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(

Plotting and cutting and planning

 With our first major trip out to the land this year under our belts, we feel a bit better about the amount of work that we got done in one day and made some plans for future trips. My only concern was that things (plants) were waking up much sooner than in previous years. I've made notes about that and hopefully we can get on top of things sooner next year. This trip was mainly to work on the watershed, since I had looked at the calendar recently and realized we had less one month to work out there until October. We knew we had some invasives left to cut, but weren't exactly sure how many. We stopped working on that project when we cut nearly a dozen invasives, mostly Autumn Olive, and moved on to the next one. 

Woodchuck has been wanting to make a path on the South side of the watershed, so that would enable us to walk it starting from the North end, walk West, turn South, and now we would be able to turn East. His plan is to continue that path along the entire property line to meet up over by the blueberry bushes, just sightly Northeast of the watershed. Eventually we would also like to clean up along the West edge of the watershed pond. Various spots we want to be able to walk thru are an absolute mess of fallen trees, thick patches of invasives, and weird property lines. They did not make it easy on us when they divided the properties.

While Woodchuck took the tractor out to the watershed, I walked on my own so that I could look at areas along the way, and I was greeted by two hunting hawks. We usually hear her at the same time each day that we are out there and I am assuming it was the mother hawk teaching her juvenile to hunt. The juvenile landed in a tree directly above me! Once again I was in awe of all that I am witness to out there in such a wild and natural place! I caught the juvenile taking off from the tree! 👇

We used a GPS map I have of our property to walk where he should flatten. He did not mow it, only flattened it. This was before he started, while I stayed about halfway down the path so he knew what direction to come. I am looking West towards him.👇

I'm looking East here, where we are headed. 👇

He loves using his tractor, Ginny 👇

The new path looking East! 👇

The new path looking West! 👇

While we were making our plan about the path, I saw some garbage in a matted down area of tall grass in the watershed. Unfortunately, someone had been out there hunting yet again and doing some target practice on a plastic jug. I did find some feathers and bird poop by it too. We have signs, boundary markers, etc. but do intend on stepping up our signage and getting cameras out there. I just don't understand why people mess with what isn't theirs. 

On our regular land that is not in government programs, we plotted out where we will be planting new trees next month. Although I don't have the land as set up as I would like to be planting new stuff, I jumped on the opportunity. That way they will have a couple of years growing time before we move out there. Later on, once we are out there, we will plan on doing more. I ordered elderberry, service berry, and arborvitae. The arborvitae will go at the front, just outside of the forest line, to help give some privacy. The service berry will go along two ditches (I'm thinking that it will eventually help with erosion), and the elderberry was the hardest for me to place, since Woodchuck loves to mow everything down. I've got a couple of places in mind for those, but need to clear those areas up first and am running out of time to do it. Rush planning seems to be my new norm.

We also cut down the the existing fruit trees. The apple tree wasn't providing fruit, and the two pear trees looked like they could have been Callery Pear and the fruit was always rock hard. We will start over in the next couple of years. I am ordering some stainless steel tree tags, so there will be no guessing what we planted. I am also making notes about where they are going and how many, so that we don't have to try and remember and then guess later on.

 We started making plans on cleaning up some trashy areas of invasives and fallen trees, and talking about the pond. We have a guy coming out on Monday of next week to talk with us about getting some clean fill to build up and fill in the area of leaking, and Woodchuck and I are going today to treat the pond with Barley Straw Extract. It's our first time trying this and I don't intend on doing it every two weeks like the bottle says, just the Spring and Fall. We are already behind because the pond meal is showing up already, but I want to give this a shot. I am still worried that we are going to continue to spend money and time trying to fix this thing, and will fail or a neighbor will mess with the ditch that runs from it and back us up again. But I guess it's worth this last try before throwing in the towel. 

We recently went to get our taxes filed and she has a pond and has a windmill set up to aerate it. No electricity, which is what we needed. So I will add that to my list of things to research.

