Accelerando Verdure

Now things are happening quickly. The forsythia is blossoming. I spent some time yesterday plucking dandelions, and today digging thistles. The grass seems to be growing before one's eyes and some places we'll have to mow in the next few days or the growth will become rank. Over the weekend we removed the mowing deck from the little tractor, got everything clean and sharp and greased, and put back together again. This is a finish mower for around the house and gardens; for the more remote areas we have the rotary brush mower to mount on the back of the big tractor. But we're resolved this year to mow less than last: the novelty has worn off, it uses a lot of fuel, and we've got lots of other work to do.

The kale is making a big comeback and will be featured at dinner tonight in a potato-kale soup.

Another good task accomplished over the weekend was laying out the grid to plant the 150 cider apple trees to be delivered in a few day. The flags are all labeled with the names of the fifteen varieties we'll be planting, and laid out according to early, middle, and late harvest season. Saturday is the big day.

We also made further good progress clearing and burning brush from the downstream dam embankment, though after nine inches (!) of rain over the past week, it took a lot of persistence to get the fire going. Yet to do is the area in the foreground of this image, surrounding the outlet structures, then seeding the embankment to a "waterway mix" of grasses.

Aside from the dam, over the past several months we did a lot of other clearing and trimming of brush and invasive species such as honeysuckle and wild grape, and yesterday got a lot of that gathered into this large windrow behind the barn. We'd prefer to process this stuff with a chipper-shredder but so far haven't found one for sale used or at auction, and they can't be rented, so this pile may fuel another bonfire. All of this came from along the lane and verges of the farmstead, where to leave it in place would have been unsightly (we're possibly a little too fastidious about appearances); the brush that gets cut in the wood and along the fence lines we've left in place to decompose and as wildlife habitat.

In addition to the cider apples, we're putting a lot of other trees in the ground, including black and Northstar cherries, black walnut, and red and burr oaks. And now Alan is home from his day job, so it's time to pull on my boots again and head back outside to get these hardwoods planted.

Atlas and Diary

Opening up the trails has given us more and easier ways to get to the east side of the property, and from the verge of the woods and eastern fields I watched the sunrise a few days ago.

Moving the gaze south one encounters the neighbor's massive oaks.

First rays catching the interior of the cedar forest.

This sequence approaches the ruined bridge near the grade control structure under the county road.

It floated in a flood and turned sideways and was destroyed. We think we can salvage much of the material to build the replacement bridge. It's going to be a good challenge to build something that we can take the tractor across and that will withstand flooding.

Looking back the other way.

Of course, the full moon always sets opposite the rising sun, so by the time I got back out of the woods on the west side...

And here some spatterlight in the grandmother cottonwood tree.

Saturday midday a rather violent thunderstorm blew through, leaving an inch and a half in the gauges after about 40 minutes. There were no puddles, no runoff, and three hours later no indication that rain had fallen except that everything was a lot cleaner with the dust rinsed away. We could use a rain like that every day for a week, so it's no end to the drought. But the rain we did get and the moderate temperatures behind its cool front have made everything look and feel better. It's been cool enough to really enjoy the pond and Deck Dock.

Tour with an Iowa DNR forester

The forester's full report will be some time coming – 60 days, he estimated, because he has to spend the next 30 installing gypsy moth traps. It sounds as though he lets his official paperwork pile up but stays current on email, so we can probably sooner get his notes and answers to specific questions that way.

Donna's emphasis was: "what's that thing; what's that called?" I asked him about enhancing wildlife, recreation, and timber values. He was very responsive to all that over the next two hours.

He encouraged redevelopment of the tractor trails and in particular suggested providing access to some of the old growth trees as park-type areas.

There are a lot of fruit trees of various kinds: cherry, plum, mulberry, boisenberry. There's a lot of gooseberry and raspberry. The shagbark hickory have edible nuts. He said there should be harvestable amounts of food from all these. We found a batch of morels. The trick, he said, is to look beneath an elm that has died in the last year or two.

Most of the little bushy type undergrowth is dogwood, which we can basically get rid of as much as we want because there's so much of it. It's excellent along edges for birds and wildlife but can be cut back in clearings to get more sunlight to the ground. But a lot of the bushy type things are also invasive honeysuckles and olives, which should probably go.

As for thinning overall, he said the rule is to look up and if a lower priority tree is into the branching structure of a higher priority tree, girdle or cut out the lower priority one. He really encouraged giving the old growth individuals their space, taking out basically any other trees within the drip line, but also making sure to leave some next-generation individuals of the same kind in the area. He thought some of the great trees were well into the two-hundreds years old.

He was very pleased at our interest in improving and managing the woodlands, in contrast. I got the impression, to many of his clients, and my guess is he'll probably give us as much additional service as we want. He had quite comprehensive knowledge about all that stuff. And he was truly nearly giddy by the time he left over the diversity and amount of native and high-value species – he said it was quite a remarkable property.

Some images from my walk down the lane to get the paper in this foggy morning sunrise:

Siberian Elm:

Grandmother Cottonwood:

 The bottom terrace, toward The Narrows:

The pond:

In Muscatine County, Iowa

Two-hour tour with DNR forester Mark just completed. Very good meeting. He was totally impressed by the diversity, varieties, and condition of the woodlands. Much advice to follow. We have our work cut out for us but the results will be worth it.

The red oak are in; going out in a little to plant the nanking cherries. This is Red Oak Avenue.

This is Red Oak Grove:

I believe this is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life.