planning ahead

Clean up: before

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I plan to work my way down the front of the row of trees and bushes in the West yard, from the fire pit area towards the flower garden.  I’ve started at the linden tree at one end.  Here are the areas I will work on next.

Like the maple and spruce groves, when I was a kid, I used to be able to mow in between the trees and bushes here.

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Nearest the linden and plum trees I’ve already cleared is this tree.  I don’t know what it is, but a lot of the leaves are turning yellow with black spots on them.  I’ve done a quick search, and it might be a fungal disease.  If so, I might have to do some serious work on it – but first I have to get to it through the undergrowth!

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I’m going to have to somehow get to that dead tree in the middle of some false spirea and… some other bush.  I think the dead tree used to be another plum.

I like the false spirea.  Really, I do!  But my goodness, they are invasive!

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This crab apple tree seems to be doing okay.  It’s got lots of bitty apples starting, no bigger than rose hips right now.  It is still going to be needing some pruning…

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More self-sown false spirea at the end if this row, and you can see some of the deadwood on the crab apple tree.

Also, I think you can see some surviving lilacs.

You can’t see them in any of the other pictures, but there used to be two rows of lilacs behind all these trees and bushes.  I remember how, at the end where the linden tree is now, the two rows of lilacs formed a natural tunnel that I used to be able to crawl into.

Now, I’m not sure how many of them have survived, blocked as they are from the sun by the overgrowth.

I hope to start cleaning up these areas over the next few days, weather willing.

The Re-Farmer

Ready to Go, and a nice surprise

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Today, my older daughter and I confirmed that the mower would fit in the back of our van, took out the seats, emptied it of my crates of supplies (we kept the emergency kit and cooler of van water, though), and loaded it up.

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I won’t be taking it to the shop until they open on Tuesday.  I had thought of dropping it off tomorrow, but my brother tells me they don’t have a secure drop off point.

Which means the mower, with an almost full tank of gas, will be in the van for two nights and a day, in the heat we are having again.

I made sure to open the windows a fair bit.  Plus, we still haven’t replaced the handle on the garage door (I finally got some replacement cable for it), so it’s wide open.  No chance of accumulated fumes.

Earlier in the day, I went into town with my younger daughter so she could drop off some resumes, and we could pick up a few things at the grocery store.  There’s a hardware store next to it, so I popped over for a bit.  Turns out they don’t have fan rakes, but they did have metal roasting sticks.  So I picked up a few for our next cook out. :-)

My mom called while we were out, so I called her back as soon as we got home.  She was wondering how we were doing in this heat (we were hovering around 30C today), and telling us that if we open the basement doors, we would get cool air.  I remember doing that, when I was growing up here.  It works very well. Unfortunately, we can’t do that until we’ve cleaned up the basements.  The old part basement is pretty good, but the new part basement is filled with all sorts of breakable things (years of accumulated jars and booze bottles, spare florescent light tubes, etc.), and way too many hidey holes that the cats would get into.

While we were talking, I told her about the different areas I’ve been working on.  I found out that she did, indeed, deliberately plant those little spruce trees at the fence line.  Why there, I ask her.  Where else? she answers.  :-D  So I bring up that, when the trees are full grown, they will destroy the fence.  Oh, by the time they’re that big, she says, it won’t matter.  I think she was implying the fence would be old, or would be replaced before then?  I’m not sure.  I told her I will be transplanting them, once I find a good place of them.  Much to my surprise, she just said not to worry about them for now.  Considering that, earlier in the conversation, when I told her I cleaned up around her white lilacs, she thought that meant I had cut them down, this is a good thing. :-D

Then I mentioned wanting to clean up the bushes growing around the other house.

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In the past, these false spirea had covered the old stairs on both sides, as the wood rotted away.  I remember this because, when we made a road trip to visit family after getting our first van, I had tried to go to the door and a step gave out under me!  Now there are nice strong steps, and I want to keep them well maintained.

Which means cutting back the spirea.  Plus, I’ll be thinning away the dead branches, etc.

As I tell my mother this, she asks me how her vines are doing.

Vines?

All I could think of were the vines I’ve been finding all over the place, choking out trees and bushes.

