Maple Grove Clearing – into the trees

More progress on clearing up the trees!

The maple grove behind our house has several rows of trees.  I worked on only the two or three (depending on the area) southern ones.

Here is the north side of the furthest row I worked on.

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This area starts to have a fair number of trees and branches already down on the ground, including some that had been cut down, cut shorter, and then left there.

This is how it looked after clearing.

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Here’s a before picture from between two rows of trees.

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Note the dead spruces further along.

I’d originally intended to leave those, but they were small enough that it was practical to use a hand saw to take them down.  I just had to cut away a section of dead branches, first, so I could reach the trunks and start cutting.

The first one, I cut leaving a stump about 2 feet high; I will go back to cut it to ground level, another time.

The second was actually two spruces so close together that, as they got larger, they grew into each other at the base.  I trimmed branches to reach the trunks, and cut the thinner one down first, then started on the thicker.

At which point, I realized there was a LOT of movement at the base.

So I just tipped the whole thing over.

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Telling my younger daughter about it later, she was laughing about her mighty mom, tearing trees out of the ground by the roots. 😀

It came down quite easily.

Here is how this in-between area looked, after.

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Oh, and I found something interesting at the base of one of the maples, closest to the pile of chimney blocks.  After cutting away the suckers, I found…

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What I believe is a gooseberry bush!

It was completely hidden by the maple suckers.  Now that it’s cleared, and I’ve trimmed off the dead bits, I hope it will now have enough sunlight to grow well.

All this clearing meant I was getting a rather large pile of cuttings, which my younger daughter says she will start sorting and clearing tomorrow (the green wood will be piled separately, to dry and become fuel for fire pits next year; the deadwood will be for use, this year).  Weather willing, of course.  We’ve got predictions for more rain tomorrow, and storms the day after, so we’ll see.

By the time I added the second spruce tree to the pile, though, I realized I needed to stop.  There just wasn’t room to add to the pile anymore, and I had to leave it off on the side!

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That tree the pile is next to, on the right?  You can see the fresh cuts from the last of the suckers I’d cut away on there.  Most of that tree, plus the lilac beyond it, was cleared last week.

That is a lot of trimmed wood to clear away!  All of this, plus the pile from clearing the shed, is just what was cleared away today.

And finally, here is an overview shot.

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Complete with a cream separator basin planter, on a stump. 😀  I don’t want to move it, because it ensures that no one will trip over the stump or something. 😉

I am just so happy with this.  The whole area just FEELS so much better.  It’s now so open and airy!  It’ll be a while, yet, before it’s safe to mow under here – there are still many old branches hidden under the dead leaves that will need to be found and cleared out, first.  I should be able to get in with the weed trimmer a bit, though.  Plus, as things get raked up, I can add more to the flower garden to break down and build up the soil, there.

This is starting to look the way I want it to!  A beautiful, open, usable and accessible space.

After all this, I finished the evening with a trip into town with my younger daughter, to see a dear friend and his lady fair, performing in one of the local coffee shops.  It has been many years since I’ve seen him singing and playing his guitar, and never together with his lady love, on an electric cello upright bass!

It was a wonderful way to end a wonderful day.

The Re-Farmer

Maple Grove Clearing – a big, rotten mess!

In this photo from my last post, you can see part of the mess I also cleaned up today.

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That round thing of rotting wood is the top of a giant spool that was used for electrical cable.  It was likely used as an outdoor table or something, at some point – that was a popular thing for a while. This top part, I was able to tilt up and roll away to the back of the shed.

But not before I had a very close call.

There’s a reason I stopped to clear the area around the chimney blocks instead of focusing on the trees.  As I stepped towards one of the trees behind the mess, to clear away branches that had already fallen, I felt something go through the sole of my shoe.

I immediately pulled back, put away what I’d been working on, then went back to dig through the dead leaves and old grass.

I found this.

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This area became a priority clean up!

This rotten wood turned out to be part of the remains of an old pallet.

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The above photo was taken after I’d cleared away the old pallet, and even removed a bundle of wooden stakes.

There’s a tire rim under there.

Because of course there is.  There are tire rims fekkin’ everywhere around here! 😀

I’d already moved some sort of basin that was screwed onto a metal base.  I have no idea what it was used for since, unlike the other basins I’ve found around the yard, it wasn’t used as a planter.

I used it to hold the rotten, some nail filled, wood I was finding.

