You're such a ditch! the long-winded edition

 Most projects we take on don't go as planned. Take the patio at our current home. When we moved in it was rock and in those rocks were dwarfed trees and other plants that the previous owner enjoyed. We needed a place for our son to play, and ride his bike, etc., so we removed all of the stone and plants and put down patio block. And during heavy rains, it floods. So I got the BRIGHT idea to remove the blocks at the corner and in a design at the patio table area and plant grass only in those spots. Sweet Lords of the Plant Kingdom, what was I thinking?! Oh it helped the flooding issue just.fine. but why didn't I take into consideration that hubby doesn't weed whack but like twice a season and that's only because I keep reminding him that he hasn't done it and it needs done. And now that we are in a drought, the only things growing are what are coming up in all of the seams and nooks and crannies of that patio. Including that grass. Ugh.

But the other thing that didn't go as planned as the burning of the tree debris pile at the land. Woodchuck just *had this feeling* that the fire department was going to light it up and POOF, it would be ashes. Since they did keep pushing back the day they would be doing it, we kept adding to it. Fresh, green, healthy bushes and other invasives. It's gonna burn, he kept saying! And we show up the day after the burn and are like, "why aren't we seeing smoke?" as we are pulling in. And "Uh oh, what if they didn't show up again?" as we are walking over to the area. The closer we got, we could smell that something had been burned, and many of the trees were charred, but didn't burn completely because they were still too green, but it did take all of the leaves off. Well shit.

This totally messes up the plan for the prairie area now. Woodchuck called them on the next business day and asked if this is a work in progress or one and done. We've never done this before, we didn't know! And nope, it's a one and done and they said to see if people want fire wood. Soooo, now we have to clean this up. Ugh. Well. we'll have plenty of fire wood for when we camp, which sadly isn't all that often. While out there we took stock of other projects we could be hitting, so we walked around and made a plan.

We have got to get to this back ditch while we have dry weather! (above)

And aw, heck! While we are back here, let's start getting this area cleaned up too! Sadly, this is the ONLY spot we got cleaned up right here. So much to do and only two of us!!! We'll come back to it soon though because I will need to come this way to access the watershed pond to treat the phragmite. 

So when we went back we tackled the front. We always think we are going to get farther than we do! We usually spend about 3 hours on one little spot, and with 15 acres to be working on at various points in the year, it's just not all going to get done. But we managed to liberate an old tree and some young junipers, from multi-flora rose. We need to come back to this area to take down some dead trees and continue moving along the front at some point.

    

                                                                            Before ☝

    

                                                                           During ☝

                                                                        After ☝

And a wall of so much more to go! Checking on the area again days later, the multi-flora rose that we couldn't reach to pull out of the tree has died. Yes, friends, the multi-flora will climb trees! This tree had that AND bittersweet. The majority of the tree died because it lost the battle for sunlight, but there are still green parts higher up where the invasive plants hadn't reached yet.

You know that I always say Mother Nature gifts those of us who fight for her. We are not just gifted with our own lives, but get to see the others we impact. How this little mantis did not get caught up in the tractor, the brush hog, or under our boots I will never understand, but what a treat!

And I have made it a habit of giving myself breaks along the way of the work to make pretty things out of destructive things. I have several wreaths now made from grapevine and bittersweet. Though many have asked what I will do the wreaths, I haven't decided. It is my understanding that I can't sell the bittersweet ones because of the new terrestrial plant rule in the state I live in. I am sure one of the reasons behind it is because they don't want people to see the wreaths and think what a great idea it would be to grow invasive plants like this Oriental Bittersweet. Another idea would be to stop the inadvertent spreading of it. For now they are sitting in my workshop, but once we move to the land I may hang them through as a ward of sorts to keep the oriental bittersweet at bay. That being said, I know it will take years to get the issue under control out there.

                                     For example. The front ditch is one of the worst areas for it.

All of those tendrils reaching up are individual vines coming off of one (at least) main root. (above).

 Directly across from the this spot, on the other side of the ditch, is this monster. (below) I can only assume there's a Staghorn sumac under the crap, but all you can see the bittersweet that has overtaken it. 12 foot tall. I doubt that the sumac is still alive, deprived of sunlight. I'm not shitting you when I say that I/we have our hands full and this will take years to get the land back to the native species home it should be. I admit that I get scared some times that we will get too old and too frail to keep working it before I see it done.

