My Neck of the Woods

 Everything is in a frenzy....the trees are all of a sudden green, the invasives are leafing out and getting ready to flower, the birds are nesting, wildlife baby season is upon us, and we are almost into May. Of course there are days that I don't mind flying by, but there are those moments that I wish I could hit the stop button to prolong them. But time waits for no one and I am doing my best to be present in each moment and spend as much time as I can outside. Now that I am done with physical therapy, being outside in nature becomes my daily physical workout and my internal cleansing and healing. With each passing day we find ourselves pulling away from people and allowing our circle to become smaller and more quality, finding more comfort and peace and joy in nature.

Morel season is here where I am at, and I now have Woodchuck hooked on going into the forest with me. I am ever the person that believes that any gift I find in nature is meant to be, but also needing to be earned. So while we hunted for mushrooms, I also pulled garlic mustard and bittersweet and honeysuckle sprouts. The first morel of the season always gets a photo shoot!

But there are other fungi to be seen and to be fascinated by! Enter Witches' Butter. This is a parasitic fungi that feeds on other wood-eating fungi and not the wood itself. It is edible, but I have not been able to bring myself to try a jelly fungus yet....it took years to get up the nerve to try morels!

And let us lend an ear to Wood Ears, or Jelly ears. This is an edible mushroom, and powerful medicine with lots of health benefits. Again, I have not. Maybe one day!

Still so many things that I can't identify yet! I am looking forward to spending every day finding the smallest signs of life in the forest and on the land. To watch these things grow and change from stage to stage and to wonder and anticipate if it's something good to keep, or bad that needs to go! What a thrilling way to spend every day in nature, learning about the natural world around me. My app said that this is a magnolia, but time will tell.

I stopped weighing them out at some point, but between the two pieces of property, I think we managed about 3 to 4 pounds this year.

Everybody has a preference on how to handle their mushies. Mine is that I soak them in water for a short period of time, rinse and set free all of the insects that come out, then soak again for a short time. I cut mine in half, then flash freeze on a sheet tray with unbleached parchment. Then I put them in Ziploc freezer bags and freeze until I'm ready to use them. I know that is blasphemy to most, but it works for me to extend the harvest magick through the rest of the year.

Woodchuck and I are finally feeling better! Whatever we had was ROUGH, and I am so grateful that the allergist helped us, unlike the family doctor who told us to take Mucinex (we already were), and drink chamomile tea (I already was). We don't like being on medications, but some times you need them to fend off something becoming a much bigger problem. Although it was rough being outside on some days because of the wind that would irritate our chest and make us cough more, I also feel like we needed the healing that Mother E brings.

As we start wrapping up our life here at our current home, I am taking stock of some of my favorite things about it. The violets have come in full force.

I haven't cleaned the flower areas up yet this season. I like to wait as long as I can.

The wild geranium/cranesbill has gotten larger!

And the patches of Solomon's seal in the tree line are spreading now that more invasives are being removed.

 

With so much rain, I've mowed the lawn twice now, though admittedly it could have used it more often. A busy schedule, rain, some days being a little less strong physically have gotten in the way of that at times. The nights are cool, the days are warm, and this drone fly was sleeping under a flap of leather that protects the padlock on the shed. How fascinating!

Speaking of rain, I got done mowing just in time! The winds picked up towards the end, and the storm clouds rolled in.

Time to make dinner of spinach artichoke stuffed puff pastries (the guys didn't like them), and to try some new coffee. I normally would not buy it, it's pricey, but I got it on sale. It was good stuff!

I am also making sure to carve out creative time in between everything else. Even just 5 minutes a day sets my soul right. You can find my items for sale at www.offorestandheather.etsy.com 

On Woodchucks recent two days off, we had GORGEOUS weather for being outside and getting stuff done!

 While he mowed for the first time this season at the land, I finally dug up the Tiger Lily that I planted at the land entrance a few years ago. I was working at the resale shop and someone dropped them off and I didn't realize that these were the non-native ones. I've been saying for the past couple of years that I wanted to dig them up, and I picked one of the days that I felt the crappiest to stand in the wind and sun, coughing and sniffling, to finally get it done! 

Nearly every trip ends with a walk. What will the land reveal to us each time? He's getting better at finding them and has turned it into a friendly competition. I won this year, but he found some good sized ones!

The Summer in the back forest is going to be brutal for me. Standing water, mosquitoes out in full force already, and large patches of Lily of the Valley. I think that this will be the year that I spray them versus trying to dig them all up on my own again. I tried digging out a few recently and it is so wet that they just fall apart, leaving the root/rhizome behind.

But the Packera is a ray of sunshine back there, and makes my heart happy.

Finding the good things is necessary when you find so many bad, like this burning bush inside of my forest. I am sure that there are sprouts all over the place that I either haven't run across or haven't been able to identify in the stage of growth they are in. 

Muscadine, native to the states, though not necessarily in this area. I have never seen fruit on them, the plants themselves stay very small here.