No.  Vines.  She had planted them by the steps.  How are they doing?

Well, I did notice what appeared to be dead vines in the spirea, which I thought were the same vines I’ve been getting rid of all over.  That was not what she was talking about.

Then she mentioned she’d actually picked from them.

Picked what?  Berries?  I had no idea what she was talking about.  The only vines I’ve seen don’t have berries.

Finally, she remembered the English word for them; grapes.

We have grapes?!?

That’s on my list of food plants, too, but at the bottom of the list, since they need a lot more tending than most plants.

I told her I didn’t remember seeing any, and perhaps the spirea had choked them out? I told her I would check.

Which I did.

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Lo and behold, there are, indeed, vines growing that aren’t the ones we’ve been fighting for the past while.

Not only that…

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… there are even little baby grapes started!

I will have to ask my mom if she remembers what kind they are, so I can look up how to properly care for them.  There are not a lot of varieties of grapes that are hardy enough for our growing zone, so even if she doesn’t, I should be able to figure it out.

I do know that they shouldn’t be the way they are now!  If possible, I would want to transplant them to the fence, which can be used as a trellis, and they will have full sun.  With judicious care, we should be able to get good harvests of grapes from them.

Oh, I am suddenly quite excited!  I had no idea my mother had ever planted grapes!  She’d simply never mentioned them before.

I filled in my mother about all sorts of things, from what the electric company told me about clearing the trees, and my wanting to get a quote for the job, so we know what to budget for, to progress on the flower gardens.  She had a hard time understanding some of what I was telling her, sometimes.  She has what she’s always done so firm in her mind, it’s hard for her to picture something different, just from a description.  But it was a good conversation, overall, even if she doesn’t seem quite sure about what I am doing.  When it gets to a certain point, though, she starts talking about how this is all men’s work, so she will talk to my older brother about it, so he can take care of it.  We got to that point in the conversation, but I didn’t mind too much at all, since she started talking about how good my dad was about taking care of things, and how he understood electricity and plumbing and so on.  Then she started talking about how women’s work was housekeeping and so on, and I just kept saying, no.  Nope.  No.  Until she started to say, well, that’s how she and my dad did things, and that worked for them, but others might do it differently.

Yay, Mom!  That right there was a HUGE step for her, and I am so proud of her. :-)

It was a good conversation.

Later on, while talking to my older brother, he told me he’d just talked to our mom as well.  At one point during their conversation, he told me that my mom expressed her satisfaction with how we are taking care of the place.

She would never tell me that to my face, of course, but I don’t expect her to.  For her to say it to my brother, however, is another HUGE step, and I am so proud of her. :-)

I am happy that we are able to take care of this place for her.  It takes a big burden off of her shoulders, and it’s been pretty good for us, too (as much as possible, under the circumstances! :-D ).  She was having a hard time with letting go, which is understandable.  If she is reaching the point where she is able to start trusting that we know what we’re doing, even if it’s different than how she did things, that will also reduce stress for her.

Win, win! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning Cats, and shopping day

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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. :-D  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. :-D

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! :-D

Instead, I got to touch the Butterscotch!

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I even got a decent picture of her!  She makes it very difficult. :-D

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.  :-D  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

I found them!

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With this wonderful rain we’ve been having, there has been so much new growth.

When I had the chance to go around the house with the weed trimmer, I found a lovely surprise.

The horseradish has emerged.

In two places!

I found the first one in the end of the flower garden, where we’ve been putting feed out for the birds and deer.  I had just moved the bird feeder stand into that area, shifting about to find the most steady spot for it, and it was most certainly not there, just a few days ago.

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In fact, it’s growing out in one of the first spots I’d set the stand.  If it had been a bit more level around there, the base of the stand would have been right on top of it!

The other greenery, my mom tells me are weeds.

I now know which spruce tree by the house my mom meant, when she told me where she transplanted the horseradish intentionally.

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It’s partly hidden by saplings and other growth.

Both areas have been cleared up a bit with the weed trimmer; some of it, I’ll have to come back with the pruning shears I found.

Using one of the 100 ft extension cords my older brother gifted to us, so we could have electricity to plug in our van in the winter, was enough for me to go around much of the house, as well as most of the south end of the yard.  There were just a couple of places I couldn’t reach.

