Posts Tagged ‘trees’
Last Thing
There was one last thing I’ve been wanting to do in the paddock before the winter weather sets in for good this season. When we had the fences installed to create our two paddock spaces, the smaller side encompassed two trees. There was a gorgeous willow tree with a cottonwood close beside it.
It didn’t take long for both trees to show evidence of not being entirely happy about the new arrangement, but the willow has at least continued to show signs of life. The cottonwood gave up in the first year. It has been standing dead for quite a while now and the small branches from it have started to litter the ground with increasing frequency.
The tree makes a convenient scratching post for the horses, so I have no interest in cutting it down. I just wanted to cut off the branches and leave the snag for birds to perch on and horses to rub against.
Mark this one off as “Done.”
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Bringing all those branches down created quite a pile that needed to be dealt with. I tend to overlook that detail when I get all fired up to trim our trees. Cutting branches down ends up being a small part of the whole project.
Luckily, George was available to help and I opted to try chipping them without delay. The other option was to move the pile somewhere and save the chipping for a future opportunity. That could lead to a lot of chances for procrastination, so I felt pretty good about taking quick action on this occasion.
I cranked up both the ATV and the diesel tractor, attached a trailer to the former and the chipper to the latter and away we went. Parking the trailer beside the chipper allowed us to fill it directly from the chute and save any extra handling to convert a pile of branches into chips unloaded in our convenient storage location by the labyrinth.
That leaves me about as ready as I’ve ever been for freezing temperatures and oodles of snow to arrive for winter. Unfortunately, the weather continues to run warmer than normal and the precipitation we are getting is all rain.
Do they make galoshes for snowshoes? I might have to get me some of those so I can do some trekking in all this rain.
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Doggin’ It
Racing home to beat the sunset, I arrived in time to drive the Grizzly into the woods with my chainsaw to clear a fallen tree from the trail. Actually, to clear half a tree, as it had fallen from our neighbor’s side of the fence. The top half of it was protruding into the path of our trail.
It wasn’t large, so I made quick work of it and returned to the garage where I changed to the winter wheels on the Griz and mounted the snowplow to get it ready for the next wave of precipitation moving our way.
Then all the off-season tires for both the ATV and Cyndie’s car were stowed away on the high corner shelf, and the garage got rearranged to make room to store all the equipment we probably won’t be needing for the next few months.
By the time I got in from chores, Delilah was overdue for attention and let us know it with an endearing parade of dog toys she pulled out and presented for our review. After chasing her around the house for her rubber yellow monkey, she got distracted by her antler chew.
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I laid down next to her and listened to the sound of her teeth clanking and grinding against the hardness of the branched horn. I was down on her level and we were just chillin’ together.
With all of the things I accomplished after work on a Monday, I deserved to spend a little time dogging it.
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Beneath Trees
After a bit of a pause in construction, I was stepping out to work on the chicken coop again yesterday, now that Cyndie is home to lend a helping hand. We were taking advantage of the very summer-like weather gracing our region this first week of November.
Striding across the yard I was suddenly struck by how distinctly different the carpet of leaves was within just a few steps. Photo op!
Beneath a big old oak tree that holds most of its dried leaves through the winter.
Next tree over is a dominant poplar that lost a significant portion of its top in a storm during the summer.
On the other side of the driveway, the grove of maples create a thick layer of light crunchy playfulness that is a delight to walk through.
Another example of the micro-environments that collectively make up the paradise where we live. We call it Wintervale Ranch.
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Boulders Rocking
While we were standing around the center of labyrinth Wednesday night, I glanced at the big boulders and immediately sensed something seemed different. One of them seems to be settling into an increased lean away from the other. It comes as no surprise, since the soil is so incredibly saturated around here. 
It has me wondering what it will be like this winter when the ground freezes. Will the excess water in the surface soil create more in the way of heaving? Could those boulders get pushed over on their sides?
Maybe when the tree finally gets established, we can get rid of the boulders altogether and let the maple take their place.
What do I mean by we ? By the time that happens, I probably won’t be around anymore and those decisions will likely be someone else’s to make.
For this moment, I am going to work on tending to the boulders to the best of my ability, while also finding a way to adjust my attitude so that I will accept the unexpected results that nature serves up.
I’m sure hoping that nature will serve up a healthy and vibrant transplanted tree. If that happens, I will find it much less concerning if/when the boulders shift into a new and different orientation from the one with which we started.
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Trying Again
Despite a strong inclination I have had to just shut up about the tree transplanting —at least until we finally meet with success in this one particular spot— I can’t stop myself from reporting the story. We have waited for most of the summer to pull out the previous dead tree from the center of the labyrinth, even though it was long ago obvious it hadn’t survived.
There was no hurry, because our plan for the next attempt was to wait until the trees drop their leaves before trying again.
The trees have dropped their leaves.
Earlier in the summer, when we knew we would need to try again, I searched through the saplings beneath the magnificent maple tree that has been my inspiration all along. I like envisioning what one of the offspring of that beauty will look like in the middle of the labyrinth garden when it reaches the same maturity of years.
I selected and marked a tree that I liked. Then we waited.
Yesterday was the day we picked to execute our fourth try at transplanting one of our maple trees to the center of the labyrinth. Cyndie dug out the hole in preparation and when I got home from work, we set about the challenging task of extricating our selection from the spot where it originated.
It didn’t want to come out easily.
With daylight fading, we finally wrested our new hope from the earth’s grasp. Using a wheelbarrow, we transported the tree to the labyrinth and slid it into the hole.
With all the tender loving care we could muster, we prepared the new home for this tree. Now we wait. Nature needs to do the rest.
