Winter Aftermath

April 18, 2021 by Erin Wade in Yard Work

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:

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.

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:

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:

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

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

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.

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.

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

Secrets Revealed in Snow

January 24, 2021 by Erin Wade in Country Life

Rosie and Calamity are working dogs.

We don’t have sheep or cattle for them to herd, but instead they patrol the property for vermin and always make us aware when people come by - Calamity in particular. They say that dog owners learn to distinguish between the types of barks and calls that their dogs make, and this is absolutely true for Calamity. Her “someone is here” bark-howl crescendo is unmistakable and can be heard from pretty much anywhere in the house.

They also say that Australian Cattledogs are “silent workers”. They are full of crap on that one. There is virtually no activity for Calamity, with the possible exception of sleeping, that doesn’t require some type of canine vocal soundtrack.

Rosie, our Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix, on the other hand, has taken the forefront on a different job. And it’s one that, until recently, I honestly did not fully understand.

The dogs have worn patrol pathways into the grass around the yard and, in the winter months they recapitulate these into the snowpack as well. Along these pathways, in particular spots, one could frequently see her standing at various spots near the property line barking at... something? in the distance.

And it’s a full-body bark, let me tell you. She has a deep bark that belies her slim frame, a real “woof”. And when she is employing it in these moments, each bark begins with a slight bounce up from the front legs - paws off the ground, mind you - with the “woof” being emitted as the paws hit the surface, and her shoulders hunch up.

She’ll do this repeatedly, sometimes for several minutes. It’s exhausting just watching it.

Most of the time I would just hear her barking and look out the window or walk around the house if I was outside, and I would see her there, fully engaged in that master-barking technique.

In more recent months, however, I’ve seen how it starts. At times, she will sit on our back steps, staring out intently across the landscape. This seems regal - a queen, surveying her realm - until she suddenly bolts off the steps, streaks across the yard, and gets to the end of the property, coming up to an immediate full-stop. And then the barking.

I have tried, many, many times, to see what she is barking at. Because there has to be something there, right? But I can never see a thing, no matter how intently I watch, nothing is there. And you might think, well, whatever it was she scared it off already. But I’ve seen her at the beginning of this now, and I’ve still seen nothing where she runs.

It’s honestly gotten to the point where I started to think she might be just a little... off.

But this winter, with the extended snow coverage, I had an opportunity to take a look at the area in the field just beyond one of her more common barking stations.

She’s clearly not crazy. There’s a lot of activity there, as you can see. Based upon a couple of track identification websites, I can see that there’s fox and mouse tracks at minimum (one naturally attracted to the other, I’d imagine). Maybe coyote or stray dogs as well (we have both in the area, and I’ve seen the latter fairly recently). And there’s a bit that I am not sure how to account for as well.

I don’t know if that odd pattern is from animal activity, or maybe something being blown across the surface (we are in a wind farm, after all).

So now I know that she’s been warding off actual critters this whole time. I’ve also long suspected that she and Calamity supplement their diet with caught critters, and the volume of mouse tracks I see in the snow would suggest there’s plenty to catch. Plus - LB and I watched her dive face-first into the snow a few days just like a coyote or fox. She’s got some skills.

And - of course - now that I know what she’s warding off, when I see her start to bolt across the yard I look at where she’s pointed and...

...still can’t see a damn thing.

Success!?!

September 27, 2020 by Erin Wade in Yard Work

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

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.