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Then, when that was full, I used the blue … barrel? … you can see in the previous picture to hold the pieces of wood I found under the top of the wire spool.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After moving out a whole bunch of rotten and rotting wood, I tried to move the wagon that was leaning against the chimney bricks.

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It promptly disintegrated.

The top half wasn’t as bad, but when I moved the bottom half, even one of the wheels just sloughed off.

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I wonder how many years it sat there?

After I moved it, I found something that brought a smile to my face.

My stone “ostrich egg” !!

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My late bother and I found this in a field somewhere, when I was a kid, and brought it home.  The size and shape made us think of an ostrich egg, so that’s what we called it.  It actually turned out to be quite handy.  My mother used to make sauerkraut in a big clay crock (which I believe we still have in the basement!).  After layering the cabbage, she put an upside down plate on it to keep the cabbage in the liquid.  This rock (after being cleaned thoroughly, of course) was put on top of the plate to weigh it down.

I’m so happy to see my rock is still around. 😀

Then I moved on to the mess under the top of the wire spool.

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The base of the wire spool itself was completely rotten, falling apart as I pulled it up.

Then I raked up the decaying leaves and whatnot that was under it.

Whoever put the spool there took enough care to place it on bricks.

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With enough time, not even that was enough to keep it from rotting.

I did find another mystery, though.  Can you see it?  Just above the brick at the bottom, right.

Seashells.

There was a pair of seashells under there.

I just… accept mysteries like this, now. 😀

I took out the bricks, cleared away around the chimney bricks – found some more small bricks, and raked around it.  Here is how it looks, now.

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The little stools had been leaning against the chimney bricks.  They really should be tossed, as they’re old to the point of unstable, but they can stay here for now.

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I forget what the long clay “pipes” are for.

All cleared!

And – most importantly! – no more rotting wood with nails sticking up.

Back to clearing the trees!

The Re-Farmer

Maple Grove Clearing – the garden shed

Today would have been a perfect day to be mowing the lawn.

If we had a working lawn mower. 😦

So, I started working on the maple grove, instead.

And I am in heaven!

I got SO much done, and it looks so much better!  I took lots of pictures, though I didn’t think to start doing that until after I’d cleared quite a bit out.  I worked on three different areas, all kind of overlapping each other, with a priority on clearing the garden shed door.  These pictures were taken after I’d finished the shed area, so they’re all “after” shots.

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The items in the foreground are a mess I had to clear maple suckers away from before I could start on it, including from the dead maple, which grew out of an old maple stump, near the middle of the photo.  With only a hand saw and pruning saws, I wasn’t up to taking this dead tree down yet.

Maples are almost indestructible!

I moved the picnic table to various areas so that I could stand on it to reach.  In particular, I wanted to clear the two trees leaning towards the house as much as possible.  Lots of dead branches on them.

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I wasn’t able to get all of the dead and dying branches I wanted to.  Especially on the trunk in the foreground.  That one started to bounce when I started to cut farther along.  It’s already touching the roof and, with the bouncing, it was hitting the roof more, so I stopped.  That whole thing needs to come down, to protect the house.  I’m hoping that the weight I removed so far will make it at least a little bit less of a risk of falling on the roof.

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Suckers from the tree on the far side of the shed had mostly covered the door.  Once it was clear as far as I could reach, I dragged the picnic table over and cut what I could from higher up.  Again, lots of dead or half dead branches.  That tree keeps going quite a bit further, over the opening to the garden.  It will need more cutting back.  We’ll need to assess it to see how much of a risk of collapsing there is, to decide how much.

The shed itself has very little life left in it, and there’s a hole in the roof.  My mother wants to replace it, though we could probably get another year out of this one.

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The north side of the shed was overgrown with maple suckers.  I cut them back and discovered … stuff.  Including a milk crate.

When clearing up the mess by the chimney blocks, I took out the old bed frames (or whatever they are) and those are now leaning against the shed in this space.  Basically, I’m putting all the junk in one place for when we hire someone to haul it away.

Also to the north of the shed is a dead spruce tree, but it did have something growing on it…

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The base of the dead spruce tree is on the left.  To the right of it are vines.  Some were already dead long enough to just pull out of the ground, while others needed to be cut.

Even as fast growing as these vines are, it takes a LONG time for them to develop such thick “trunks”!!  They may well be what killed the tree.

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This pile is of the stuff I cut from the shed door, and the north side, only.  Most of this was blocking the door.  Plus, there’s a bit of what I cut from above the shed door.

Shed is now clear and accessible again!

On to upload photos of the next section…

The Re-farmer

Finding things out

I had an adorable surprise, while puttering around the kitchen, making supper.

