Little by little we have been moving forward, trying to get things marked off of the list at the land and at the home. I am trying, and most times failing, to focus on what is getting done and stopping the need to keep looking around me and getting panicked about everything that's not. Chipping away, plugging away, one tiny, little bit at a time. But progress is progress, right? We have gotten so used to BIG things, happening FAST, and I think that is why I tend to use my hands more than big equipment at the land. When you go in with a tractor and mow it all, it's instant.....and then when it all grows right back within three days you get caught up in a cycle. But when I go in with my hands, little by little, feeling the energy of the area and the plants....chipping away, it feels like...I don't know, that time itself slows down. I have often said that one day Scientists will be able to see and prove that we are speeding up time with our hurriedness, with our cramming so much into short amount of time frames. If we slowed down our actions, our movements, our thoughts, our breathing, why is it so far fetched to think that we could slow down time too? What if time is what we make it, and we are the keepers of it? What if we have time all wrong? We are governed by time, but if it was supposed to have been the other way around?
I have not been working on art. Other projects have taken precedence and I am trying to stay calm while also preparing. Because I have had to slow down because of the arm, I am picking and choosing where my energy and physical capability are going. I promised you a picture of the finished Forest Witch Star. I had to revamp a bit on it, as I suspect Woodchuck bumped into it and damaged some stuff, but that was for the best. While I love a piece with things dangling from the bottom of it, that doesn't mean absolutely everything I make has to have that. Right? I am saying that to convince myself 😂 But I do love how this turned out.
My oldest son wanted to go for a short hike recently. Even though we are only moving 20 minutes away, I think he feels like it's going to be 20 hours, lol. He even made a list of the things that he wants us to do together before I move. I told him that I cannot commit to that, but that I am looking forward to doing those things! So we headed about half an hour North to a place he likes to walk at but that I had never been to before. You KNOW I am gonna see of the invasives! Once you are trained to see them, it's hard to not pay attention.
This dock was enormous! It was right at the trail head, sadly surrounded by garbage. Remember to pack out what you pack in!
There had been some severe storms that moved through the area, and lots of trees had fallen.
But wow, this is a lovely place! This area of trees is between the parking lot and a footbridge that goes over a channel that connects two lakes. I love a good berm. There's something magickal about being in a forest with them.
We came up to the lake, and man, I really miss being in water, lol.
This has to be my favorite shot of the day 😍 👇
But this kind of sight makes me angry. And, of course, I didn't think to bring a bag for garbage. I am so used to my own land, that I forget when I go onto public places there is going to be garbage. It was spread out from the parking lot into the farthest reaches of the woods.
There are a lot of cut trees. Literally fell, got cut, and left right where they were! I love that, actually! That wood can decompose, it can provide a temporary shelter, it can foster some fungi. We need to redefine what we view as messy.
Ohhhhh, I like how this area feels! A hollow, a faery ring, I dunno.....but it feels right.
Heading deeper into the trees now!
Woooahhhh, this tree is HUMONGOUS!
We are above the lake water level now, and the beauty of the forest sounds are being drowned out by load boat music and people yelling to each other. I guess we all get our enjoyment from different things.
In going around the tree, it enabled me to see this little toad friend!
The path gets narrower and jumbled in some places. Younger me would have viewed this as an adventure, older me is feeling claustrophobic!
I found a Narnia tree! It will take off running into war!
I stopped and paid tribute to this tree. Look at the years in those rings 😍
Another "good feeling" place!
Oh my goodness, the burls on this one tree! The brain wants to see them as faces and creatures and every day things we are used to seeing!
And what? A plant I have not seen before?! Wayneberry, native.
I would love to stop and spend some time in these beautiful places, but 1) my son does NOT like bugs and 2) with the humidity, there are a lot of bugs swarming us if we stop moving.
I love that mushies can be found in so many different places!
This poor little guy was laying on the path, like, directly in the center of it. Paralyzed, it seems. Most likely from a wasp? I carried it with us on the rest of our walk, and placed it on this rock that my son liked. Something felt so Medieval about it.
He also spotted this fungus on a tree
OOOOooooo, what do we have here? If only I could run and jump in that water!!!!
It reminds of the area that we played in as kids at my Aunts house. Back then, you just jumped in and didn't think about what was in those waters. I think about those things now, and while it may keep me well and with all of my digits, it is not as fun of a way to live life.