While working around one area by the fence, I saw a frog hopping in the grass.  A wood frog, which is very common around here.  I wasn’t able to get a picture, though.  Ah, well.  We may not see them much, but we sure hear them a lot, in the evenings!

I was glad to get the trimming done, but it was so muggy, my face was just dripping, even though I wasn’t exerting myself at all.  It wasn’t even particularly hot – only about 18C.

There had been predictions of more rain this afternoon, but that seems to have changed.  After that, there’s no rain predicted until more storms are supposed to arrive on Wednesday, so we should have time to mow the lawn and build that gate. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Status after storms and rain

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This morning, I made a point of walking around the yard to see if there was any damage from the storms.  We’re all still very wet – enough that our sump pump has actually turned on! – and everything is so wonderfully green!

First order of business was to clean out the cat food containers, which were full of water logged kibble.

I had several cats come out to see what I was doing.

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None of them were co-operative when it came to getting their pictures taken! :-D

I was very pleased at what the flower garden I’ve been working on looked like.

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Absolutely none of the uncovered cardboard blew away.  I am quite surprised, really.  With the winds we had for a while, I’m surprised quite a lot of things didn’t blow away!

No roof damage.  No dead branches fallen down – at least not in the yard.  Just some small branches and twigs.

We’re getting to where we should be mowing the lawn soon.  We’re expecting more rain today, but even without more rain, the grass is far too wet.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to get it done on Monday.

Not that there is much grass to mow.

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The above photo is of the yard to the east of the house, between the house and a flower garden on that side (though that “flower” garden is now mostly bushes).  On the far side of this garden, there is better grass.

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The above photo is the west section of the yard, near the fire pit.  Mostly moss, some weeds, and very little actual grass.

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The north side of the yard has a dead patch that perfectly corresponds with the overhanging maple branches above. Hmm.  Do you think there’s a correlation? LOL

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The south areas of the yard has more grass, especially on the south east, but under the Chinese Elm by the kitchen, it’s more weeds and dirt than grass.

That tractor tire is an interesting bit of decor. ;-D

At some point, though not likely this year, we will work to improve the lawn.  Even if it’s to move to a ground cover rather than grass.  Some areas are sparse because vehicles get driven in to the door fairly regularly, so I wouldn’t expect anything to do well in those areas.

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One thing I was seeing a lot of were black ant hills, like these.  The one in the middle was the biggest I saw.  Most were like the tiny bundle of soil to the left of it.  They’re not good to have in the yard, since they destroy root systems with their digging, but I’m not too worried about them at this point.

Our plans for the day will depend a lot on the weather, but I do hope we’ll still get some outside work done. I had been thinking of building a new barb wire gate for the other driveway, and we still might start preparations for it (like seeing if we can salvage the wood fence posts in the flower garden to replace the rotting posts in the existing barb wire gate) today.  We shall see how it works out.

Little by little, it’s getting done. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Sun Room Cats

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This evening, I decided to spend a bit of time in the sun room, leaving the door open to see if any cats came to join me.

They did, of course.

Including this strange cat…

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My first thought was that it was The Hand, whom I rarely see and stays away, but quickly realized the patterning was all wrong.  Yet, I still felt I should know this cat.

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Then a (suddenly skinny) Butterscotch came by, and clearly they were familiar with each other.

As the cat slunk into the doorway, I realized…

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The strange patterning was dirt.  It was Squishum!

The cats LOVE rolling in the dirt, but this is the first time one got dirty enough that I no longer recognized it. :-D

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Squishum and Butterscotch hardly came into the door, but Butterscotch was more adventurous, coming all the way in and exploring behind the stuff that still needs to be taken to the storage shed.

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Nasty Crime Boy also explored the room, including spending time in one of his favourite places; my dad’s old walker.

When my mom came out yesterday, she borrowed the walker to get around the yard.  At one point, I looked over to see the walker sitting outside the sun room, while my mom was inside, and it was covered in cats.  Two on the seat, and one in the basket! :-D

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Trüllbus the Crime Eater is looking like he’s shouting “Ah!  Something under the door has got me!”

