As Summer color gives way to Fall hues

 It feels like to me that Spring and Summer lasted two months collectively before we had a couple of weeks of beautiful Indian Summer and straight into gloomy, wet, and chilly Fall! But honestly, I am grateful for it all! What a wonderful area we live in to experience to much diversity in weather and seasons. 

Woodchuck continues to do well after his shoulder surgery! He says some days are better than others, but he continues to do his at home therapy exercises every other day. My shoulder has yet to be figured out. Most are suspecting a pinched nerve, though I am still not letting go of the possibility of a tear somewhere. A spine and back x-ray was done and I was found to have some bulging and slipped discs, bone spurs, a tumor, and an infection somewhere. Physical therapy provides no relief and sometimes only makes it worse. They are only focusing on my neck, so I've started focusing on my back, especially the lower back and my anterior pelvic tilt. That has provided the most relief! 

I started a new full time job in mid-August after we took our youngest back to college, and left that job a week ago. I promised myself that I would only put myself in places that felt good. While I stayed there longer than I should have, I got out before I had invested too much more time. I am grateful for the lessons and that job covered expenses for the first semester of our sons Senior year of college. I will continue to look for a second job while working my original part-time job at a resale shop. Leaving my full time job also made it possible to be with Woodchuck while he was on his most recent weeks vacation. Our week was CRAMMED full of projects, errands, and several medical appointments between the two of us. It was so nice to not feel the pressure of the job and to just be with him!

Projects at the land are picking back up, with snow in the forecast this coming week. Woodchuck has built a shooting range back drop of sorts (it's not done yet). Not where I would have focused the energy right now, but I wasn't going to stop him, lol, he deserves to do things of his own. I am hoping to also use it for knife throwing and shooting a bow and arrow, since I am not comfortable handling guns.

I worked on removing invasives from around the pear and river birch trees, then moved on to an already dead tree that was killed by multiflora rose and was surrounded by many other invasive plants at the base. The before and after.....

                        We will leave the tree for now! It can still be utilized by birds, insects, etc. 

The weather was amazing for the week of our vacation and the time we spent working on the land. I even took the time to cut off all of the honeysuckle berries from the bush I cut down, just to keep me there outside longer and to prevent the seeds from being spread. I black bagged them as usual and picked up as many that fell to the ground that I could find.

                                            We got all of the work lights hung in the barn! 

And we started burning the pile of removed trees that had been sitting for a year! It didn't go as smoothly as it could have, but nobody was seriously hurt and at least we made some headway. We will continue to break it down into manageable piles and burn it little by little.

Yesterday, we took a road trip to Rochester, Indiana to a modular home building facility to see if that would be a more affordable way to build. It was a very interesting tour of the actual workshop, and a couple of the model homes! The first model home we walked through was very similar in floor plan to the one that we designed, even if the outside was very, very different. I think we could have tweaked materials to get the aesthetic on the outside we were looking for, but honestly, it was going to cost just as much, and most likely more, to go with the modular facility than to just go with our original design. 

We have some other things to check into before zeroing in on the way to proceed. It's honestly getting harder and harder to leave the land when we are there, we are both looking forward to spending so much more time out there. We didn't even get to camp this year!

Woodchuck will be calling the forester this week to set up a day to meet with us at the land in November and walk the CRP forests to mark trees that we will be girdling to start thinning. The health of the second CRP continues to decline and trees are snapping in half. I am honestly really looking forward to learning more about this process and to see the positive changes it will bring, even if it will change the look of the forest as we know it and fell in love with. It is all for the betterment of it, and to let the native trees grow and thrive again. Once we have that plan down, we will spend this Winter girdling, as well as continuing to remove invasives from inside the forests. During our most recent walk there, I found a large patch of honeysuckle in the second forest that I will need his help with. If he doesn't want to help, I will break it down into manageable pieces for me to work on by myself. But it will get done.

I have a very good feeling about 2024 for us. I had already been saying it to Woodchuck the past month or so, and when I was walking out of the imaging department, the tech said, "It's going to be your year next year, Heather, make sure you celebrate every day." I told her that I would if she did too, because we all deserve it every day. I leave you now with some colors from the land 💛💛💛

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/