The July Full Moon was absolutely bonkers. I mean, I am looking forward to being able to ride them out at the land because some of them are becoming downright feral in energy! But, maybe the Moon is requiring us to let go a little more, be a bit more feral and wild. Maybe we would enjoy being humans more if we did that.
The energy strikes different, even the plants seem different, colors seem different....
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Some times my brain glitches. Some times it gets overloaded with stimuli and information. I look at things and think to myself, "You really do know what this is and here we are staring at it and can't remember." Like this. Looking at it right now, I instantly know what it is, but when I ran across it out in the wild of the land, overheated and dilirious as I was? Nope. Couldn't pull it up in the brain computer.
And THIS part of it confused me even more! "What an odd flower", I thought. Nope. Not a flower, just new growth leaves. This, friends, is bittersweet. You know, that stuff that I've been fighting for the past 5.5 years at the land? Good grief, someone grab me an ice cold towel and slap it on the back of my neck.
Look at those beautiful ridges! Don't eat this ruffle though!
A show and tell moment. THIS is what bittersweet does to trees. It strangles them as they try to grow, and as the bittersweet vine grows upwards, it out competes the tree for sunlight. Let's not forget what it does to the surrounding soil. It's a damn beast to get under control if you don't stay up on it.
I found this rogue native wildflower all by itself and caged it.....only to have Woodchuck not see the flagging tape and mowed this plant, as well as the cage, down. Thankfully, within weeks, I found the land exploded with these. A Panicled tick tre-foil, native.
The focus lately, and bouquet of horrors today, is Queen Anne's Lace mixed with a bit Curly Dock.
One of my favorite sights: sumac drupes.
I went and investigated the Red Pine Tree and wanted to see its cute little pine cones closer. It had dropped them all around, and aren't they just adorable?
More storms moving in. This has been such an odd Summer for them.
May as well sit down and take a load off and watch them.
And again with the vultures, this time getting much closer. I am not dead yet, friend!
I finally made soaps, though they are being as weird as the Summer has been. Some times they can cure within a week, other times it takes months. We are somewhere in between that now with weeks since they were made and they still aren't ready. I had hoped to keep making soaps until we moved, but with this happening, I had to nix that plan. This was right when I cut them. The colors have darkened since! One batch of Honeysuckle and one batch of Nag Champa.
Every year we look forward to going to the fair to grab dinner. Some years it's harder than others to make sure we have the money to do so, and some years are more enjoyable than others. With everything going on with the bank concerning the construction loan, and then an issue with the dumpster company we rented from, on top of all of the other every day stuff, there was a very dark cloud hanging over us and I had to field a lot of BS messages and texts while walking around the fair. But it wasn't just that, the prices are just stupid high. And the portions have gotten smaller. I was so sick to my stomach from stress, that I couldn't even eat. I wish I could have just let everything go and had fun. That is something I am working on to trying to achieve in every situation. Some times I can do it, other times I can't. I guess it depends on how much pressure is coming, and for how long. I do realize that I don't have grace with myself to be human. I expect myself to be transcendent of that, and to be so enlightened that NOTHING bothers me and I handle absolutely every single thing with fairness and eloquence. Yeah. No pressure or unrealistic expectations of myself here!
Pierogi the Cat says, "Mom, you can't live like that! Come here and sit down and tell me all about it." I love ending each day with her snuggles.
And then I get to start each day with her snuggles as well! Though some times she can be very neurotic and that starts the day off with a little more stress, lol. But look at that sunrise on her fuzzy butt! 😆😍
Back out at the land to meet with a NIPSCO guy about laying/burying our gas line for the new house. While we wait, I am pulling invasives, and it's been a foggy morning and the ground spider webs are catching the droplets.
And I came across some brier, which makes me growl every time I do. When I was volunteering at Coffee Creek in Chesterton, I got pegged in the thigh by one of these and it was so painful and the mark from it lasted a month. I think of that now every time I see these. I honestly don't know if these are native or not.
I found a spindle in the forest, and it's likely Burning Bush because that seems to be all I find here as of right now.
Now that the meeting has happened about the gas line (we can't move forward yet, because of course! We need to re-clear the access path since it's been quite awhile since the electricity line was buried and things have grown since, and we need to call 811 to get the path flagged for where that electrical line is at), I can move on with my day.