And if it doesn’t take, I’m just going to keep trying, all the while debating whether I will do so covertly, or choose to continue chronicling the possible repetition of failures.
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That Time
It’s that time again. Now is the time of year when it is very easy to see the common buckthorn leaves in the woods, because they stay green longer than our other trees. Buckthorn is a non-native invasive tree that makes a great hedge, but given free rein, can block out all others here and take over the landscape.
I let the buckthorn get out of hand on our previous tiny lot in the suburbs, so I have first-hand experience on what can happen, and what it takes to eradicate it. Now we have a LOT more property to police, which makes it a difficult thing to control, but I still want to put effort toward keeping it at bay.
There are still a few other plants that also have their leaves, so it isn’t as simple as pulling up or cutting down anything that is still green. Most of them are relatively easy to recognize as something other than buckthorn, but there is one in our woods with leaves that look surprisingly close to those of the buckthorn.
Usually, if I’m not absolutely sure, I just skip over it for the time being. Once you know what buckthorn leaves look like, it is pretty clear when you come upon them.
The saplings are rather easy to just pull out of the ground, and the area where I was working was very wet, so that gave me even more inspiration to try pulling most of what I found.
Some were just too big, obviously ones I hadn’t properly dealt with a year ago to have grown so large. Those I had to cut down with a saw.
The pulling is just so much quicker and more rewarding. I knock the dirt off the roots and dangle them over some nearby branches to wither and dry. Delilah loves to help with the root pulling. She claws away at the dirt and then grabs the roots in her teeth and pulls.
Sometimes we end up pulling against each other.
It is a serious full-body workout to pull the bigger ones. It ends up becoming a challenge for me to see if I can dislodge the next size larger trees by gripping them with my legs bent and then trying to stand up. I need my legs to do the bulk of the work, not my back.
At one point when I felt my legs tiring of the effort, I looked over to see how Delilah was holding up. She was sound asleep in a nap.
Yeah, it is really an exhausting exercise.
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Micro Climates
This morning while walking the trails with Delilah instead of lingering in bed to write this blog post, (because Cyndie is gone for 10-days to Guatemala visiting Dunia and family, helping guide some equine-assisted seminars while there) I was struck anew by how different our property is in as little as a few feet separation.
In the woods, the prominent grouping of trees change from oaks and maples to butternut and poplar. The trail transitions from hard soil to mossy to grassy to muddy to sticks and dirt.
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I paused to take a picture of a spot that grows a beautiful carpet of medium-length grass and Delilah photobombed it. I like it!
Popping out of the woods, suddenly we are walking beside open fields, each that have their own characteristics of differing grasses, prominent weeds, and volunteer trees trying to grow. Of course, we also have paddocks with horses in them.
Cayenne had isolated herself away from the rest of the herd by grazing a spot that dead-ended around the round pen and she was making her way back to the paddock upon noticing Delilah and I approaching. I figured the morning feed was her priority, but when dog and I came around the bend I found her nose to nose with Hunter.
He received her invitation and they set about grooming each other before coming up to eat the morning serving from their feed pans.
Standing with the horses, the muddy trail at the bottom of the hill in the woods seems like it must be miles away.
It is only a minute away by foot.
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Paving Paradise
We are experimenting with a new way to improve a particularly wet and muddy portion of one trail through our woods. Originally, I was hoping we could simply cover it with wood chips. It worked for a while, but we haven’t been chipping branches frequently enough to produce the supply needed to cover all of our trails.
The piles of wood blocks that I have been pulling off pallets salvaged from the day-job are suddenly proving valuable. Instantly, we have gone from having too many of these lying around, to not having enough to cover the muddy lengths of trail that need the most help.
It is interesting to consider the path (no pun intended) these pieces of former trees have traveled. Somewhere, trees are cut down and milled into boards. Then the wood gets cut into these shapes and nailed to pallets. The company that manufactures the products we receive at the day-job mount their units onto the pallets for shipment and charge the end customer for the wood.
We have asked if they wanted the pallets returned for reuse, but like so many other things in today’s world, since already paid for, they apparently weren’t worth the trouble. We end up with perfectly good, single-use pallets out of brand-new wood, albeit with four odd blocks nailed to the tops.
I’ve been pulling the nails to remove the blocks and using the pallets as a floor in my wood shed and beneath stored hay in the hay shed. I also claimed boards off some pallets to build hay feeding boxes for the 4 stalls in the barn. All the while, the odd blocks that were removed have been piling up.
When Cyndie started looking into a boardwalk as a way to get up out of the mud on our trails, we landed on the idea of using the blocks. She wanted to add some words of inspiration and enlisted Anneliese to join her in creating the enhancements.
Yesterday we laid down the first test run. So far, so good. Only a couple more miles to go. I hope there will soon be a lot of new orders for that equipment at the day-job.
It is poetic justice that we’ve found a way to ultimately bring this pallet wood full-circle, placing it on a forest floor once again.
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Different Look
Even though it happens every year, I still find it amazing to witness the change that evolves in a forest at this time of year. I look at it every day, but it seems to happen mysteriously. Space just opens up and all of a sudden you realize it is possible to see through to the other side of a grove of trees.
A couple of months ago, it looked like this:
Yesterday afternoon, it looked like this:
The forecast for temperatures tonight and tomorrow morning includes the possibility of frost. That means it is time to drain and coil our garden hoses, and blow out the buried line that runs down to the labyrinth spigot. I even heard use of the word “snow” in predictions for areas of northern Minnesota.
Regardless the overall general warming of temperatures around the globe, we still get cold enough here in the winter to have snow.
I love that our weather changes dramatically with each season, but it would be nice if just once, the seasons weren’t in such a hurry to come and go.
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