Ranunculus Recurvutus, aka Blisterwort or Hooked Crowfoot. Native wildflower.

The watershed is alive with so many species of plants...bergamot (wild bergamot, bee balm)

This species of clover is not native to the area, but took over the fire break path on its own. I LOVE the smell of clover.

The wild strawberry flowers are reaching for sunshine! I rarely find any berries, and these would be super small anyway. I leave them for the wildlife.

Hard to believe that a storm will blow in a few hours after this walk! The sun is hot, but the wind is perfect enough to keep me comfortable!

I noticed the same kind of tree that I just found at home...a boxelder maple. While native, it's a fast growing tree that has brittle wood. Not something I want right next to our cars, when we are already having to cut down trees that broke and nearly hit our sons car...twice! But out there, it is the right kind of conditions to find it in, but will it out-compete the oaks? They can get up to 50 feet tall, with a canopy just as wide. I might post about it in a native plant group I belong to and get some feedback there.

As soon as we got out of the car, I told Woodchuck that it smelled like lilacs. We don't have any of those, so I knew right away what it was. The dreaded Autumn Olive are getting ready to flower. They.are.everywhere.

The flood waters continue to be a third pond, and I am unable to get close to the blueberry bushes without waders on....and I don't want to take the chance of getting stuck in the muck and irritating a hip trying to get unstuck. I can see that the pruned two bushes that are left are leafing out well though! Though this area will still be marshy at the time the fruits show, I may be able to get to them to harvest some. This area gets full sun nearly all day, so that will eventually cause the water to evaporate, and hopefully too by that time the contactor will be out to fix this area. One of the really cool things though is that there was a plover of some sort walking around the edge of the water on this visit. I couldn't get close enough to get a picture, and I didn't want to scare it away. They move so funny, it was adorable to watch!

Still under water! Blueberry bushes that we didn't realize we had for a couple of years at least, and this is where we were hoping to make a trail from the watershed back up to the prairie area. Will have to wait until the flooding is resolved with drainage pipes and vegetation. Woodchuck would lose his tractor in this, lol.

A wonderful way to spend Earth Day week! 💚

And now that we are out of hibernation season, I am enjoying the fresh, raw ingredients of Spring! A cucumber, avocado gazpacho with croutons I made from some store-bought sourdough.

As we pack this place up, it strikes me how each part of the year will be our last here. I am ready though to let this be someone else's home. I hope it's a young couple and this is their first home, like it was mine. A place to raise their kids, a small town to let them run and play in, a small-town school where you have your classmates from k-12 and the high school and elementary are in the same building, just on opposite sides. I foraged for some mushies, and realize it will be the last time doing that here. I am watching the grapevines leaf out, and realized that I won't be here to harvest them. I will miss the bird song, noticeably the robins, in the early mornings and evenings and the way the sun is in the front of my house all day, the South. Will we use the fire pit one more time before we move? We've reconfigured it yet again, getting rid of the broken blocks.

 But it's time, and I know it. I am allowing myself to feel the joy and excitement of the next step, of something new and fresh, of being able to walk out the door and into the trees. We are deserving, we are rich in blessings, and they keep coming. )O(

Go!

 There's been a lot of red light, green light being played over the past 5 years. We have made so much headway on the land, my memory jogged after going through my computer to start clearing out pictures. That place was WILD when we bought it, nearly so thick with vegetation that you couldn't walk through it, definitely couldn't access certain spots at all, and you were covered in ticks. We have a lot to be proud of. Including that we got approved for the construction loan and are moving forward with the building process now! We meet via Zoom with the bank tomorrow, which happens to be Woodchucks birthday, to go over the next steps. In meantime, we carry on as we have been. (UPDATE: the bank called and had to reschedule. The meeting won't happen until next week.)

Checking trail cams. I am up to checking 7 at the land and 1 here at home. I don't know how I entered in to this contract of he goes to work and I do everything else, but here we are, lol. And look what I found!

We made it through another holiday. Easter. I hate holidays. Woodchuck worked, and I made cookies (lemon cookies with strawberry icing and Easter sprinkles. I got maybe four of them over the course of a few days, our son eating the majority of them. Maybe I'll make some for when my sister comes home for a visit next week! Dinner was great, and the ham was the best I think we've ever had! The eggs were bought from a friends local farm stand!

Spring is in full force now, no matter what the up and down temps say! All of the plants, both good and bad, are waking up and I get to see one of my favorite sights.....rain drops on leaves!

We trodded around the damp yard to clean out the greenhouse and shed, and loaded up the truck to take those things for storage at the land.

I won this lot at a local auction and am looking forward to sprucing them up and using them!

I am not thrilled with using the shipping the container as storage though. It's fantastic as far as the amount of space, but the condensation builds up and water drips from the ceiling down the whole length of it, and it stinks inside like gasoline and mustiness.

I also took a wreath back that I had made at the land and had out front of our home. Probably a good thing to return it to the forest, since it had lots and lots of tiny insect holes from having it at our house.

The pond is super full, but the flooding on the other side of it has started to go down.