Though it was evening, the sun room was very hot.  Once we get it cleared out and set up the way we want, I can picture spending some late evenings in there, enjoying the residual warmth, long after the sun goes down.

I can also foresee using the room as a greenhouse to start seeds in late winter, for transplanting in the spring.

We won’t work on it until the yard is cleaned up enough that it can be mowed.  The grass is starting to get to that point!

While in the sun room, I plugged in the weed whacker I found in there and tested it out.  It doesn’t work. :-(  There’s another one in the garage, but my older brother pointed out to me where it was broken, so it’s not usable, either.

I guess we’re going to buy our own, after all. :-/

The Re-Farmer

We… don’t have rain. :-(

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So much for weather forecasts.

For all the lower temperatures and overcast skies, and forecasts of 80% chance for rain, there has been none today.  Going into town with another errand, my daughter and I played a bit of Pokemon Go.  In the game, which is linked to local weather in some way, showed pouring rain on our maps.  In the real world, there wasn’t a drop.

Once home again, I did a quick check around the yard and garden area.  After talking to my mother yesterday, I learned that the trees in the flower garden are not cherry trees, after all, but ornamental apple trees.  The cherry trees, she tells me, are in the spruce grove, behind where the wood pile used to be.  No sign of blossoms there, yet.  I am not sure why edible cherries would be planted among spruce trees, while ornamental (I assume that means they don’t produce anything edible) apples are planted next to the house.

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The apple trees in the flower garden are leafing and budding up nicely, too.  The row of apples (all varieties of crab apples, as I recall) are barely in leaf.

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Planted on the north side of the spruce grove, they wouldn’t have anywhere near as much sun as the ones in the flower garden, which is the most likely reason why they are so much slower to revive for the season.

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On the far side of the garden, along the fence line, the lilac border is showing flower buds already on some bushes.  I was looking for a sign of the chokecherry tree that used to be there.  The lilac border runs the entire length of the fence line now, but when I was a child, it was only about half the distance, and the chokecherry tree was at the end of the row, about the middle of the length of the garden at the time.  I may have found it, but can’t be sure, as it’s behind lilac bushes.  The tree I saw that might be it also seems to be dead; likely the chokecherry tree was choked out by the lilacs. :-(  I will see if I can confirm that with my mother one of these days.

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This is part of a row of what appears to be raspberry canes, though it’s hard to identify them among the scrub and without any leaf buds to be seen.  On one side, it’s almost right up against a row of spruces.  On the other, I can see that it was plowed within inches of the stems.  They would be getting light only in the early hours of the morning, now that the sun is rising so much farther to the north than it did in the winter.  By about 9 or 10 am, they would be in shade until sunrise.  We’ll see what raspberries we get this year, if any.  Most varieties of raspberries have canes that produce in the second year, before dying back.  At that point, the spent canes should be cut away, but that is something my parents never did, as far as I can recall; they just let them be until it was decided to transplant them.  I remember when they were planted on the far side of the garden, beyond where a row of trees is now planted.  At the height of raspberry season, we could pick several ice cream pails’ worth of berries in the morning, then come back by evening and have more ripened berries to pick.  On our list of things we eventually want to plant are three different varieties of raspberries, each with a different harvesting period, so we could have raspberries from July through September.

Whenever that happens, we will be sure to plant them somewhere that actually gets full sun.

The Re-Farmer

I’m Sensing Something – or not!

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While cleaning up around the yard, one of the girls reached the far post of the clothes line and called me over to look at something.

Hmm…

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So… we have a National Geographic remote sensor, attached to the clothes line post, with electric tape.  (The rope is there because the post as started to lean over.)

There isn’t really anything to say what it’s there to sense.  A search has turned up nothing; this thing is so old, nothing even close to it is showing up.  Most of what does show up is weather related, but they look so completely different, I can’t even guess that this is also some sort of weather sensor.

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The wire from the sensor is also attached to the pole with electric tape.

This has been there long enough for that bit of lichen above it to actually overlap it!

I’m guessing it was sending a signal to a receiver inside the house at some point, though I can’t recall finding anything that could be a receiver while we were packing up my parents’ stuff.

