SPRING!

 

Yes, it's finally here. It has been here for a few weeks now, actually, and these pics show the flowers that are presently turning into Jungle. More ticks than I've ever seen in my life, as well.

 

The forsythia by the garage in bloom. The forsythia, not the garage. I must take some cuttings and spread this stuff around.

Last year I found some honesty (known to some as the money plant or Chinese Pennies) out by the garage. I never saw it before, prolly because I cut it down with my trimmer before it had a chance to show itself for what it was. Luckily I got lazy last summer, and by fall, I had hundreds of plants with disc-shaped seed cases. When fiddled with, these seed discs let slip their outer skins (which contain the seeds, which I saved), revealing a white translucent cellophane-paper-like flat disc that makes beautiful arrangements that keep well for months. I left a few to propagate more plants, but wasn't expecting this many. By next year, I'll clear the rest of the little hill and plant ten times as many. I'll be swimming in honesty!!!!

The...LARCH. With the pear in full bloom. I walked by this tree and couldn't hear myself think for all the bees. We had no pears or apples last year, big crops up here, all due to a mid-April freeze. Not so this year; they'll prolly be a bumper crop to make up for last year. I found two small apple trees on the north property line. I'd never seen them until they bloomed a couple of weeks ago. I intend to trim them up and keep them dwarf.

The animal pens between the house and the pond. SIGH. Every spring I go to battle with the briars, bittersweet and poison ivy here, and every year it kicks my butt. It pisses me off that one generation of farmers could soil their nest so badly. Beginning in 1938, the last tenants (who restored this place) began dumping their trash right here. Under that huge briar to the left is a four-foot deep pile of glass, plastic, and rust, which will take a front end loader to remove. Yes, they were simple farmers. The common clay. The salt of the earth. You know. MORONS. To soil your nest right where this property's history started, where the animals were kept, right where you can see it every day! Criminal. Two hundred years of farmers never did this.

Beginning the task of clearing the north side of the animal pens, which are only stone walls now. The Stihl chainsaw and Husqy trimmer got a lot of use this day! Pile of metal trash in front, firewood to the right, and small burning piles in the middle. Now I just need a dry, non-windy day.

This'll keep me warm by November.

So'll this.

Looking good. Now I have to rake the leaves into a mulch pile, hack and cut out the stumps, move three tons of stones one by one, and kill the newly emerging briars, bittersweet and pis'n ivory with torch and/or 'brush killer,' a fancy name for a spray that makes Roundup look like tap water. I hate chemicals, but hate those plants more. One application and that's all she wrote. Interesting thing is that by next year, all the other plants will come up, but the bad stuff will not return. It's about my only use of the ChemWorld on this farm. I'm saving the large cherry, maple, and dogwoods, along with some well-balanced shrubs for sculpting. I take out the weakest saplings and keep a few strong ones to take over when the big ones go to tree heaven. I want a lot of sun for this area, though. I also want to see the pond from the house, a goal yet to be realized.

The front edge of the trash pile. Fifty feet across and four feet deep in the center. Mixed with firewood and pis'n ivory.

A Journey to the Center of the Trash Pile will require the removal of this massive briar. I lost my shirt(literally) to this thing in my first month here. I had no idea that when you get caught up in one, there is little chance of getting away. This one has a date with brush killer next dry spell.

One of the back walls, hastily built. Should have one stone on two and two stones on one. The builder didn't know this. A stand of gigantic ash behind it, likely to be dead within fifteen years. A third of my trees are ash, which is being decimated statewide by the emerald ash borer, an import from China. Mine are still healthy. Hemlocks are going away as well, to follow the American Elm, American Chestnut, and The Durnorian ocean-apes of Thrakkus Three (on the other side of Pluto). Ain't progress wonderful?

A much more well-built wall in the background, along with a section of a side wall that made up one of the pens. This one has mortar between the stones, very unusual it is here, he said in his best Yoda voice.

 

I already have at least thirty tick bites this year despite bathing in DEET before each outing. Spring brings about a lot of the little buggers, but they never went away this winter. Good old mouse infestations are to blame. I capture as many of the little white-footed rodents as I can using snap traps, and bring them to the Nature Center in Mystic to feed their raptor population. This little iridescent green beetle scurried under my feet this day. Prolly will eat my tomaters later. The rock in the foreground is schist. I knew you wondered, so I told you.

Frinkin' red wasp trying to find a place to build a nest. Not in my truck's engine compartment, you don't!

This little guy, about an inch and a quarter long, was motoring across the lawn on his way to the road. "Where do you think YOU'RE going?" I asked him. He told me (in a baby mud turkle voice, of course) that he was on his way to the casino. One of the older mud turkles in the pond told him about Foxwoods Casino (the world's largest, and four miles from the farm), prolly to get him out of the pond and make more room for the older guys. "You can't go to the casino!" I told him. "You don't have any money! And even if you did, you don't have any pockets to keep it in!" The little guy got mad and said he'd grow up and whup the other mud turkles' asses when he got bigger. "It took me a week to get this far!" I offered to bring him back to the pond, and he happily accepted.

 

Cute lil painted mud turkle.

 

So, with the next few days in the eighties (ugh!) I retired to the barn, moved the scaffolds, and began the setup for the rest of the roof removal. I'm keeping the end rafters, which are connected to the old siding, and so temporarily reinforced them with a horizontal collar tie (the gray wood above the loft door) and some vertical supports on either end. I'll set some angled bracing outside and stake those to the ground before removing the last three sections of roof (two sections can be seen in the upper right of the pic). Then the front wall comes out. That will be the last of the demo before rebuilding the front wall.

Ladder placed to set the right vertical support. A past repair, farmer-style, can be seen where water and squirrels ate away at end of the six by six rafter plate. Looks like he spread some cold-process tar on the thing (a really stupid fix). Then I looked closer.

 

Oh, this one was a real eggspurt, he was. Prolly wondered where his brush went. Actually, he knew he couldn't use it for anything else and was too lazy to add it to the growing Trash Pile by the pond.

A look at the next area of work; note the wall to the right. It hasn't moved in three years. It will soon! I need the come-along (cable visible in the middle of the pic) for pulling together the tractor shed in the far background.

 

This temporary mess will be replaced by a proper scarf joint, as will the rotted-out post below (to the left of the tilted wall).

I had everything set up, including the sawzall and cord on the scaffold walkboards, when Spring called out to me. Remember Spring, at the beginning of this post? Well, I'm highly allergic to this season, beautiful though it may be. I started sneezing just as this picture was taken at two and didn't stop for three days. I'm still sniffling, and the sawzall is still up on the walkboard, waiting for my return. Don't worry, it's in the dry.