We are workhorses, and all work almost all of the time. So in response to Woodchuck's work schedule getting changed with no notice, we decided to camp out on Das Zem! The few days prior to were PERFECTION. No humidity, breezes, clear skies. Of course that changed the night we decided to camp. We were both dripping sweat barely five minutes into trying to remember how to set up the tent. Why did we even bother showering before we went there?! It's never a fast thing to set that tent up, but

we prevailed!

Home away from home for the night! Always seems like a lot of work for just one night. 😑

It was almost 8 p.m. before we were able to get the grill going, and sit with a beer to watch the sun sink.

Woodchuck even got fancy this time with the bathroom needs! We've always had the bucket, but he added the seat this time.....just wish he would have sanded the wood a little better and centered things correctly. I'm surprised I don't have splinters on my tush.

With the naked eye we could see some bright stars, but with my phone camera, we could see so many more in the pictures. It was truly magickal!

And the darker it got, the more magickal it got! But 5 beers later, and staying up way past our usual bedtime had caught up with us. Time to hit the hay because we had a lot of hard work waiting for us on the next day and it was supposed to be really hot.

I slept like shit, there is just no sugar-coating it. An air-mattress is no place for a 200 pound Slovakian man named Woodchuck, and his 5 foot tall wife who is the size of a 5th grader (okay, maybe 4th grader. But I refuse to say 3rd grader!). It was hot, and I don't handle polyester anything very well and that is what the sleeping bags are made of, as well as the sheet we put on the mattress. This was the first time we'd camped out since my hip surgery and my hip says NO MORE air-mattress, lady!!!

But the crows didn't come screaming out of the forest this time before the sun rose, in fact, the first bird I heard was a cardinal in a tree next to us at 4:15 a.m. And then the symphony started. Waking up to those sounds never gets old! In fact, as I am typing this I have tossed all caution to the wind, turned off the a/c and thrown open the windows. It may only be for an hour and it may be an irritation to my asthma with the high mold counts, and listening to the neighbors dogs barking by 8 a.m. is always frustrating, but that morning bird song gets me every time. 😍

Up and at them with a quick breakfast of organic chicken sausages on the grill and another beer for Woodchuck. I was already dehydrated enough, thank you very much, so I had juice! 

We packed up the stuff we weren't going to need anymore, took down the tent so that the dew could dry off before we packed it up too, and then headed to the (gulp) back ditch. We have worked on this ditch area three times now, and are not even quite halfway down the length of it. The next trip out there doesn't look promising to work on it again, and I am trying to figure out exactly what *will* we be working on when we go out there next.

The first thing was to get the drainage tubes cleared out and dug out a bit better. We don't know if the previous owner, who put in this ditch, put the tubes in this position, or if they've been heaved up over time by twigs and branches. A lot of what we are doing out there is trial and error. Do something one way and observe it over time to see how it responds. With the lack of rain, there's been nothing to observe right here. Below is what is looked like before all of the work started.

You can just see the black tubes above, at the bottom of the picture.

Many staghorn sumacs wrapped in grapevine.

                                                       I'm just gonna grab a quick snack!

The ditch was dry but a little slick in spots. So many types of toads and frogs in it!

And this corner up on the bank is now clear!

And after, down in the start of the ditch. You can see the black tubes clearly. Farther on in the ditch is another tube that was buried in the second CRP forest by the previous owner. It has a plastic grate covering on it and something large has been gnawing it. Possibly a Woodchuck? (no, not my human one!)

Walking farther down the ditch line, we see it is all dried up and we decide that this needs to be our continuing project for as long as possible.

Lots of various kinds of animal tracks down in the muck!

           Another day, a little farther in to the ditch. So.much.grapevine. and MFR. The before.

The after.

The tree is actually down in the ditch, and possibly rotted, but we don't have time right now to deal with it. It's not causing any issues, and other things are. I slipped and fell while working on this spot too and landed hard on my right hip. I bounced right back up but was a little sore and worried that maybe I messed some thing up. The surgeon told me to be careful through the month of June and this happened right at the end of it. So far so good though!

I tackled the front ditch on my own the last trip out while Woodchuck serviced his tractor. I thought I could whip right through it, as I always think, and I always end up being wrong. I started on the worst part of it, because there was a tree that needed help. It was covered in oriental bittersweet and the MFR was starting to climb it. Before pictures x 2 👇

This bank of this ditch is lined with bracken ferns and while I tried to be careful, a small portion was trampled in my efforts to clean the area up. I always feel bad about that. I have found them to be very resilient though and grow back if they are mowed down, but I don't like to play with the possibility that they may not at some point. 