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Though this device isn’t going to be sending signals anywhere, anymore!

I’m going to have to ask a sibling about it and find out what the story is!

In other areas…

Along with the clean up, we’re gathering a fair bit of stuff that normally would go into the burn barrel.  We haven’t done a burn in ages, with good reason.  There is a total burn ban in the area, and while approved fire pits and BBQs are still allowed, we aren’t going to take any chances.  Sure, we could hook up a hose, now that the outside taps have been turned on again, and spray the area around the burn barrel, but why take chances?  This stuff is just going to have to go to the dump.

I also did the meter reading today and sent that in.  I then went back over the last 5 readings and worked out the differences from month to month on our power usage.  This gives me some idea of what we can expect on our next electric bill.  It was quite interesting.  Our highest bill was just under $600, then the next one was about $550 or so.  Those two months can predictably be our highest consumption periods, though this also included the weeks we spent heating water every day, until we could get the new hot water tank.  The next month saw a consumption drop of about 1/3, and the month after that showed another slight drop.  That’s when we saw bills of just over and just under the $400.  This month?  The consumption dropped by almost half – more than 2/3s less than our highest month of consumption.  So our next bill, I am thinking we will see just a bit more than $200.  It should be interesting to see how much it’ll drop when we are at our lowest consumption period over the summer.

Interestingly, I found that we have been living here long enough to qualify for the electric company’s “equal payment” plan – with monthly payments of only $44.  !!  Based on the last 6 months of meter readings, including the one I sent in today, I just don’t see how they came to that number.  Unless I’m just not understanding something about the plan.  I think we’ll give it a few more months and see if that changes, before we apply for it.

Our electric bill is much, much higher than it was when we were living in the city, which we expected.  I’m just glad we’re not living in Ontario.  I know someone there who got an electric bill of over $2000 – about double what they paid in the same month the previous year, with less consumption!  So I’m definitely not complaining about our power bills, that’s for sure!  Still, we will be examining our options to see what we can do to bring the bills down.  Especially for the winter months.  Options that do NOT include heating with wood, since that will increase the insurance costs.  Add in the cost of buying wood, and there would be no savings at all.  Theoretically, we could cut our own wood, but even if we were all able bodied enough to do the work ourselves, it’s not worth it.  There are too many other things that our time, efforts and energy need to go to.  Like so many other things, it’s a balance of priorities, not just about dollars and cents.

Which is how we will be looking at all sorts of things as we clean the place up and learn what work it needs.  There is going to be quite a few things where we are simply going to hire people to come in and do it, rather than try and do it ourselves.  Sometimes, it’s just more efficient that way, even if it costs money.  I think some of the biggest problems we are finding now come down to the fact that no one wanted to spend the money to hire people to do it, but didn’t necessarily have the time, knowledge, resources, or skills to do it themselves.  Sometimes, the best way to save money in the long run, is to spend money in the short run.

Of course, that requires having the money to spend in the short run, which is always its own problem, too!

To complicate things further, we have my mother, who owns the place, and siblings, telling us about things that will need to be taken care of, like covering holes in shed roofs.  Which we do appreciate, since we haven’t spent a lot of time looking at the outbuildings, with our focus being the house and yard.  Then we go to look at what they are talking about, and all I can think is, this shed is not worth patching.  It’s not worth fixing.  It should be torn down and gotten rid of.  The stuff inside that’s worth keeping needs to be moved elsewhere, to protect it, and the rest needs to be turfed. Heck, some of the sheds I’ve gone into, I’m reluctant to even walk across the floors.  I’m no light weight, and there’s a good chance the rotting wood won’t hold my weight!  Meanwhile, things that could have been salvaged, like the log cabin out by the fire pit, has a roof that was allowed to cave into all the stuff that had been store inside it.

Ah, well.  Little by little, we’re figuring it out.

The Re-Farmer

How Does the Garden Grow?

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As we clean up around the house and yard, we are starting to discover where things are growing, and even what some things are.

These pictures are of the biggest of my mother’s flower gardens, at the old kitchen.  It actually has a fence around it and everything.

Here is what I am seeing in it, now that growth is starting to happen.

