As the girls and I headed out to the city, Beep Beep came out to see us off.
Beep Beep is pretty much the only one of the outside cats we are seeing regularly. Every time I see her, I am amazed by how little she is! Just fur and bones!
During the drive to and from the city, we saw many beautiful fields of canola in full bloom.
Gorgeous!
We even saw some cranes just half a mile from our place this morning, some pelicans flying over as we were leaving the city on a different route, and a herd of bison, with their little ones, on the final leg home.
I wrote up my last post while taking a hydration break from working in the maple grove. By the time I was done, I found myself nodding off at the keyboard. I figured lying down wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Three hours later… :-o
But, I’ve got it done as much as I can for now.
Here are the before and after pictures of the two North rows.
I cleared out two of the tree spruces in the foreground of the second picture. The two I took out had a few green sprigs here and there, but were otherwise dead. I also cut off the dead branches from the one in the middle. I am hoping that, now that it’s open and clear, it will survive.
The remaining spruces in that northernmost row are doing pretty good. I trimmed the lowest branches, as well as the dead ones that I could reach with a hand saw. The dead ones were mostly on the south side of the trees, where they had no light. The other living spruce trees, I only took off what was in my way as I moved around. I will finish cutting away the dead branches when my birthday gift comes in. :-)
This is the remains of a row of raspberry bushes. I can see some dead canes from years past, but no fresh canes in this area.
To the right, you can also see a gooseberry bush I found. I had cleared out a broadleaf tree that was between two spruces, and discovered the gooseberry under it!
Then there’s this gooseberry bush, in dire need of having the deadwood cut away. It’s growing next to a chokecherry tree, which was also overgrown and in need of pruning at its base.
It was amazing how cutting just one sucker at the bottom of the chokecherry tree cleared almost everything up! A few downward hanging branches to clear away, and various saplings, burdock and stinging nettle to clear away at the base, and what a difference! I even found some raspberry bushes with baby berries on them.
The gooseberry, on the other hand, has almost no sign of berries on it at all, and what little it does have are not looking good.
This is the very end of the “raspberry” row, with an apple tree near the compost pile. There’s even a lonely little asparagus fern growing in here!
I found more salvageable raspberry canes. After cutting away some lower branches and saplings at the base of the apple tree (including maple and elm saplings), it was basically just weeding and removing old raspberry canes. There are some plants in there I recognize as flowers my mother planted, so I tried to avoid taking those out. Lots of creeping charlie and burdock in here.
At this point, I called it a night. Which worked out perfectly, because that’s when I got a call from the second tree care company about coming over. It was another father and sons team. :-)
When they got here, I showed them the areas I wanted work done on, plus the trees to come down. He asked questions about how far back I wanted to cut things (basically, enough to not have to do this again for 5 years). He wanted to know about the overhanging branches, which would normally be left if they are not touching the lines. One of them is a very healthy maple tree, and cutting it back would mean removing pretty much half the tree. When I pointed out it was from those overhanging branches that we got the burned branch from, and that it had happened before, causing a power outage, he understood why I didn’t want ANY overhanging branches at all. They even measured the trunks of the trees that will be taken down, including the dead spruce. They had to take into account being able to get their equipment in, too, and I told them about the three different gates that were available. We also talked about cleanup. He charges extra if they bring in a chipper, but I did say I wanted to keep the chips for mulch, and to keep the bigger wood, too. He mentioned they don’t usually chip dead branches, because it dulls the cutting edges, but the stuff they’ll be cutting back will mostly be life branches.
He took a whole bunch of notes, and I will get the estimate emailed to me.
I told him about how we don’t own the land, and that I am getting estimates to talk to my mother and brother about before a decision is made, and that I’m hoping to get it done in the fall. Or spring, if the cost is higher (which I suspect it will be, with these guys, but we shall see). He was good with fall, mentioning after August is when they’d be available to do the work, so that works out.
And that’s it for the next while. Tomorrow will be a trip to the city for my daughter, which should give my body time to rest. Feeling pretty stiff and sore right now! :-D
Today, I am continuing working on the East end of the maple grove, and have just stopped for a hydration break before finishing for the day.
I am thinking it would be a good idea to rent a wood chipper in the fall. There is just SO much wood being cleaned and cleared away.
So this is what the area looked like on Saturday, after I cleared out the old garden path.
Apparently, the only photos I have taken from the other end don’t show the whole area. Ah, well.
An interesting thing about my taking all these before and after pictures, as that I have a time record, too. I don’t typically pay attention to what time I start or finish, but my phone’s camera is set to use the date and time in the file names. This means I can say with confidence that I worked about 1 1/2 hours, starting just before noon, in this area.