I had a furry audience!

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Trülbus was watching me. 😀

Then he and our mama cat started talking to each other through the window. Too funny!

This evening, I got a phone call from my older brother and had a lovely long talk. He was able to answer some questions for me – and not answer others!

That linoleum under the eaves?

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No clue. It wasn’t there before. He’d never seen it before. Best guess; when our late brother was building the sun room, he might have put them there to protect the underside of the eaves from any back splash of rain from the sun room roof. That was the only thing he could think of. 😀

He also told me that he’d been looking through some old photos and happened on one taken inside the shed we’re storing my parents’ stuff in. There in the photo was an A-frame ladder. He knew we hadn’t been able to find one, so he let me know.

As soon as I got off the phone, I grabbed a flashlight and checked.

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On the one hand, yay! It’s there!

On the other hand… it’s completely blocked with stuff.

Since I was there anyway, I looked around and noticed something odd about a hand saw hanging on the back wall.

It was two hand saws. One of them was the fine, narrow bladed one I remember using in my youth, that I was wishing I had while doing yard work.

Also, completely blocked off. Plus, way out of reach. My late brother would have hung it up there. He was fairly tall, but not that tall!

That shed is so full of stuff. Somehow, we’re going to have to fit in more!

*sigh*

I also got to talking to my brother about what the lawn mower was doing. Turns out it was doing the same thing for him, though he’d hoped he’d fixed it.

Easiest thing to do to fix it once and for all is to have the carburetor replaced.

Time to go looking for a small engine repair shop. I mean, we *could* do it ourselves, but when it comes to things to put our time and energy to, it would just be simpler that way.

Not everything is worth doing it ourselves.

The Re-Farmer

Morning Cats, and shopping day

I want to start by sharing some photos of the cats this morning.   Because it’s a great way to start the day!

Like waking up to this…

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Actually, I woke up to see her sitting there, staring at me. 😀  The cats really appreciate the extra thickness of the window sill, thanks to the log walls in the original part of the house.  They’d love to get up onto the other window, too, which is much, much bigger, but it’s the one that didn’t get replaced.  Which means it still has sheets of plexiglass covering them on the inside, so there’s nowhere they can sit at.  Which drives them bonkers, when the outside cats are in the trees outside the window, looking in. 😀

Speaking of outside cats…

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With all the rain we’ve been having, I moved the food bowls under the little roof over the basement window.  They actually seem to prefer when the kibble gets a bit wet; likely softer on their teeth.  “A bit wet” is not what’s been happening, lately.  Which is a good thing!

When I came out this morning, Squishum (not in the picture) was all talkative, squeaking away as if wanting attention, but still won’t let me come near.  Nasty Crime Boy, Beep Beep and Butterscotch were content to ignore me to come to the food.

The Hand, on the other hand…

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…would not go to the food while I was around!  I took this through the screen door of the sun room, after bringing back the container I use to take food to the bowls.  She would only peak her head around the corner of the shelf outside, watching to see what I would do.  I was able to move my phone enough to get more than just her head, but she was not comfortable with me being there and slunk away to the clothes line platform to wait for me to leave.

I don’t want to prevent her from eating, so I left.

I so want to touch that cat! 😀

Instead, I got to touch the Butterscotch!

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I even got a decent picture of her!  She makes it very difficult. 😀

I wandered around the East side of the house and did a bit of weeding to free up some irises that are coming up.  Looking into the spruce grove, I just had to get another picture.

Remember this?

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That photo was taken on May 15.  The leaves are barely coming out at this point.

This is what it looks like, today.

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That broken piece of tree in the first picture is still there, in the left side of the photo.  Completely hidden from where I was standing, and barely visible even at other angles.

That horseradish is coming up nicely, too.

In time, that underbrush will be cleared mostly away, and the dead tree will be cut down.  Likely not this year, though.  I think we will focus on cleaning up the maple grove, first.  At least as much as we can, until we have a working chain saw.

My goal is to have both the maple and spruce groves open under the trees, park-like and mow-able.  I would like us to, at the very least, be able to walk through the trees without having to skirt dead branches, dead trees and other detritus.  Including my husband, with his walker.  Maybe set up a picnic table or something in the shade, so we can enjoy the spaces more.

Little by little, we will get there.