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I am enjoying the sight of leaves and flower buds on this cherry tree.  It looks like we have a second, smaller one.  I look forward to seeing them in full bloom!

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Under the bigger cherry tree, outside the garden fencing, chives are coming up.  Plus what looks like an onion, over on the right.

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There is also some rhubarb growing just inside the garden, near the base of the tree.  I am happy to see it.  I love rhubarb!

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Near this rhubarb, there appears to be a whole lot of onions coming up.  It should be interesting to see what all we find once we get to raking in here.  Though my mom has always called this a flower garden, she’s had onions planted in here for as long as I can remember, though there may have been some years without them.  I remember tomatoes planted in here, too.

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The middle of the garden is completely overrun with these plants.  My mom told me the name of them, but I don’t remember what it is.  She had planted them, only to discover they are quite invasive, and has told me that she would like me to get rid of it.

That is not going to be easy.

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Along the outside edge of the garden, I can see some wild columbine starting to come up.  Next to what looks like a wild rose?  I like wild columbine.  So do hummingbirds. :-)

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Around the corner, on the opposite side of the garden, there is a whole bunch more rhubarb.  Hmmm!

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This tangled mass of last year’s growth is asparagus fern.  We have had it for as long as I can remember; as a child, I used to love looking at the fine sprays of greenery.  What I don’t remember is us ever eating asparagus!  I think it may have just been too much of a hassle, so my mom left it to itself.  I’m hoping to get it cleaned up soon, and see if there is new asparagus growing.

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Then there is this mass of greenery, near the house, under a rose bush.  I have no idea what it is, or even if it was intentionally planted.

The soil is rock hard and bone dry.  It’s going to take a lot of work to get this garden going again!

I think it will be easier if we start by removing the fencing, which is falling down.  Even the fence posts are starting to fall over.

I do hope we get some rain soon.  There hasn’t been anything more than a few sprinkles all spring.

The Re-Farmer

Walkabout – the East yard

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I had done a walkabout yesterday, through our East yard, some of the areas just outside the fenced yard, and explored around the old gravel pit and pond.  I had my phone with me and took plenty of pictures, but then had technical difficulties uploading them to my desktop.  My husband was able to see them fine on his laptop via the USB cable, so the problem had to be with my desktop.  This morning, I tried one thing.  Usually, I have my USB cable attached to one of the front ports of the tower, but my husband had moved it to one of the back ports, so he could access the front ones for something he was doing.  Could that have made the difference?

Turns out, yeah.  That seems to have been the problem.  I was able to upload the pictures without getting the weird error messages I was getting before.

Unfortunately, in my attempts to access and transfer the photos yesterday, some were lost, while others were corrupted or damaged.

So today, I did the walkabout again, this time using the DSLR (Nikon D80) and an 18-55mm lens.

I ended up taking 308 pictures! :-D  And I didn’t even go into the other house in the yard, this time!

Basically, I am documenting the way things are right now, that we will have to deal with as time goes by.  Anything outside the house and immediate yard are lower on the priority list, but they will still need to be dealt with, eventually, so I want to maintain a photographic record of it all.

For now, I will just talk about the East side of our yard – and not even all of that.

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When I first came out, Nasty Crime Boy was there to greet me, but he did NOT like the noise the DSLR made when I took pictures! :-D

The first area I went to was around the other house in the yard.  This house used to be a church rectory, and my dad bought it and moved it when they wanted to build a new one.  It was put into our yard temporarily.  The plan was that it would be moved to one of the other quarter sections of the farm and be a home for whichever of the boys inherited it that section.

That never happened.

I’ll post about the house itself, another time.

This is next to it.

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When my parents’ freezer died, they gave one of my siblings the money to buy a new one, which we are currently using.  The old one, for some reason, got dumped in the yard.  They took the door off, so nothing could get trapped in it, but that’s it.

I hadn’t realized that even the baskets were in there until I came over to take pictures.

I could do posts of nothing but large household appliances, abandoned in strange places, and have no shortage of material.  Especially washers and driers.  It’s amazing.

Then I went around the back of the building.

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That largish black pipe you see?  It’s placed through a hole in a partially boarded up window.  That means it was deliberately placed there.  I find myself wondering if there is something under the house that is being propped up.