Big storms are on the way late tonight into tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see how the pond holds up when we go to see it in a few days after! Always a plan, always an unknown, and always an adventure! 💚

A rare day of water

 We recently made a trip to the NRCS/USDA office that portions of our land are under contract with, to hand in receipts to request a profit sharing reimbursement for supplies we bought for the back CRP girdling project (that had to have been a run-on sentence, because even typing that I was running out of breath as if I had said it aloud, lol). We made this trip no more than a week before the end of September, with only one more day in September that we would make it to the land, and they requested for us to get the girdling done by the end of September if we could. So we left their office and made our planned trip to the forest to finish the project!

We were even more prepared this time with mosquito netting we could wear over our heads, an ax, and the new electric chainsaw that we bought late last year for this very project. We were reaching the end of the end of the work, or at least this stage of it, and looking forward to marking this project done! ✔  This tree was girdled at the beginning of the project. 👇

It was a misty day, with no rainfall to really tally up, but it was enough to get everything drippy. We decided to take a walk since we couldn't do anymore work at this time. We always talk about how we enjoy seeing the land in the different seasons, and how each year we find something we've never seen before out there! We can also see a difference in the land after each effort we make, one of them being more Brownstem Speenwort  (Asplenium Platyneuron) (a kind of fern) coming up in the forests. 

There's a lot of baby pines trying to come up too, which will be something that I will keep an eye on so that we aren't in the position again of hardwoods getting out-competed. I never realized how much of a balancing act it can be to have a healthy forest, though because they had been let go for so long, maybe once they are healthy they will be better able to take care of themselves. 

As Fall is setting in more each day, I'm always in awe of the colors, but also on how fast trees can lose their leaves. I love long-term colors, but it always seems that just as the leaves are turning and becoming more "fragile" at the end of the stems, we will get a day of strong winds that knocks them all down. Don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for the sound of walking in the dry leaves, but I love the sound of them blowing on the tree just as well! 

We are also at the time of year when the honeysuckles are getting their berries and I have it on my radar to get the berries off of them and into back bags so they don't fall to the ground. I'm hoping to have that done within the next week or so. Then once I know the berries aren't going to be an issue, I'll cut and treat the plant itself. This particular one is an Amur Honeysuckle.

I also wanted to share what happens when you cut something and don't treat it. Woodchuck and I had a conversation about clearing out around the side of the shipping container, and even though the information was repeated several times, he still did it: which was mowing it down and driving away. No treatment. And the majority of those sprouts are bittersweet trying to come back up again, because the root system is still alive and well, and the seed bank too.

As hard as it can be at times (less so now that I am more accepting of it and less judgmental of myself and my experiences in life) to be so in-tune and tapped in to the nature around me, I love being able to find the beauty in all of it. So many things that so many people would not notice, and even now Woodchuck is starting to realize all that I see and he tells me that he never would have noticed on his own. Take, for instance, this wet and sleeping bumble bee on some golden rod. It's things like this that make my heart melt, that feed the wonder I have for the natural world around me, and have a greater appreciation for ALL of its inhabitants. 

We were able to walk across the back ditch now instead of haphazardly stumbling across slick logs. Even the deer have utilized it, and maybe this is their approval stamp? 😂💩𐂂

We entered the world of the Watershed Preserve, all ethereal and full of magick. This Dogbane stood out with its colors so vibrant, even Woodchuck could see it. And that's saying something!

I've always been fascinated with water drops on plants. There is such life, yet gentleness, in each.

And I really need to get the right kind of boots for this kind of weather...................

But this kind of weather feeds and refreshes, just as the sunny, warm weather does. The cycles and weather patterns are so important to all.

And my love for Mother E and all that I try to do to help her is always paid back me to ten-fold. On this day, there was just a little extra. Those teeny tiny vertebrae? SWOON 😍 I am rich with these treasures as the Knochenhexe (bone witch) comes alive again )O(