👍👇

My actual mothers day was like any other day. Woodchuck worked, my oldest and I went for a hike locally, my youngest didn't acknowledge the day, I picked out my owns gifts (stops at a couple of resale shops earlier that week, and a beehive cake from Meijer), and then when Woodchuck got home three of us went to the land so that he and the youngest could finish the big ditch project! I did spend some time on the patio, reading a good book in the early afternoon to give myself a break from some family drama that's always festering. The ditch project was so important, and we had rain the forecast, that I didn't want the guys to have to wait too many days before going back to finish it. (that project will be in a future post!)

We went to another park here in Northwest Indiana that is part of the county parks I used to work for. We've been to two of them this year now! There are reminders at all of them as to why I left that position, though they are all beautiful! The day was sunny, but the wind was chilly, So we dressed in layers and headed out! The Mayapples (native) were some of the first things to see when you enter the woods! Once the land gets under control, I was thinking about adding these in, but I haven't decided yet. This is the flower that is underneath the canopy of leaves.👇

Their county parks have no shortage of Trilliums (native)! I'm used to seeing the red ones that haven't opened yet, so at first I thought this was something else!👇

Wild Geranium, native. Which, to me, doesn't smell like the geraniums we are all used to seeing! 👇

A close-up of the white Trillium. I have to say here that it was really sad to see how many trails veered off of the main one. This is also a bike path, and I am sure that people are foraging, but there seems little concern for the eco-systems that might be affected...which is one reason I left the parks department. The pubic wants to use them how they want to use them with no regard to anything else. 👇

Eastern Waterleaf, native. 👇

This makes me so sad to see, and unfortunately there's one tree at least two of the county parks that people have done this to. 👇

Look.at.this.grapevine. I don't know yet the differences between a native and invasive one when just looking at bark. This one was so big and up in the tree so high, you couldn't see leaves to be able to use that as an identification tool. 👀👇

White violet, native. 👇

Jack-in-the-pulpit, native. 👇

I couldn't get the picture to load completely, but this is what I was hoping our foot bridge at the land would look like, but it ended up being more of a roller coaster 😂 You tried, Woodchuck, you tried. 👇

Wild Blue Phlox, native. THIS is what I am hoping for on the land instead of the invasive Dame's Rocket. 👇

Enemion biternatum, or False rue-anemone, native. 👇

This is the trillium I am used to seeing and in the stage of flowering I am used to seeing. Isn't it gorgeous?! Native. 👇

Another Wild Geranium in a slightly different color, native. 👇

Liverwort, native to Eastern North America. It will get flowers on it. 👇

Projects at the land are like my projects at home...I usually have no less than 3 going on at one time! The land depends on weather and how much I have on a trip out there to deal with something. One of the main projects is the banks of the front ditch. We had been able at one time to get down in the ditch during a drought, but the West side of it has remained untouched and a complete mess. Woodchuck wanted to tackle it this year! You can't even tell there's a ditch down there, and it's a deep one!  These are a couple of before pictures.👇

One of the after shots! He has worked on this project alone since but I haven't gotten anymore after pictures yet. 👇

My time in the forests and on open land in the Spring are about noticing what is there. I swear each time we go there we find something new. I try and make mental notes of what needs to come out, what can stay, and what needs to be watched. I love seeing the good stuff wake up, like this fern! Who would guess by looking at it in this stage that it will have branches upon branches of stunning green fronds and will reach heights up to my thighs in places! (I'm short, okay? But these can get tall!) 👇

And we have soooooo much milkweed coming!!! I tried transplanting some to areas that would not get mowed. If all goes well, we should have dozens and dozens of them for the monarchs to utilize! But we also have Indian Hemp coming back up too, and when they are both sprouts, I can't tell the difference between them at a glance! It turns out that a lot of what I thought was going to be milkweed was Indian Hemp. Sigh.👇

I was so excited to see the spice bushes staying healthy too! This one is on the watershed and I'm looking into various ways of marking/tagging it so there's never any question moving forward about what it is. 👇

This is one of the cocoons on the spice bush, and there was a handful of them!!! 👇

The early season spice bush flowers, which I forgot to see how they smell!!! D'OH! 👇

What an exciting time of year and I can't wait to start sharing more adventures with you!

 

Spring-a-ling-a-ling

 Just like that! Just.like.that. From Winter, to Fall, to Winter, to Spring, to Fall, to BAM-Summer. Doesn't change a damn thing in what I need to get done, and with a newer outlook on life, our youngest son being able to step back into more and more things in his life and independence, we are taking every moment that we can at the land to stay on top of things. The big Spring project to get done was to change out the drainage pipes from the back ditch to the pond, and let me tell you that I was really nervous about it being done by us and not a professional. Really nervous. Hubby hired our youngest son to run the tractor on the project, and since my help wasn't needed, I made it clear what my concerns were and told Woodchuck that if those concerns come to fruition, not to call me to help clean the mess up. But honestly, I needed to not be a part of it for many reasons. I need to be able to step out of the mediator role, I need to not project my anxiety about what might go wrong, and let them deal and figure. And it all worked out beautifully! Pictures and updates to come in a later post! Here's a sneak peak at the pipes we will be using!

In the meantime of them starting that though, I needed to continue with my own things. It's garlic mustard (I will refer to it as GM some times) and Lily of the Valley (I will refer to it as LOV some times) season and I have a lot of each to contend with in the back forest. I think that forest is the worst of the two with invasives because it floods some times, and at least a couple of neighbors to the North have these things on their land and don't do anything about them, so they travel downhill to us, and in the waters. But along with invasives, it's that time of year to forage for many good things as well!

These deer hooves are what came off of the carcass in a previous post that we found in our back forest. They are drying out well and will likely be incorporated into art in the future.