Oh what a nice start....a Tree of Heaven has broken out from the usual area of them. Jerk. This is not far from where the house will be built. I do believe that I have repeatedly dealt with this particular one and can't seem to kill it even though it's less than several inches tall and I've tried at various times of the year. Honestly? I would rather deal with bittersweet than Tree of Heaven. Don't forget: a thumb on the leaves and a smell of peanut butter when scraped on the trunk will tell you the difference between the sumac and the TOH.
It's amazing how many varieties of plants can come up in such a small area of soil, and how, at least at some point, both good and bad co-exist.
Don't ask me if this is a good or bad one! I dunno!
I found some Campion, which is extremely sporadic throughout the land. I honestly don't go looking for this one, but pull it when I find it while looking for other things.
What I did find though was some Toadflax. What we refer to as The Prairie was covered in it when we bought the land. It has taken a number of years, and consistent mowing to see less of it. I did try and pull the plants when I first found it years ago, as is my way, but the ground was so compacted on the prairie that the upper part of the plant would just snap off and leave the root system. Luckily for me in this particular spot, I was able to pull them. They remind me of eggs, lol.
My next target was an area of invasives that we had cleared years ago and need to keep going back to--which hasn't happened often enough. But with planting a bunch of native plants near it, I need to stay up on it so it doesn't get out of control. We had noticed a little Juniper and Woodchuck thought maybe he could back the brush hog in on each side of it? After thinking about it, I felt it was best for me to do it all by hand....which will take more than one trip out there to deal with.
The nice thing is, by doing by hand, I found around four little junipers!
But I smashed my finger...at least my glove absorbed the blood so by the time I took my glove off, the finger was pretty clean. 😖It doesn't look like much in this picture but my finger was throbbing for days and I had a blood blister 😜
The humidity lately has been just stupid. One thing on my list for when we live full time at the land is to get some clothing that is meant for working in hot/humid conditions. As of right now, I've been buying my stuff from resale shops and while that has been immensely helpful in finding landwork clothes, some of them add to the warmth when I have to layer. Thick and durable really only needs to happen when I'm thorny areas, so I can leave those clothes for those situations. In the meantime, I try to find shade where I can, rest, hydrate, and lament.
The first of the goldenrod have graced us with their cheerful color!
I have not been able to work on the pond bank lately, other than a quick walk/look to pull a few glaringly obvious bad things, but I am cheering on the native plants to fight for their territory in the meantime! I pulled some cockspur on this walk through.
And I am wondering if this is Carex Aquatilis, water sedge? Or even Carex Atherodes, wheat sedge? There wasn't much of it that I could see.
This lovely little grasshopper was nearly completely camo'd!
And oh boy, oh boy!!! One of my favorites, though I am really not sure if this is the only one we have at the land, or the only one that will survive the ditch edge clean up....because I seem to think that we had them along that at one time too. The Tree of Heaven is starting to take that over now though 😡 Winged/shiny sumac. Those drupes don't look anything like the Staghorn one, and look at that winged main stem! These turn a brilliant red in the Fall and is about the only thing out there that does!
This is my dirty little secret. A red clover that volunteered itself along the driveway. It is not native. I keep telling myself to pull it and make some tea and then I forget. It will get wiped out when the house is delivered, so I will pull it before then. Clover fragrances are one of my favorite, but all we have around most of the area where we live is the non-native varieties--especially the white! It's EVERYWHERE.
Back here at home, I am relishing in these last months of seeing the beautiful things I enjoy about living here. The Solomon's Seal.
The volunteer white vervain on the patio (which Woodchuck wiped out eventually 😞).
This Tigrosa (genus of Wolf Spider) that got out of the grass in time before the mower came through.
While Woodchuck mowed, I creeped around the jungle treeline that the railroad owns, but that I have to occasional tend to to keep things out of our yard (Tree of Heaven). I thought that this was another TOH, but upon closer inspection, it's a walnut! Not just any walnut though, a Japanese Walnut and of course, non-native. Once it stops raining here this week, I will cut and treat it.
While Woodchuck mows our oldest sons yard, I finishing pulling the weeds that I didn't get to weeks ago. Even though these Mares tail are native, they are way out of control now.
Woodchuck and I walked home extremely overheated and exhausted. We are both looking forward to less chaotic days where we each can wear less hats.
Things have been absolutely all over the place with trying to move forward with the construction loan. I will never recommend to anyone the bank that we are using, and we are both looking forward to moving ahead and then ultimately, being done with them. At this point, we still don't know when the house will be ready and when are moving. Stay tuned, some big stuff will be happening soon!
