Winter Aftermath

It is, of course, Spring - for nearly a month now, technically speaking. And with spring there is always yard cleanup. It’s an inevitable, unavoidable part of the season out here in our old house.

Yard cleanup is one of those tasks which never seems to be easier from year to year - I don’t ever gird myself for this activity, look around the yard and say: “hey, not so bad this year”.

But this spring is something... special.

Our past winter really offered some beautiful snowy vistas, with freezing rain followed by freezing frost coating trees earlier in the season, and then later alternated with wet, heavy snow just coating everything. It was truly impressive at times:

Snow on everything

But while it’s truly a natural spectacle, it’s also naturally hard on the trees. I realized this a bit even at the time, as the old fir tree line remnant at the back of the property had some fallen limbs. It turned out, however, that they were simply the most outspoken members of our arboreal family. The others - especially the maples, stoic in their presentation - were apparently hiding their pain until they just couldn't any more. As late winter thawed into spring gusts, all of the broken material these stalwart soldiers were holding in was then released in a cathartic blast of broken branches, sticks, and twigs.

And so we have yard cleanup.

Branches, sticks, and twigs

Twigs, branches, and sticks

Not only is the volume of these prodigious, the number of very large branches on the ground is really quite astonishing. Enough so that I’ve actually separated out several of them as being big enough to cut up for firewood:

Future firewood

And the thing is, it isn’t all done - not just yet. The pictures here represent two separate weekends of activity that mostly removed and the things that were on the ground. But in some cases - for both the evergreen and deciduous trees - they aren’t ready to part with their damaged limbs.

In the case of the maples, branches break free and splinter off at the base, with portions of the limb remaining attached. You can see them hanging in the trees, just waiting for the wind to twist and turn them enough that they can finally break free. And for some of these I can reach them with my handsaw and a latter, or with my telescoping pruning doohickey:

Pruning at a distance

Others are simply too high up for that, and will need to come down on their own.

Lofty elevations

For the most damaged trees in the old tree line there were two sizeable branches that were broken and twisted to the degree that the piny part of them were laying on the ground. But the soft, malleable nature of these trees is such that they were still attached - they had broken, and would soon completely die, but they didn’t know it (one could hear them saying softly “I’m not dead”, but they weren’t fooling anyone... or was that just the wind?).

For these, then, more substantial effort was required. And for the first, and smaller of the two, I initially started to work on it with my handsaw.

I saw a problem here...

I did this for about three minutes of exhausting, largely vain effort before I remembered that I actually own an axe...

Take a seat, little guy - help is here.

And that was definitely better. The first one separated with relatively minimal effort. The other one was broken higher up into the tree, and I ended up needing to cut it up in sections to get it down into workable pieces.

Tree dissection.

I always find working with the axe very satisfying - it’s a real workout, it lets out all of the frustrations of the week, and makes one feel, well, rather manly. However, by the end of working on the second branch I’d be lying if I didn’t at least idly wonder why I don’t own a chainsaw...

My two separate weekends of this were nearly a month apart - one in mid-March, and then this weekend. Finishing it up became a thing, tho, because the grass has begun to grow again, and it’s really hard to mow over fallen branches. This put some urgency into the idea of moving forward, and so I and my yard crew had to get to it.

Yard crew

They are good company, if not really good help. And no so great at posing for pictures...

Success!?!

I documented Rosie’s front yard excavation project a couple of weeks ago.

So proud!

She has continued her efforts towards this project since, periodically appearing very intent, showing up at the back door with paws and chest full of dirt and/or mud (we’ve been going through a rainy patch of late), but with no clear evidence of a positive outcome.

And, it should be noted, that it was quite possible that she was having success at catching the critters and simply consuming them as she catches them. As I’ve noted before, the dogs are pretty effective vermin hunters, and I very much suspect that they supplement their scheduled meals with critter snacks.