Late this morning, my older daughter and I made the trip into the city for our monthly bulk shopping trip.  Our usual routine is to stop at the town we drive though on the way, to fill the tank.  The gas station we stop at is a co-op we have a membership with, which will translate into a check at the end of the year, so we make it a habit. When we got there, however, I got the nasty surprise of seeing the gas prices had gone up 10¢ per liter.  !!!  Our tank was lower than I normally let it go (we drove over 1800km since I filled it and reset the trip counter at the end of last month), so I kind of had to put something in.  I ended up putting in $30, which didn’t even bring it to half a tank.  While paying for it, I asked when the big jump happened.  Turned out to be a mere 2 hours before we got there!

When we finished our Costco shopping, I filled the tank there.  The price was 14¢ per litre less!  Plus, since it’s Costco, that will also be included in the check we’ll get at the end of the year.  Even at the lower price, and having already put in $30 of gas and bringing it to just below the half way mark, it still cost over $60 to fill the tank.  That’s almost half our gas budget for the month, right there.  Thankfully, our van does have good mileage.

The increases in gas prices are really going to be a problem.  The politicians can talk about how we should be using alternative transportation all they want.  Even in the city, that’s not always feasible.  For anyone living in the country, what choice do we have?  It’s not like there’s a bus we can hop on, and we certainly can’t bike to the city to do our monthly grocery shopping.  Or even to the next town.  Plus, most people have multiple vehicles, because they are work tools, not just transportation.  Heaven help those who make the commute to the city!  When we last lived out here, my husband had a 70 minute commute, one way.  That’s highway driving, for the most part, so it wasn’t affected by traffic until the last 10 minutes or so. I know others who have longer commutes.  Back then, it was a big deal when gas prices went higher than 60¢ a litre.  Now we’re looking at $1.309 (there are about 4L in a gallon, for those of you in the US.  That works out to about $5.24 per gallon), and other areas are even higher.

That’s going to make life more difficult for a lot of people. 😦

We got the monthly shopping done, at least.  $600 later. :-/  My splurge of the month was new wiper blades for the van, to replace the ones being held together with electric tape.  😀  Tomorrow, we go to the regular grocery store to get the things we don’t need to buy in bulk.

It feels good to have well stocked cupboards, fridge and freezer again!

The Re-Farmer

So Green!

We had predictions for a series of thunderstorms throughout the day, starting at noon.

It didn’t quite work out that way.  At least not in our area. The first rainfall (I won’t even call it a thunderstorm, though there was some thunder) didn’t start until late afternoon/early evening.

Which worked out well for us, since today was when one of my husband’s medical appointments was rescheduled to.  We left early enough to have lunch in town.  Ooooohhh… a date!  His appointment was for an hour, though, so it did make things a lot longer than was probably good for him.  Especially after pushing himself so much for the family dinner in the city on Sunday, which he would not have recovered from quite yet.  The specialist he was seeing cut the appointment a bit short, which was a good thing.  We still had to stop at the pharmacy, grocery store and post office on the way home, too.  My husband stayed in the van, with the AC going, by that point.  No sense in dragging the walker out for quick stops.

It’s been a hot and muggy day today; the main floor manages to stay pretty cool, but the upstairs gets really hot.  Just like, in the winter, it got really cold!  There isn’t even anything we could do about it.  Even if we got, say, an air conditioner, there aren’t enough grounded outlets to plug it in.

When the rains did come, it swept through in short bursts, with one big downpour.  We even lost our internet for a bit, which is something we can expect any time there’s more severe weather.  At least until we can get about 14 feet cut from the tops of the trees in the south yard.

It’s pretty amazing, how different things are looking right now!

This was our west yard, a month ago.

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This is what it looks like now.

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So much green!

We needed this so much!

After taking the above photo, I had some issues coming back into the house.

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Mom and son, with their noses at the bottom of the door, waiting for me to come back! 😀

The good thing is, when I open the door, they aren’t really all the interested in going outside.  They just become a tripping hazard. 😉

At about 10pm, we’re still at 21C, and its expected to cool down only a few degrees as we get more rain overnight.  More thunderstorms are expected tomorrow evening.

I do wish I’d been able to mow the lawn before the rains returned.

Ah, well.  At least the girls were able to get most of the eaves troughs cleaned.

My mother had mentioned to me that there was a hooked tool somewhere around that allowed for cleaning the eaves from ground level, though she said a hose was still needed to finish the cleaning.  She told me where she thought it was, but the only things there are long handled pruning tools (that I look forward to making use of!).  I mentioned it to my older brother and he knew exactly what she was talking about.  He’d bought it for my parents!  He said it was in the sun room.