This is what I did in that 1 1/2 hours. :-)
I started by clearing away by the water tap. For that one, I just had to take some video.
So… that post isn’t doing anything useful anymore. :-(
I cleared out a couple of dead spruces beside the tap, one of which was rotten enough that I just broke the trunk at ground level and pulled it out. There were some elms growing out of an old trunk that was pretty big when someone finally cut it down. That’s the one that has me wondering if the roots have caused any problems with the underground water pipe.
There was another dead spruce nearby that I took down.
I even got it to fall right on my pile! :-D
As I moved on and went to pull some stuff out of the grass by another dead tree, I stepped on something that sank under my foot.
Do you see it?
Neither could I. Even after using the weed trimmer here, I see nothing.
It was some fence wire that was rolled up, but ended up flattened at some point. From the looks of the rusty old soup can I also found under it, it’s been here for quite a long time!
I moved the two tillers closer to the shed so I could clear where they were sitting. That included moving two garbage cans (one of which was partially sheltering a tiller) and piece of aluminum that looks like it is part of ducting for a large building that used to shelter a push mower. My brother took the mower to see if he could fix it.
When I went to take out some other fence wire in the area I found…
… a chokecherry tree and some vines growing through it.
Some of this is going to wait until my telescoping pole chainsaw arrives – I got a shipping notification in my email this morning. :-) I also won’t be going back through this area with the weed trimmer until after I’ve cleaned it out more and cut trunks down to ground level. I was finding too many rocks, branches, brick and pieces of wire. I got the cheapest weed trimmer I could find, so I don’t want to wreck it!
At the Easternmost end of this area is a couple of dead spruces. One of them had thick vines growing out the bottom of it that I had cut, but left hanging.
Today, I pulled them out.
The vines may have started at the base of one tree, but part way up, it spread to the other dead spruce tree (and is likely what killed both of them).
Looks like some kind of triffid!! Some of it broke off and is still in the tree, but this is most of it.
These are the two dead spruce threes it was attached to. Funny. They look MUCH emptier, now that the triffid vine is out.
Oh, my SIL told me about an app called Plant Snap that I downloaded and tested out. These vines are Virginia Creeper. It is related to grapes, but their berries are poisonous to humans (birds can eat them), and the sap can be an irritant. Because they spread through rhizomes so aggressively, it looks like the only way to permanently get rid of them is with some Roundup. Which I plan to use elsewhere, at some point, so that works out. I’m told that spruces are impervious to Roundup, but clearly not to these vines!
This is what the area looks like now.
Later today, I plan to work on that north row. After that, this section will be pretty much done, other than what is waiting for a chain saw.
Here is the pile of what 1 1/2 hours of cleaning and clearing trees looks like, including the vines.
We got hit by a short, but intense storm today. Severe enough to warrant shutting down the computers.
I got a couple of videos, so when the storm passed, I turned on my desktop, and began uploading the videos.
Then the power went out.
It was just for a few seconds. Then it came back on. Then off. Then on again. Then flickered a bit.
So much for my uploads!
I didn’t try again until after picking up my younger daughter from work. Thankfully, my older daughter and I had put on the new windshield wipers, first! Turns out that we have to open the hood to be able to access the wiper arms, which meant I could barely reach, and couldn’t see. The wipers the van came with were broken and kept together with electric tape, which had come off some time ago, so the ends on the driver’s side blade were just sort of flopping.
Changing wiper blades should be easy. Just pop off the old ones, pop on the new ones. But no… that would be too easy! I got the old wiper blade off, but there was a piece attached to that arm that should have come off, too. It wouldn’t. After a while, I figured I’d put the old blade on and try again later. That didn’t work; a piece broke off, instead. So later on, I backed the van out of the garage so we could see, then popped the hood.
Of course, that’s when it started to rain. *sigh*
After righting with it for a bit, and another piece breaking off, I drove it back into the garage while my daughter got our tool kit (with all the stuff in the garage, do you think there are any actual usable tools in there? Nope!). While waiting, I got the passenger side blade changed. That one came off easily, and the new blade popped right on, the way it’s supposed to.
It took a pair of pliers and elbow grease to get the driver’s side arm bar clear of the broken bit. Once that was done, the new blade went on quite easily. Yay!
It made all the difference while driving in the rain!
As for the videos, I’ve had some trouble uploading them; I think the power outage happening while I was trying to upload them the first time messed things up. As I type this, the second video is still uploading, after the file got rejected three times! But it seems to be fine now.
After the storm, I did a walk around to see if there was any damage. A few branches had come down, but nothing serious. I did another walk around after picking up my daughter, and there were even more branches down. No roof damage, though, which is the main concern. :-)
The sky is clear, now, and it’s looking lovely out there. The rain is much appreciated!
The Re-Farmer 