So maybe, just maybe, I reasoned, she’s catching dozens of subterranean snipes, and I’m just not seeing it. Maybe - and to be honest, it salves my metaphorical wounds in relation to the craters in my landscaping.

But then, a couple of days ago, this appeared:

I’m pretty sure they’d mount it’s head on the wall, you know, if they had a wall.

Now, I had assumed that what Rosie was going after was moles - I’ve periodically seen evidence of an ongoing mole eradication program conducted by the canine crew. But this fine looking - if unfortunate - fellow appears to a ground squirrel.

Ground squirrels, like their tree-dwelling, furry-tailed cousins, are among the critters that we typically haven’t seen much of out here at the homestead. They are otherwise all over the place - driving and cycling around the countryside I frequently see them making their ill-advised mad dashes across the roadways. Just not on our property.

While we’ve seen the return of the rabbits, for better or worse, this is the only ground squirrel I can ever recall seeing on the property in our 11 years or so out here. Of course, if the current situation is representative of the type of welcome intrepid explorers can expect, I suppose we shouldn't expect an influx of new settlers.

So - Rosie appears to have been successful. But, in light of catching this single ground squirrel I couldn't help but look at the yard...

This could be the beginning point for a very short subway system…

...and ask Rosie:

Me: “Rosie, do you think maybe this is maybe a Pyrrhic victory?”

Rosie: “I’m not sure - what does ‘Pyrrhic’ mean?”

Which is clearly just her playing dumb as a distraction - every knows that herding dogs are well versed in the Greek classics.

Holy Moley!

I have mentioned here before that our canine companions are pretty capable at pest management on the property. They catch an array of critters, both undersireable and benign - I wish they’d leave the possums alone, for example, but I wish they’d do a better job managing the rabbits. They even manage to catch moles from time to time, which is a little surprising but, as someone who does not delight in the pleasure of a turned ankle, a good thing.

It is possible to take a good thing too far, however.

Generally speaking, when I say that they manage critters, what I mean is that said critters sort of show up dead (or playing dead, in the case of the aforementioned possums), either near the back door or actually in a dog’s mouth. Usually we don’t have the opportunity to see the actual critter catching. And in the case of the moles, I’ve always just pictured Rosie or Calamity patiently waiting outside the mole hole for the subterranean interloper to peek his little gray head out and then BAM! No more mole.

Well, that’s what I’ve pictured until very recently.

Rosie has apparently decided that the one-at-a-time mole removal strategy is just too inefficient. She also seems to have forgotten that she is an Australian Shepherd, and is operating under the delusion that she is now some sort of unusually large, very fast terrier.

The clever and/or attentive among you might be saying to yourselves: They’ve got a couple of dogs. How does he know it’s Rosie?

And that’s a fine, appropriate, well considered question. You are very smart.

This is how:

And what does one do when one discovers such an excavation? I think one of the natural reactions might be to utter a few well selected four letter words at an elevated volume. I’m not beyond that, and I wouldn't swear that it absolutely hasn’t happened, but for the most part I’ve had the luxury to be rather circumspect about these events. I do not maintain my yard as an example of modern botanical manicuring, so Rosie isn’t disturbing a treasured flowerbed, for example. What’s more, I’m loathe to scold her for it.

The thing is, it’s just in these few spots - it’s not all over the yard. And I’ve watched her begin the process. It’s not random. Her ears perk up and she looks straight down at the ground, head moving back and forth as if she is following an unseen - yes, tunneling - critter a few inches below the surface. It’s somewhere in this process that she begins tearing at the earth.

And once she gets down to a given depth - about a foot or so - that’s when the snout goes in. I have not actually seen her come up with a mole, mind you (though I think I’d enjoy that), but when you look in the holes, they appear to open on a tunnel. I think she’s on to something.

I’ve filled the holes in multiple times at this point, but apparently they are still felt to be fertile mole-hunting grounds.

And, if she ever manages to fully extract this particular group of burrowers and is looking for more to do, perhaps we can hire her out to an excavation company. Of course, they’ll have to be okay with Rosie choosing the dig site, but otherwise...