So that’s what that thing was!  I’d seen it, tucked into a corner, and was wondering.

Turns out that it’s a hose attachment.  My brother had demonstrated to my parents how to use it, but he didn’t think they ever did.  This was before my mom moved to the senior’s centre, so we’re talking quite a few years ago!

It came in very handy.

It couldn’t clean out the eaves troughs on its own, though.  My younger daughter got up on the ladder with a stick to clear out some of the eaves troughs out, then got onto the new part roof through the 2nd floor window to clear the others, while my older daughter used the hose attachment to finish clearing everything away with water.

Thankfully, we do have some very long hose.

There’s still one corner on the north side of the house that needs to be done, but that will have to wait until we get another break in the weather.

With how much rain we’ve been having, I am sure the fire bans can finally be lifted, and I hope the fires around the province have been thoroughly rained on!

We’re basically getting the sort of weather we were expecting last month.  Which I suppose makes sense, since the winter weather came in about a month behind, too.

As long as the shift keeps matching all year, it should work out for the farmers and gardeners.

The Re-Farmer

More progress

Since the ladder was out anyway, after my daughter caulked the screw holes from the previous satellite dishes on the side of the house, I decided to tackle one of the Chinese elms.

There was a large branch overhanging the vehicle gate into the yard.  With the power pole being replaced in a few weeks, I figured I’d better get it down now.  I don’t know what kind of equipment will need to be brought into the yard, but it needs to be done anyway, so may as well!

Since we don’t have a (working) chain saw, it ended up taking all three of us, taking turns sawing, until our shoulders got too sore.

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And it’s down!

The next while was spent breaking it down and adding it to the pile I’d started with the saplings I’d cut away, earlier.

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The remaining log was a bit much to manhandle alone – the wood is remarkably heavy, compared to other types of trees – so it’ll wait until there are two people available to toss it on the pile.

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This is so much better!

There is still a higher branch that should probably come down, as it’s half dead, and there’s another that’s completely dead, but that will wait for another time.  At least the one big one is now down.

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Not bad for a day’s work.

The Re-Farmer

Another Mystery

This afternoon, while my daughters broke down the pile of branches I’d trimmed at the back of the house, I got the ladder out to caulk the holes in the wall left from the original internet satellite dishes.  Hearing the noise, my younger daughter came around to help.  Sweetheart that she is, she braved the incredibly bouncy ladder to fill the holes while I held the ladder for her.

My older daughter came around to see what was going on.  In the process of looking at her sister caulking the higher set of holes, she noticed something very strange, under the eaves of the second floor roof.

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Yes.  That’s right.

Linoleum tiles.

Why?

Why is that there?

The Re-Farmer

Trimming, clean up and… NOT mowing the lawn?

With predictions for rain tomorrow and storms the day after, I decided that this was my day to try and mow the lawn.

Of course, nothing is quite that simple around here.

When I got outside, I was greeted by…

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… a reminder of one of the reasons I stopped liking Chinese elm.  There are millions of these seeds, being blown everywhere.  They’re starting to drift in places, and they’re coming off the trees like rain with every breeze.

Ugh.

Before I could mow the lawn, I needed to clear the back door into the garage of trees.  This will be needed for when the power pole is replaced, but also to get the mower in and out.

Let me find a before picture…

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Hmm.  Apparently, I don’t have a picture that includes the fence, as well.

You can see that there are saplings growing in front of the door and along the garage walls.  More were growing along the fence to the gate.  Most of is was poplar, but I also found some raspberry canes and vines, and along the fence was an unintentional coppice of maple.

I had noticed a metal pipe in the middle of the maple, but had left it until I could start cleaning up the area.  So while clearing the saplings away, I pulled it out and…

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… it’s a hoe.  Someone replaced the handle of a hoe with a length of heavy pipe.

Well, it’s certainly not going to break. :-/

This is the after picture.

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I started stacking the saplings I cleared outside the yard, alongside the garage, which you can see part of on the right of the photo.  I cut away poplar towards the outhouse, too.  There’s more that needs to be cleared, there, but it will wait for another time.

Leaning against the garage and half buried in tall grass and dead branches, I pulled out three lengths of … hmm.  I don’t know the name of them.  They’re used as ramps to drive a vehicle onto a trailer or something like that.  Two were longer and the same length, plus there was a shorter one.

I ended up using the shorter one to cover the hole in front of the outhouse.  It will do double duty in keeping the door from coming open on in the wind again.

I found other stuff in the grass and leaves.