We took a quick walk and the same Callery Pear tree is on the neighbors land. It will probably never get cut down, and now that I cut one down on our watershed not far from this, I will continue to keep an eye open.

We had to spend some time here at home working on the tree line that runs the length of our side yard and driveway. The railroad owns it, but does not maintain it and trees are breaking and nearly hitting our cars. There's also a lot of invasives, like honeysuckle and Tree of Heaven, in there that I have been trying to remove for over 5 years now. 

Before.

During. Woodchuck cutting the larger, broken trees with his gas powered chainsaw.

We will be renting a dumpster once our tax return comes in, so we can start disposing of things around the house and property, like this fence panel that I have been asking for years to remove. The bottom has bird nest fungi, one of my favorites!

A handful of hours later, and only about halfway cleaned up. A little bit at a time though, especially since we have been sick and really shouldn't be doing this right now.

A couple of days later, I was in town and ran to the grocery store after physical therapy. As I was loading my car up in the driver side back seat, I noticed my tire. I was LITERALLY right next to the tire place, but I had frozen food in the car and it was a warmer day than usual. I also know Woodchuck, he would want to see that tire to make sure that it was indeed split. In hindsight, I should have taken the loss on the frozen stuff, because I could see the dry rot for myself, but I didn't do that. I drove the 20 minutes home, unloaded, he looked at the tire--and yes, indeed, it was split--, called the tire place, and we drove the 20 minutes back to town to sit there for 2 hours waiting to spend $500+ on two tires. 

I am sure that every time they put that car up on the lift, they think I am a terrible driver! The rims are all scuffed up, the whole underside is ripped apart, but I bought the car that way! 😂 And hear me out. I know now that Woodchuck does not want anything to do with car maintenance, repairs, upkeep, other than oil changes. He doesn't want to spend the money, he doesn't want to spend the time. BUT. I had my car in to the same tire place FOUR times since late February of this year. My smooth ride went to a wobbly mess. Woodchuck would some days say he felt it and to get it in, and other days say he couldn't feel it and it was fine. He had me take it in for an alignment, a rotation, and I took it in twice for a balance. Yet, nobody saw the dry rot. He said that is not what they are looking for when they do those services, they are looking at the treads. I mean. I guess I don't get that since I wasn't a car mechanic of any sort like he was, and their face was closer to this spot on the tire while they were messing with them all of those previous times than mine was while loading groceries. 🤔Anyhoot, it's done now.

I've finished another project! This one was something I made years ago, and when something doesn't sell for that long, I revamp it. I added two colors of glass beads to it. Don't know what a medicine wheel is? See my previous post for an explanation.

On our most recent trip back to the land, Woodchuck changed the oil in the truck, and I went into the forest to pull garlic mustard, honeysuckle, and baby pine trees. It must be baby season for spiders too, unless these are just young ones, or maybe a small male? Wolf spiders. 

Not a bad haul for someone recovering from hip surgery and working alone. I felt pretty good too, no tightness or pain.

We are slowly, so very slowly fencing of the tree saplings. Plastic mesh deer fencing is a pain in the ASS, especially if there is the slightest breeze. That is part of why we are only doing a few at a time, lol.

Stinging nettle season!

Elderberry!

We took a moment to sit on our bench.

And then I picked a handful of garlic mustard to try and eat at home with dinner.

All washed up, dried, and ready to cook. I cooked it, tried one piece, spit it out and threw the rest away. It was too bitter for me! I will continue to pull it and bag it up.

This past weekend, Woodchuck and I participated in the indoor rummage sale at the Expo Center where I used to work. It was so nice to have his help!!! I set everything up the day before by myself, but it was nice having him there to help tear down and carry stuff to the car....and of course to have his company all day! We did well, and got to see some familiar faces. It really was a fantastic day overall! 

A couple of days ago, we celebrated his 65th birthday! It was a tough day for him emotionally, so I tried to make it light and fun. I made him a cake, which I found out is now a no-no to surprise him with a cake. I have to always ask now what he wants. We headed to New Buffalo for some resale shopping (nothing to be found), metaphysical store hopping (nothing to be found), a stop at a new-ish business where they make their own breads, serve coffee, have produce growing on-sight (they were closed), went to lunch at The Stray Dog, which has rave reviews (we weren't impressed, especially for the price), and since we were right at the lake we wanted to take a walk (it was raining and with us recovering from some chest stuff, we didn't think it would be smart to get drenched and chilled). So we came back to Indiana and stopped at the grocery store, then my friends workplace to get some empty boxes, the electronics recycling site, library and post office, and then home. I could really get used to him having two days a week off and having it be like it used to be when we could do day dates more consistently.

He used the free time to start calling contractors and getting bids. We also found out that our son has found an apartment and will be moving out in early June! So the house is filling up with packed boxes from us all, and I am purging decades of stuff faster than ever before. It fills amazing to be letting go of what has been weighting down my spaces, and to make it to where I won't be spending as much time managing STUFF, but having experiences, freedom, and flow. )O( 💜