Delayed Mowing

This year, like last, we decided to delay mowing for the first part of the season to allow for additional flower time for the variety of plants growing in our two acres or so of yard. Of course, in this case, flower time is specific to Dandelions, Violets, and (gasp) Creeping Charlie, among others. This is a practice that bee folks advocate for, as it allows for additional nectar gathering opportunity for our fine, buzzing friends.

One gets an opportunity to see it at work while traipsing thru the tall grass. Bumblebees, in particular, are easy to detect as they go by, both by the erratic flight pattern and what seems to be the sound of a tiny B-52 bomber sailing past your ear.

It lends itself to an interesting - to me at least - visual presentation of the yard:

It’s interesting, at least in part, because it only looks this way for a short time. We (LB) mowed it yesterday afternoon - trying to get it done ahead of the threatened rain for today - and it will stay mowed more or less for the rest of the season, so it won’t look this way again till next year.

I do occasionally give thought to leaving it - perhaps mowing a portion of it in the front yard and around the house and leaving the rest. But you only have to do this once to realize why we mow. I mean, nowadays I suspect most of us now because _what will the neighbors think?_if we don’t. The reality is that there are practical purposes to it. The simplest one is that a yard like ours, where there are abundant Maple trees and a few hated Chinese Mulberry interlopers, would soon become a small forest. Volunteer trees sprout all over the yard, and mowing keeps them at bay.

The other thing you realize during that first mowing is that tallish grass - even the 6-8" high stuff in my yard - is excellent coverage for rodents of all sorts. We are not, as a rule, in the business of trying to support rodent propagation in this household.

Thus, after a decent interval, down it must come. But we’ll probably do it again next year.

Yard War III

Yard War III

Normally I set aside Sunday afternoons for a ride through the countryside, but last week I’d managed to squeeze in a ride on Saturday. Besides, it was raining into the early hours of the morning, and the weather reports threatened more rain (because - you know - we haven’t had enough of that lately) by noon or so. So it seemed reasonable to default to some yard work until the rain started to fall.

Behind our shed we have a volunteer maple tree for which a portion gave up the ghost and fell over late last fall. At the time it was unfortunate, but did not require any immediate attention. As spring has come, however, that departed tree now stands (or rather, lays) in the path of the lawnmower. It has been time to deal with it for a while, and today provided a good opportunity, given the circumstances.

LB has been engaged in ongoing work on the yard this summer, but this was a multiple person job. So we gathered up our weaponry and struck out.

One might look at the prospect of cutting up a tree and think first and foremost of a chainsaw. And understandably so - I know it’s something that I think of every time I take on a project like this.

But I don’t own a chainsaw.

Perhaps I should, and it occurs to me at least once a year or so. But the need is an intermittent one, and typically by the end of the project the felt need has faded. Besides, swinging an axe and running a hand saw provide a workout that a power tool doesn’t offer. So each year I end the season without having purchased a chainsaw, and the following season the cycle begins anew.

And now it was time for LB to learn their way around the handle of an axe.

The primary goal was to remove the downed portion of the tree. It was a good 10-15 foot of maple, which meant that it had to come out in portions.

Rosie offered to help, but her lack of thumbs presented a particular impediment to actual assistance...

There was a secondary objective of clearing away lower branches so that mowing could be cut closer to the trees going forward. Progress through all of this took a fair chunk of the afternoon, and ended up with a fair amount of debris.

Once everything was cut away it was a matter of hauling it off to the ever-present burn pile. Some pieces were small and manageable, while others were slightly larger...

Some four hours later, give or take, this particular project was done, both objectives achieved. There’s still more to be done, of course. There is always more to be done. But we were finished for this day.

Prairie Yard...

This past Sunday I mowed my lawn for the first time of the season.

Now I realize there will be a subset of you out there who, upon realizing that last Sunday was the middle of May, will pronounce me a monster.

