What a difference two weeks make! Yesterday I made my first trip back to the land since we kidnapped the artist. In the intervening time, Winter had returned for a bit with cold and storms and icy rain. Perhaps we’ve finally moved on now… the temperature was back into the 80s today. Not quite so warm yesterday, thankfully. Pink blossom is now visible in my woodland, and the bright green of new leaves. I haven’t found any dogwoods or wisteria yet – perhaps they are there, waiting to be discovered. I’ll plant dogwoods anyhow. One of my favourite trees, and native here!
I arrived at about lunchtime, and ate a sandwich sitting on one of the breeze blocks of my fire circle, admiring all the new leaves. The ground is also now covered in a variety of plants – the wild garlic is rampant, but there’s something purple-flowered that could be from the mint family, and, here and there, blue violets. (I’m certain about the violets and the garlic; for the rest, if I tried to identify them with the book I have, this blog would never get written. More homework.) But I am happy to report that the bird feeder is still there, and needed replenishing! And how lush and green it is all starting to look (probably thanks in this picture, at least in part, to something invasive, but we’ll overlook that detail for now):
This week’s task was to plot out the perimeter of the deer fence. I took along 600 ft of garden twine with the idea that I could stake that out, and leave it there till I’m ready to go back and dig holes for the fence posts. It took a couple of hours of unwinding, placing, calculating, recalculating, rewinding, replotting… My ideal boundaries (which would have included some of the old buildings within the fence, as well as the area I’m now fondly thinking of as my future orchard) had to be substantially redrawn. Half a dozen times. But in the end I got my pieces of twine to meet. I’ll have to take out one or two small saplings, and cut my way through (or move somehow) a couple of large fallen trees. But I think it’s doable.
No pictures of the twine boundary, but here is the Old Man bursting into new leaf. Good for him!
Thanks for the update, Clara! Your land is so beautiful, I love springtime! Are you in the American South?? I think I saw a tweet confirming that? I don’t know why it took me so long to realize… I grew up in East Tennessee, and still visit my family there regularly (though I think they’re coming to Maui this year!). It’s such beautiful country there, especially this time of year. Well, keep up the good work!!
Hi Jean Marie, I don’t think I ever replied to this, for which I apologize. Yes, I’m in the South, in North Carolina, not too far from where you grew up. It is a beautiful part of the world in springtime. The pollen can get to some people, but I’ve been lucky with that so far, thankfully. Can’t believe how fast everything is growing now! All best!