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blossom and new leaves

an eastern redbud in blossom, swarming with bees

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):

spring green

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!

old man in spring green

 

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spring… and strength

The former definitely starting to happen, but strength in short supply!

Now let me be quite clear: I like being a girl; I enjoy walking into a D.I.Y store, like I did yesterday, feeling quite feminine (reddish lipstick and all), but fully intending to walk out with an armload of mean-looking tools. Yesterday’s necessary item was a utility knife capable of cutting through the sidewalls of a tractor tyre (or three). So I asked the nice man where I could find the utility knives, and he was more than happy to show me. When I grabbed the baddest, meanest looking knife of the bunch and explained what I wanted to do with it, I then got the raised eyebrows, and, “You have got somebody helping you with that, haven’t you?!” Well… Best thing to do, I’ve found, is smile and nod, pay for the thing and leave. Quickly.

And that brings me to the actual task of, you know, cutting the side wall out of a tractor tyre. Or three. The sort of job you’d probably give to a guy, if you had a spare one just hanging around. But there isn’t one handy at the moment, so… I warmed up to the task by cutting the sidewall out of a normal car-sized tyre, and, voilà!, the beginnings of a compost bin!

inverted the sawn-off inner wall for the beginnings of a lid!

Flushed with that success, I thought I’d have a go at one of the tractor tyres. I chose the one that already seemed to be quite weathered and managed to get the knife blade in. There then began the business of what can best be described as sawing my way around the tyre. I managed it, with much effort, and a dawning realization that I really *need* to be doing more yoga… I’ve been way stronger than this, bring on those sun salutations! Those handstands, those downward dogs!

half-way round, with knife embedded...

But of course I still couldn’t remove the central part, with its metal inner ring, because all of that is quite firmly connected to the side wall on the other side. So… I heaved the tyre over, and began the much more laborious process (because this side wasn’t so weathered) of hacking the side wall off side 2. Began it, but too tiring to finish today. Did I mention there were three of these things? Whose idea was it to make raised beds anyway??

Instead I took a rest and went searching for signs of spring. Spring, and old grain sacks.

three sacks of... grain sacks

I spent quite a satisfying half hour or so playing hunt-the-old-grain-sack. I think these have been dumped here over the years by hunters, spreading feed to attract deer. There were enough to fill three large sacks – I’ll keep the ones that were still fairly intact, in case they can be reused for something else.

And after the scavenger hunt, the pictures… They’re both a celebration of approaching spring, and homework.

those bunches of leaves have produced a flower

One of them is a daffodil type, obviously, but I’d like to put names to the white-flowered plant that is carpeting most of the homestead site, and the tree that has grown its own deer-repellent spikes!

small white flowers to identify
spiky tree

Good news on the tree that was dripping last week (I’m calling him The Old Man) – not dripping today!