This house had had a full basement in it.  Now, the areas with the bricks are what used to be the top of the basement walls, and there is basically a crawl space underneath.

Then there’s this.

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A toilet.  Just sitting there.

Another rain barrel.  I don’t know what the 6 sided plastic thing is.  A wire shelf.

Just.  There.

Why?

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This is some sort of mini garden, near the fire pit.  I can see no rhyme or reason to it being there, and can’t figure out what’s in it – that will have to wait until things start to grow.  It needs to go.  Seeing what’s there will help me decide whether it’ll just be torn up, or if there’s anything in it worth transplanting.

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The above picture is of what is directly North of the mystery planting.  There used to be a playhouse here, built by my oldest brother.  It was basically a shell of a building, with a door and windows in the front.  I was too young to remember it being built, but as a child, I helped my late brother, who was just a few years older than me, frame out bunk beds inside it, and we used old couch cushions as the mattresses.  In the summer, I would sometimes sleep in there, with a tiny kerosene lamp for light.  It was glorious.

I don’t know what happened to the playhouse.  For a while, one of my brothers had some bee hives here.  Now, there’s nothing.  I am thinking this is where we will start a wood pile from what we’re clearing out of the garden now, and what we’ll be clearing out of the trees around the yard.  I am looking forward to when we can have the fire pit going in the summer, and have some wiener roasts!

This is the fire pit that’s there now.

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Yeah.

Believe it or not, there is a metal ring in there.

It’s not where the fire pit was originally.  That was about where I was standing to take the picture.  It was made of loosely stacked bricks, on top of an old tree stump that had been cut to ground level.  I only discovered the tree stump when I took it upon myself to “rebuild” the fire pit, because the walls were being knocked out of place.

One thing I noticed that you can see in some of the photos, is that this area now seems to be mostly moss!  As I was the one who took on the chore of lawn mowing, I know there was no moss at all in there when I was living here.  I don’t know when the moss started taking over, but this is not a sign of a healthy lawn!

I am thinking we should move the fire pit back to where it was, and farther away from those trees in the background.

We will first have to trim away the a dead branch overhanging it, from one of the maples in the area.  There are a lot of dead branches that will need to be dealt with.

Eventually, I want to build a cinder block cooking pit in the area, but that’s a few years into the future.

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This old log cabin is near the fire pit area.  (note the amount moss in the foreground!  That used to be all grass) From what I’ve been told, the family that owned this area before my family bought it – the ones who built the original log portion of the house we’re living in now – had built this and lived in it.

I am hoping we can salvage it.  The one side wall has logs that are sagging in the middle, which may be a problem, but the rest of the walls seem sound.  The roof is almost completely collapsed, and it’s filled with junk – including large household appliances, of course.  At some point, I want to hire someone to empty it, including the remains of the roof, and haul it all away.  Then we can see what can be done with the remains.

There is one thing about it that has me wondering.

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See that tree at the corner?

When I was growing up here, there was a gooseberry bush growing there.  I used to love picking and eating the berries right off the bush.  I don’t know that anything else was ever done with the berries.  Which might have something to do with why, years after I moved away, I came back to discover it was gone. In its place were a couple of spruce trees.

Now, the spruces are gone, and there is this tree.

I don’t know if it was planted, or if it seeded itself, but it’s going to have to go, along with the other trees that are growing too close to the building.

I am seeing this all over the place; trees were allowed to grow right next to buildings.  No one bothered to cut them away.  Did no one consider how much damage they can do to buildings?  Did they not think of it?  Or did they just not care?

So much of what I’m finding around here smacks of “no one cared.”  I’m not talking about things that were left as they were, as my parents aged and weren’t able to take care of things themselves, either.  It’s really quite disheartening.

Well, that’s part of our East yard.  I’m expecting that, this year, we’ll be able to do some clean up and improvements in this area.  At least the smaller stuff.  The big stuff will have to wait, as they will require hiring people, and fixing up the main house is the financial priority.  Still, we should be able to get the East yard to the point that we can use it and enjoy evenings around the fire.

Well.  Maybe.  That will depend on how bad the mosquitoes are this year!

The Re-Farmer