Fine. You’re right. While I desperately love that we have a substantial yard, I do not aspire to the tightly manicured green-striped lawn of suburbia. In fact, that’s part of the reason I do not live in suburbia. But beyond that, there is a school of thought that says that it’s better for bees - which are struggling - if we give some time to let the lawn grow.

Of course, that presumes that you are also letting things that flower grow in your yard as well.

Which we do. Trigger alert here for those for whom a yard means an extended stretch of Kentucky bluegrass and nothing else...

The other benefit to letting the yard grow is the view. It’s not strictly a prairie - the grass and flowers certainly aren’t that high - but you do get a crop of at least the ubiquitous dandelions and violets to pose for pictures before the lawn gets sheared.

But there are limits. I waited long enough that Rosie seemed to be a little perplexed at what I was up to...

Of course, by this point, Calamity could also be in the picture - with her short little cattledog legs, I’m not sure she can see out over the standing grass.

And ultimately, as you are working your way through the taller portions you realize why people started cutting grass. In addition to the occasional opportunistic tree that tries to take root, there are also a small assortment of rodents that scurry away as the mower approaches. There are actual, practical purposes to this activity besides ensuring that your dog doesn’t get lost.

I think we’d reached that limit.

Limbs Down

Now that spring is officially underway - Punxsutawney Phil’s dubious predictions aside, spring officially started with the vernal equinox on March 20th - temperatures have started to rise, melting back the snow cover. The uncovering of the ground reveals the consequences of this winter of repeated ice and wind storms, backed by a polar vortex - our trees have shed what looks to be an unprecedented volume of material.

There are a lot of nice things about having a country yard full of mature trees, and there are many things to look forward to about spring. The yard cleanup is not one of them.

Every spring involves some degree of impending yard cleanup, to be sure, but the area around all of our trees looks like some sort of lost elephant graveyard. It’s like all of the trees coordinated on an extreme weight loss program, and came to the conclusion that they really had only one way to achieve their goals - radical shedding.

The ice storms probably are to blame for much of this. Few things will take a toll on a tree like being first encased in thick, heavy ice, being made brittle by the cold, and then being buffeted by 30-50mph winds. Honestly, in the big picture, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more damage in general (though I haven’t done a comprehensive overview of the yard, so I may be speaking too soon).

Each year we end up with a large pile of yard material - mostly downed limbs of various and sundry sizes and composition - that provides an opportunity for a bonfire. This year’s pile is likely to be epic tho, likely we’ll want to burn it in sessions rather than all at once.

I started doing a bit of cleanup earlier this weekend to get the ball rolling. Just the bigger stuff, not the heavy-duty raking to pick up the smaller sticks that are hard (and tedious) to get by hand. Those I’ll leave until the remaining autumn leaf cover blows off (one of the bonuses to living on the prairie - the wind does the leaf raking if you let it). One of multiple such piles is shown below.

And - of course - this is just the beginning. As we go rolling towards spring we will also be moving into thunderstorm season. Looking up in the trees, still bereft of their leaves, one can see additional limbs which are either damaged or completely broken, but caught partway down. They will fall as well. And while spring does remove the effects of the ice from the equation, one can count on more arboreal detritus before it’s all over.

Whoopee?

Milkweed

I’ll admit that the combination of a schedule with limited free time and a yard that is about two acres in size makes it difficult to keep up with more than only the most rudimentary tending. This means that I am often fighting a less than decisive battle against enemies such as burdock, lambs quarter, and the hated Chinese mulberry. Depending upon which point in the summer one views the yard, the state of my struggle can be more or less evident.

But though there are many weeds against which I battle, the one which gets a complete pass from me is milkweed.

This is not because they are a thing of great visual appeal in and of themselves. While not unattractive in the way that a burdock or lambs quarter is, (and they do flower, though not in a particularly showy fashion), they have things going for them that the others simply do not.

