Another toy edition!

 It was going to be another scorcher of a day, and so we headed to Das Zem (The Land) early again and this time with our youngest son in tow! By now you should have guessed that we had a plan of attack for our time out there, and mine was to work alone. Again. Le Sigh. Thus far staying on the outskirts of the second CRP forest, it was time to make my way in and start attacking those patches of Lily of the Valley that I've been seeing on our quick walks thru. This was going to be my first time taking the work wagon in! Little did I know how difficult it would be for me!

Pulling a wagon is difficult enough when you've had a shoulder surgery just over a year ago and the other one needs it. Not to mention that the humidity is making me hurt everywhere! And then the weight of the wagon and everything you are hauling. But if I didn't trudge on alone, it wasn't getting done. The best I could do was take breaks when needed and try not to injure myself. It was extremely difficult for me to try and pull that wagon over the downed limbs, but she performed like a champ!

                                            

The above picture shows Lily of the Valley surrounded by various other plants.

You'll also notice poison ivy in a lot of my pictures. It is everywhere on the land right now! I ended up finding 6 patches of LOV, the final one being the biggest one that was the original one I had found last month. I was about 6 plants short of getting it completely torn out when the guys let me know that they were done with their project. It seems that the toy posts I do get more love than the plant posts. I can't blame you, I agree that pulling invasives isn't much fun.

Hubby and the boy used some oak to build a boat saw horse to store it and elevate it. They ran out of twine to build the second one, so that will be done next time. This keeps the boat up off the ground, and they are portable as well.

I still needed to make it out on the watershed though, to identify if the tree/shrub I found last week was multiflora rose. Indeed, it is.

Pictures have been sent to the NRCS and I'm waiting to hear back from them. The growth on the watershed, at last the part along the pond that we walked is INSANE! The amount of ferns on the land anyway is just mind-blowing, and on this area the sensitive ferns are loving the ground. They are as tall as my waist and go as far as the eye can see! We also have more willow along this pond that we also have along the main pond. Although native, it can easily take over (what would be referred to as "aggressive"). I'll have to find out more about those. Right now, I am making as many observations about the land as I can so that once we get the okay from the government, and we get our tractor, we can start working on really getting things under control.

While we are grateful to become stewards of this land, and have a plan in what we'd like to see it become, we are extremely overwhelmed right now and not able to do too much until we start getting the green lights. Even then we will be overwhelmed at the amount of work to do after so many years of the land being let go. Breathe in, breathe out.....breathe in, breathe out....it's going to be a process and not something done quickly! I hope that you are enjoying seeing the posts along the way!