Once some of the icky stuff was cleared, I found a little treasure! At first glance I thought it was a bone, but it ended up being something more hard to find on the land.

After pictures x 2 below 👇

These piles of vegetation that I cut out and piled will be taken care of by the tractor next time we go out there. 

I left the grapevine wreath on the tree I pulled it from. There's still lots left in the tree itself, but it will die of now that it's cut from the main root source. I could feel the tree sigh in relief and where its prize proudly! It had been liberated!

And once again in the liberation, I found the tiniest of creatures. I was worried at first that it had been tagged the herbicide I had to use when I cut the bittersweet and MFR (and AO!), but I believe it is okay. It's a baby (referred to as a Nymph) walking stick 😍 

And the tiniest bit of amber (tree resin). Something may have injured the tree in this spot. I have gathered tree resin in the past for art projects, but not only do I have enough already, this tree needs this to help protect the damaged area.

                                                        Another oriental bittersweet wreath.

                                                                A grapevine wreath.

And a video of the baby walking stick. Woodchuck and I are getting so excited to start the process of building and to move to the land and to see these things on a more consistent basis. There is magic all around and everywhere we go 💚💜

Nature Warrior, Honeysuckle edition

* Please read to bottom where I include some very important information about the new Terrestrial Plant Rule in Indiana. Various species of Honeysuckle are on that list!*

I am finding the amount of work on our less than an acre of land to handle invasive/non-natives plants overwhelming and I feel so far behind! I went into the small and narrow treeline last week to keep pulling Dame's Rocket (I did not plant those! Hell, it seems like 99% of what I've got growing here and need to remove is not something we planted!) but was promptly, and without grace, repeatedly carried out by the mosquitoes! I barely filled one bag and that was done with much swatting and cursing. I did manage to get a couple of armfuls of those plants out, plus some stinging nettle, burdock, etc.

The honeysuckle is in bloom right now and I've got one large tree/bush of it in the that treeline and a few smaller ones that aren't matured yet. It is yet another invasive that has made it to the new Terrestrial Plant Rule list here in Indiana and it is a prolific beast...as most invasives are. Why do invasives and non-native plants have to be such pretty colors and have such heady scents, damn them!?

Honeysuckle was one of the first invasives I was taught to identify (along with wild grape vine), at a watershed preserve I volunteered at a couple of Summers ago and it's one of the few plants that I can identify usually by just the bark. I used to work at a county park for a couple of years and was horrified to see how much was there, not to mention have you looked along roadsides?! The park assured me that they have someone who comes and takes care of them (by getting rid of them, of course), however, I just recently took a walk through that park a couple of years later and it is the same as ever. Those plants have not been touched at all. There has been no attempt whatsoever to do anything about those...and there was a lot of garlic mustard still there as well. Part of the reason I left!!! Anyhoot. I digress.

Honeysuckle. Research it a little and you'll find variations of it, like so many damn other plants, and some sites will say that there is supposedly a native species of the plant here in Indiana (a trumpet honeysuckle. But people will hear the word Honeysuckle and just assume they are all okay) and others will tell you that there is no such thing. It's super important to talk with people who work in this kind of field, to help take a wide array of information and zero it in a little and make sure it's correct. You also have to be sure that the information you are reading is for your particular state. I've read something, saw that a plant was considered bad, and didn't notice that is for another state. Here though? These honeysuckle are all coming out. But I wanted to utilize the blossoms one last time. DO NOT plant honeysuckle in the state of Indiana  just to utilize the blossoms. Again, these were already growing wild, and we are taking them out! I've had many people ask me why I wouldn't just leave them in order to utilize the blossoms each year? Because that is not important to me. Because that would be irresponsible and when we know better, we should do better. Because this crap, as with many invasive species of plants and animals, get out of control REALLY.FAST. And I want a healthy and diverse NATIVE eco-system.

Woodchuck (the hubby) made me a drying screen. We had some packages of oak snap-together frames that he used and then some metal screen that he hastily stapled on (never mind my delicate- skinned fingers!)