While cleaning up some invasives and looking for mushrooms here at home, I found these beautiful pheasant back mushrooms! I harvested most of them for a friend of mine since she hasn't had much luck with the morels this year and has never tried this particular one. She loved it, and I have to admit that they smelled amazing! Apparently they have a bit of a watermelon taste?! 😛 I intended on harvesting the big one for me, using the softer edges in cooking and drying and powdering the tougher center, but I never managed to get to it. Hopefully next year they will come back!

But I needed to get focused on the land, and always find so many amazing things there as well! A tiny light green assassin bug catching some rays! 👇

Some sort of jelly fungus that I used to know the name of. I had fun gently shaking the branch and watching it jiggle. 👇

Packera. So, four years into taking care of the land and I am finally learning the difference between the different yellow flowers blooming there at this time of year, and the different Packeras. The first patch I remember finding there was in the back forest, and it was native. Then I started finding some other yellow ones that were similar but with some notable differences. They are native too, so I left them, and am finding out now that they can be aggressive in out-competing various other native plants in growing. It is referred to as Packera Glabella, Butterweed/cressleaf groundsel/yellowtop. It IS native, but so aggressive that it is recommended to get rid of it. I can see why they say that, it has spread quickly into my forest. If you look at this flower, and its leaves, it looks different from another packera that I will be doing a more specific post about. But keep an eye open for these, and for something referred to as Yellow Rocket. Both can be pulled!

My projects now, and indefinitely, will be getting the LOV, GM, and some of the packera and yellow rocket out of the forest and off the land. Each year, each season, the land and forest show me steps of getting back to healthy because of the work that I do. The work that some times feels overwhelming and futile, but that I know is so important. Many do not understand why it is so important to be managing the invasive species population (whether that be plant or animal), but I have seen time and time again the ramifications of letting things go and the rewards of fighting back.

I have probably no less than a dozen patches of LOV right now, though it might be more because they are spreading all of the time. This was the first batch I tackled this season, and you can see the plant parts and how it spreads by rhizome (some times referred to as "suckers". There's a hairy nest of thin roots, then a white rhizome that can connect several plants together. Some times, I get lucky though and get a single plant, which is much easier to get out of the ground. 👇

Here you can see some of the rhizomes I started to uncover in the soil. One of the most difficult things about removing LOV, and keep it from coming back, is that you have to get ALL of the root and rhizome structures out of the soil. ALL of it. Those roots are very fine, and hard to tell from the dirt, and if there are any other things growing around, it's difficult to tell what is the root of the LOV and something else by it. Once I get everything out of the ground, I put it in a black garbage bag. It's also important that you don't shake the plants once they are out of the ground. It's almost a knee-jerk reaction to do it, but if there are still seeds in that soil, you will be dropping them right back down. That may leave holes and divets in the areas you dig them out from, so just be aware of that possibility. 👇

This picture shows several LOV attached in masses of roots and by tendrils of rhizomes. 👇

And some of them are already flowering! When it gets to the point in my trips out there that I don't have time to get to anymore removal, I walk quickly through the forest looking for any that have flowers and I pull those off. They will all still continue to spread by rhizome, but at least it takes care of the seeding issue. This what it looks like before the flowers open. 👇

Once this patch was done, I moved on to looking for other things to pull. I am continually shown beautiful things and they are the things that keep me doing this hard work. I mean, why else would I carry all of the tools into the forest that I do? Hot, humid, muggy days, mosquitoes, crawling around in the dirt? To give everything that SHOULD be there a chance at survival, and to thrive. Like this tiny oak tree 👇

Or this wee little maple with leaves the size of my pinky fingernail 😍👇

Or this adorable little fern that was one of the first ones of this species that I can recall seeing in here! 👇👀

The first morel of the season! 💖

Sensitive fern. These get the most beautiful patterns on them as they get bigger! 👇

Leaves on the elderberry that we planted recently! I think they are really enjoying their spot along the back ditch! 👇

Half-free mushrooms, also known as "peckerheads". A type of morel, and edible, but I leave them because I usually have enough of the regular morels and I don't want to wipe everything out. 👇

Poke berry is coming up too! A lot of people complain about this plant because the birds eat the berries and then poop purple splotches on car, sidewalks, etc. Honestly, I don't care. I am not vain like that. Poop away, birdies, poop away! 👇

I was happy to see that the deer carcass we found in the forest has been utilized by many creatures. While I hate finding them, I cannot undo what has already been done, and the creatures on my land will benefit from an unexpected meal. 👇

Woodchuck has Pink all ready for me to use, but. He forgot that I can't depress the peddles in all of the way. I have the seat pulled up all of the way and still can't do it and it hurts my already funky hips to have to hyper-extend. So he's going to attach some wooden blocks to the peddles for me, and in the meantime, I walk with all of my equipment like I have done for the past four years. I actually prefer that. It's quieter that way, though harder physically. I can see snakes, and spider, and frogs, and plants underfoot that I would not see while on a rider. I hear leaves rustling in the wind, birds singing, and hawks feeding, that I would not hear on the rider. I don't take Pink into forest, I just use her to get my equipment to the edge of the forest where I enter in at, and then she helps bring the heavy bags of invasives back up to the front. He did a great job on the wagon! We won it at a local auction and he changed out the tires, painted it and attached it to Pink for me. It will come in VERY handy for me. 👇

Here at home, I am adjusting my self-care regimen. I see a therapist once a week, which is harder than I thought to find someone that meshes with the style of therapy I need to be successful in healing, I am upping my cardio each week, and adding things like golden milk and aloe to my daily intake. Something new as well, alcohol-free beverages. Here's to feeling better, staying strong physically, mentally and emotionally, and getting the job done every day. )O(