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Along with more branches, some plastic margarine tubs and what might have been a metal tobacco tin, I found these concrete blocks.

I’ve left them for now.

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Ah, yes.  Another tire planter.

You can see part of the remains of the maple I cut away in the bottom right corner.  I had some concerns about accidentally hitting the remains with a lawn mower, so I decided to take advantage of wanting to move the planter and cover it with the soil.

Flipping the planter over, I heard an unexpected noise.

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Metal on brick.

Not sure why the bricks are there.  It’s not like they could support anything under there.

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I don’t know what was planted in there, but it was amusing to see a perfect mold of the rim in the root systems and soil.

Since there was this handy hoe nearby, I used that to move the dirt over the remains of the maple.

Once it was all cleared away, I got the lawn mower out.  Finally!

It didn’t want to start, but my brother did tell me it was finicky.  It didn’t help that the part that held the throttle cable to the handle frame kept popping off.  Nothing a zip tie couldn’t fix.

I finally got it going, but it didn’t have a lot of oompf. Still, I was able to mow along the fence line and around a few trees before I started working on a section in front of the house.

Then it puttered and died.

I checked the fuel.  There was still some in there, but low (I’d started with about half a tank or so), so I topped it up with the gas my brother had left for me with the mower, when he did maintenance on it in the fall.

I got it going again, but it kept stalling.  It ran as long as I was going over areas where there was hardly any grass, but as soon as I hit slightly greener areas, it would stall again.

And again.

And again.

By this point, it was getting too hot to be working outside, anyways, so I finally just put it away.

So frustrating.

I did some research to see what might be causing the problem, and the only thing that seems to make sense is the fuel didn’t handle the winter well.  Yet, it was stored properly.  It shouldn’t have gone bad in so short a time.

I just don’t have the spoons to fight with it.

It will have to wait.  Not after all the clean up I’d already done.

Ah, well.  There are other things that need to be worked on.

The Re-Farmer

 

An Awesome Day, and growth explosion

Today, all four of us made it into the city for a family get together.  It made for a very long and painful day for my husband, but he hasn’t seen his sister in 4 years.  She flies home soon, so he wasn’t about to miss this chance.  It was so great to see everyone and spend time with them.  It is a rare thing for everyone to be together at the same time, these days.

With all this wonderful rain we’ve been having, it’s just fantastic to see everything so GREEN, everywhere.  Even the drive into the city looked completely different.

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A short time ago, the trees were just showing green leaves, while everything else looked like the dead growth from last year that you can still see in the ditch.  Now, it’s like the trees all just exploded in green.

(Also, I’m amused by the fact that there is a reflection of me driving, hovering in the sky. 😀 )

When we got home, we found all sorts of cats had missed our company!

The inside cats were very curious about Nasty Crime boy.

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It was a shared curiosity! 😀

I’m loving the long daylight hours, too.  Though we didn’t get home until past 8pm, there was still plenty of light, so I did a quick walk around the yard to see how things were.

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The crab apple trees north of the spruce grove are finally blooming.  My sister and her husband pruned them back quite heavily last summer, but I can see that there are some dead branches that will need to be cut away.  These might have died off over the winter.

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A few days ago, these linden leaves were just barely new leaf buds!

I had a chance to ask my mother about the linden tree, because it looks so different than I remember it.  So much so that, until the leaves unfurled, it looked like two different trees!  She told me that she used to cut back the suckers every year, but no one continued that after she went to the senior’s centre she now lives in.  That would explain why they look so different.  The growth at the base – where these leaves are – is only about 4-5 years old, whereas the trunk in the middle is more like 30-35 years old.

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These lilies had been showing in green clusters but after the rain, they shot up several inches and threw out flower stocks and buds virtually overnight!

Rolando Moon approves.

I also did a basement check this evening, and the old part basement is bone dry, though there is some water in the sump pump reservoir.  Well below the level of the float.

We still need to get the old hot water tank out of there.  It’s much bigger and heavier than modern ones!

I was just thinking, as I wrote this, how I can’t remember the last time the old part basement was still dry this far into spring, and I remembered one year when it flooded.  This had to have happened before the new part was built, so I was probably about 6 years old, give or take a year or two.  I remember going part way down the stairs to see.  The water was a couple of feet deep – deep enough to cover several steps – and perfectly clean and clear.

Then, as I was looking, a frog went swimming past the bottom of the stairs!

I will never forget that frog! 😀

I hadn’t thought of that in years!

Funny how things trigger old memories of growing up in this house. 🙂

The Re-Farmer