I raised the screen to get air flow and just rested each corner on some tall mason jars that are filled with various rocks that I've collected over the years. Nice and sturdy! I like to pick anything in the morning, when it's not still dewy, but before the sun gets high and hot. Fresh and supple is my goal. Some times I just go off of smell of each plant (Flying By the Seat of My Pants? I'm telling ya, it's fitting in so many areas of my life!) The hubby forgot to take the lid off of stain can for me before heading to the store, and I needed something to do, so I went and did the sniff test and looked at the blooms and determined that they were ready for me! (is anything ever really ready for me? HA!)

White blooms are the freshest and newest, more yellow-ish blooms are older and beginning to dry up and wilt. Those are super easy to get off, but also too easy to knock to the ground. Maybe laying a sheet or something underneath the area will catch those? I wanted to be careful anyway since we have poison ivy growing in this area I was in. Blooms are usually in three's from what I've noticed on the plant that is here.

I don't let them sit in this container for long and get them right to the drying the screen. I should add that the workshop these are drying in has a dehumidifier running, so it makes the perfect place for drying out herbs and such. I don't let them sit in the container for long because I want to get airflow around them, and I have forgotten herbs/flowers before and then they got moldy. Lots of pollen, and some tiny little bugs...it will all settle down.

I sprinkle them around, trying to not have any clumps, because again, air flow is key! They'll start to darken (yellow) and shrink as they dry. I don't rush this, I don't want to jar them and then have them mold because they weren't dry enough. Sprinkle and then walk away and forgot about them. You'll notice most natural things will start to shrivel or dry up very soon after being picked.

I use this same technique for things like lemon balm and dill too! I have a hanging thingy that is mesh and tiered and supposed to be for laundry, but I've tried that too with the dill with good results though it's not as easy and accessible as this screen. But this also takes up our workshop table and if we want to work on other projects, this has to be moved. I should also say, I have used regular window screens too for this! Literally. Hubby takes it out of the window to put the a/c in and I snag it. He doesn't like that (because what if my herbs and flower suddenly wield swords and cut the screen!?), so that's why he was more than happy to make this for me on what was already a very busy day for him!

Now, back to being to be a responsible steward of this precious land I live on and call home, because I'm dealing with removing invasives and non-native plants here for some very specific reasons. I care and I want a healthy eco-system that can be as it's supposed to be as much as my two little hands can make possible. This new (and fabulous!) Terrestrial Plant Rule that was recently passed here in the state of Indiana makes it illegal to gift, sell, transport, etc., any plant that is on that list. These blooms were harvested for my use only, with the intention of taking out the plant completely soon. We've already removed a winged burning bush (sold to me years ago at a farmers market. Make sure you do your homework before buying any plants from farmers markets, online, home improvement stores, etc. Some plants are just misidentified and marked incorrectly because of it and others know exactly what they're doing selling invasive plants and they don't care about the ecological impact it's having on native territory and plant species) and some Tree of Heaven to deal with (I have no stinking idea how it got here, and it seems like it's going to be very difficult for a layman to get rid of. Sigh.) So. Don't go transporting, planting, selling, gifting anything on the list in Indiana. Big no-no. And you'd be very naughty and on my shit list.

Also, I was taught that if the honeysuckle has Its berries, do not drop the cuttings on the ground. Just as a rule for myself, any invasive that I take out gets bagged in a heavy black bag. SOME plants can be left to dry that way (in the bag) and then burned once completely dried out, but we don't like to burn, so we bag them and them throw them out. Sadly, I was not able to find ANY written information (it may be spoken in one of the many YouTube videos I ran across but did not watch) on not letting the berried trimmings lay on the ground, but it makes sense, right? If it's spread by self-seeding and birds, you wouldn't want the berries laying at ground level or out in the open. Same with Autumn Olive and Burning Bush when they have their berries (and I was also told when we took out the winged burning bush here, not to let the roots come into contact with soil again or they'd take root again. In other words, no throwing the root ball in a field, ya'all!) I'm lucky to have become friends with the gal that I was volunteering under to remove invasive plants and I've just to send her a text with a question and maybe a picture and she gives me a lot of valuable information and helps me identify plants that I don't know yet.

Here are some sources to check out! Once you learn to identify non-native plants, and trying to remove them, you begin realizing how they are everywhere and just how big of an issue this has become.

 https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/us/indiana
https://www.entm.purdue.edu/iisc/pdf/Terrestrial_Plant_Rule_Fact_Sheet_final.pdf
https://www.in.gov/dnr/6351.htm
https://www.indianawildlife.org/wildlife/native-plants/
https://www.misterhoneysuckle.com/
https://greatriversgreenway.org/honeysuckle/