The flowers are a food source for bees and similar pollinators and, given that we are in an era of decline for honeybees, it seems reasonable to lean towards maintaining things that support them (we grow other flowers as well, and don’t treat for things like dandelions). But the chief benefit is, of course, that these plants are a food source for Monarch Butterfly caterpillars.

When we first moved back here one of the things that surprised me were the sheer volume of butterflies, monarch and otherwise, that we had in the summer. These range from your basic butter-pats to a variety of multi-colored visitors.

They are painfully difficult to get good pictures of, but very occasionally I get lucky.

This one, a type which I see often, appears to be a painted lady according to this Insect Identification website. The site indicates that painted lady caterpillars preferred foods are thistles, and that they "also eat the leaves of mallows, hollyhock and burdock plants". We don’t see much by way of hollyhocks, but thistles, mallows, and the hateful burdock are certainly plentiful in the area.

As for the Monarch’s themselves and their relationship with the milkweed, I was lucky enough to catch a couple of shots of (what I believe are) Monarch caterpillars in action the other day:

The milkweeds are also home to a variety of other critters. I can frequently spot Milkweed Beetles, a critter that looks a little like a giant, misshapen ladybug, and which I’d neither seen nor heard of before till moving back out here.

(Of course, I assume that what is going on in the second picture is that the beetle on bottom is sick, and the one on top is trying to help her get to the hospital...)

I’ve seen spiders hiding in between the closely gathered top leaves and, unfortunately, have also found batches of earwigs. On at least one occasion the spider and the earwigs were in the same general area, which gives me a tiny bit of hope (there are few animals or insects that I truly dislike, but earwigs are definitely on that list).

This process of exploration and discovery often helps to soothe, at least for a little while, the frustration of trying (and failing) to keep up with the tending of the big yard. There are amazing and interesting things to see around each corner, and under every leaf.

Time to Mow

Spring has fully sprung, and the rainy season has been out in full force. These April showers do, of course, bring...

Well, I don't know, there are already flowers blooming here - they don't wait for May, so I'm not sure that saying was coined by someone living in the upper Midwest. But what it does bring is the dawn of mowing season.

To be clear, MLW does the bulk of the mowing and seems to enjoy it. What's more, LB is primed to be learning this task as well. This is not about to become a screed about how annoying it is to care for the lawn.

The other thing that Spring brings is the annual realization that I need to get a battery charger, though this would negatively affect what has now become the traditional harbinger of mowing season: the announcement that the mower will not start.

Of course the challenge is that the only time I ever need a battery charger is at the start of mowing season. This means that the only time I ever think about getting a battery charger is at the start of mowing season. And, since we typically need it now, to get the lawn mowed, I've borrowed devices to get the job done in the moment.

And then, of course, forgotten until the following spring.

I am not ahead of the game this year. The mower has already failed to start. But I think, this time, that perhaps I will risk that tradition and actually get a damn battery charger.

Out in the Cold

I said last time that I delight in the midwestern winter, even when I'm entering it after a week in the tropics.

Fortunately, life out at the Homestead offers plenty of opportunities to spend that time outside in the snow. On our first full day back from vacation there were a handful of activities that I tackled, all part and parcel of time on the prairie.

Since we missed the first snow of the season I hadn't thought yet about picking up salt for the sidewalk. This fact was provided as a near miss at a painful reminder as I felt my feet move out from under me when I took my first steps out the back door. It was added to the list of things to pick up as I ran my errands.

But when I returned from those my primary chore - which I'd frankly left a bit for want of time to address it - was upon me. A little longer ago than I care to admit MLW sent me a text to let me know that a rather large section of the fir tree next to the back door had broken off and fallen to the sidewalk.

One of the things I've had to teach myself about living out here is that it is often better to leave a project - at least one that isn't an emergency - to a time when one can handle it properly. As it stands, with the declining daylight hours I typically leave in darkness, and in darkness I return... The limb had fallen near the sidewalk, but it wasn't in the way of anything, and it was too large for me to simply pull over to the brush pile; it would need to be cut up. But this meant that I'd be working on it in the snow.

Given the size of the limb, and in the interest of efficiency and practicality, I made a suggestion to MLW:

E: Hey, you know, what do you think about just using that fallen limb as our Christmas tree this year?

MLW: ...

E: Hey honey - I said I thought maybe we could use that fallen limb as our Christmas tree.

MLW: Yeah - I heard you the first time.

It appears she was, shall we say, less than interested in that option.

So I gathered up some of my yard weaponry and prepared for battle.

I used my implements of destruction and was able to get it into small pieces fairly quickly. I keep thinking that I should get a chainsaw - there are enough downed limbs and weed trees to justify such a tool. But there is something especially satisfying about taking apart a limb like this with an axe. A few well-aimed swings can separate things into manageable pieces, and it's hard not to feel like you've accomplished something when you're done.

Once cut up, though, the pieces still had to be hauled off to the brush pile. Given that Freyja was hanging about and "helping", I tried to elicit her assistance:

E: Hey Freyja, you like to haul wood about. How about you carry these on over to the brush pile.

F: ...

E: Really - come on - you're big and strong. It'll be a good workout for you.

F: ...

So, yeah, disappointed for the second time of the afternoon, I hauled it all off for future burning.

Anytime I do something like this, outside, in the wintery weather, it reminds me how quickly one warms up if one is actively working in the cold. I started up bundled up against the cold, but before I got halfway through I was loosening buttons and unzipping things to get relief from the heat. It's mother nature's little gift.

The Yard War

Somehow, yesterday, the first day of Labor Day weekend, became a yard work day. And by yard work I mean that MLW worked in the garden while I marched about the yard attacking things with bladed weapons.

I don’t believe I would have ever really thought of an ax and machete as yard work tools, but it’s a reality out here. There are, of course the trees that are nothing but tall weeds, but there are also some varieties of herbaceous plants that, when not attended to early enough, grow tall and thick enough that a weed-whacker simply cannot take them down.

The primary offender there is Lambsquarters[1]. This extremely common plant likes to grow up against buildings and in unattended, disturbed ground. Left to its own devices the base of the plant can get as big as a baby’s wrist.

Hence the machete.

LB was also spending part of her holiday weekend fighting the good fight against invaders. She’s been tasked with clearing the uninvited trees away from alongside the old barn. Armed with a tree saw and a branch cutter she managed to tackle and remove a 12’ Chinese Mulberry, almost entirely on her own. Few things make a father’s heart swell with pride more than seeing his 13-year old daughter dragging a huge section of tree across the yard by herself.

Taken from a distance - As the teenage years have come on, it has become ever more difficult to capture the elusive LB in her native habitat.  One must use subterfuge and trickery if one is to be successful.

By the end of the day we all made several trips to the burn pile - the place where all the yard waste (that is not either compostable or good for firewood) goes to meet its fiery doom. Our pile this year is big - it stands over 5’ high and is a good 10’ in diameter. And this pile is just what we’ve done over the course of this summer - last year’s pile was burned this spring. It seems, no matter how many of our opponents we take out, they have more to send in.

This has all been gathered over the course of just this summer.  It will make for an impressive fire come late fall or early spring.

And so The Yard War goes on.

---

1. The University of Illinois maintains a Weed Science website that is an excellent resource if one is interested in identifying what the the things growing, uninvited, actually are. It includes a description of the type of plants (e.g. broadleafs or grasses) to help narrow down the search; and most of the plants have pictures across the lifespan of the plant - seedlings, juveniles, mature adults, flowering, etc. - to allow one to correctly identify the plant in any part of its growing season. It’s how I came to learn, for example, that the blue flowers growing on stems in the ditches all over the region are chicory, the root of which can be used to make a coffee substitute. Fans of American western movies and books will recognize it as something that cowboys brew up at the campfire. Given how easily it grows, one can see why one might try to find a use for it.  ↩