Spring Break
I had Friday off for Spring break, so we came out Thursday -- which turned out to be the nicest day.
Unfortunately we didn't arrive until 5pm. Just time to fill the bird feeders and water the little trees I had transplanted out front. I was glad to see this Buckeye I brought out 3 or 4 years ago leafing out. I strive to just keep them alive – assuming that eventually they will thrive.The
nectarine and peach seemed to be almost done blooming, and it doesn't appear there will be much fruit from either of these (unlike last year when they were loaded). This picture is of a beautiful nectarine bloom. I was really glad to see blooms on the pear trees – since I only got 1 pear last year.
Two arms of the 3 in 1 were leafed out and blooming (the third was still bare) and the Magnesse was also leafing out and blooming. I'm hoping the pears will do better than the apples. (There were no blooms on the gold rush apple and the pixie delight is too young to bloom. So there will probably be no apples this year since my other apple up and died at the end of last year, and it takes two to cross-pollinate.)Dining
We ate really well this trip. Thursday night we used the last of the pesto I had frozen last summer and made a delicious pizza. Sally had picked up a crust from ONF and we added onion, black olives, mushrooms, pepperoni, bell pepper, garlic, spinach, and cheese.I bought some buttermilk on the way out and made bran, black walnut, raisin, coconut muffins for breakfast Friday. Sally had only 1 and half while I had 3 and half (with honey).
And for dinner Friday night we had black bean burgers which Sally mixed up -- cooked on the grill with pepper jack cheese.
Rain
Early Thursday morning, while we were still in bed, we got a very brief shower. Maybe 5 minutes. You could hardly tell it rained. But early Saturday morning we had a hard rain with thunder and even some hail. The rest of the day was drizzly and gray, but we needed the rain. I don't think it got out of the 30s Saturday. (Sunday turned out to be the same, when Fayetteville set a record low high temperature.)Lopping
Friday morning I took Tender up the hill to the upper pasture and lopped 360 cedars (while Sally made the black bean burgers). Saturday morning I went down the hill, up plume creek, back up into the back pasture (near the downed white oak), and back the track I use to drive back there. I lopped another 570 cedars, and could have gotten many more if I hadn't grown tired (and tired of the task).Knap Weed
Sally had an appointment in Harrison Friday, so was gone much of the day. The knap weed is already growing and is everywhere. So I decided I would see what an early dose of clear pasture would do it. I was only able to cover the area back of the house and back of the barn.Black Jack, Oak, Cedars
I then took the Stihl and cut these black jack logs from a tree that had died and I had felled a couple of years ago.
Its not good fire wood, but now that I've had one blow log fire I want to get some hollow logs on hand for more fires. Unfortunately I had to carry these down since they are pretty rotten and fragile. (The log on the right is the red oak I had cut on the short cut, taken into town, and brought back out once I realized how hollow it was.)I then started cutting and trimming cedars on the slope above the house. I didn't bother dragging the limbs into a burn pile, but that will have to be done. In the same area there was an 8 inch hard oak (not black jack, probably red) that had been blown over, so I cut it up as well. I got six decent split-able logs from it, which I threw down the hill in stages.
Birds
When I went onto the porch to remove my boots for lunch on Friday, I swear there were 50 birds that scattered from the feeders. I think most were gold finches. There continued to be swarms like this around the feeders, which was nice to see.Split Logs
I
split the last of the black oak and all the other shorter logs. This is the stack for Denver and Chicago. Saturday I split about 6 of the large white oak logs I have stashed at the barn. One large one where the tree split into two trunks I'll probably have to give up on – at least I did this weekend. That leaves me with only about 6 more white oaks to split.Bike ride, Weedeat, Walnuts
Sally brought her bike out and after getting back from Harrison Friday, she took it up to the top of the hill and road 221 past where it turns to dirt and down the shortcut road a ways – I think it came to 5 miles or so. While she was gone I got the John Deere weedeater started for the season and cleaned up the high weeds around the back and front doors. I then got a fire started for the black bean burgers and cracked one more box of black walnuts (I'm behind on picking them though, still with another box of cracked nuts at the house).Blow Log
I
kept the fire going as we cooked the burgers (I have a keyholepit and move coals with a shovel to the cooking side). Then I put this black jack log on for fun. In preparation I had put three large rocks in the pit to stand the log up on. But once the fire got good and hot it started popping like crazy and throwing out pieces of hot rock. The limestone rock seemed to do fine, but the large piece of chirt turned into a bomb. I'll not use it again.Garden
Sally brought out about a dozen plants she had started in peat pots at the house. (I don't even know what they are.) We'd put a couple these in the ground two weeks earlier and they were doing fine, but these we had at the house were spendly and it looked to me like they had gotten to dry at some point. She put about half of them in the garden, and then talked me into doing the rest due to the cold damp conditions Saturday.Cleared Ditch
The road from the house down the hill is really in bad shape. I've rarely had to do maintenance on this section, but it is needing it now. The December 31st storm cut into the road opposite the barn and created a gravel wash a hAt the sharp turn heading down the hill the Carroll Electric equipment had taken the corner a bit sharp and driven in the ditch. This changed the course of the runoff to be across the road. I took my adz and straightened this back out, plus cleared the ditch from there down to the sole culvert on this section of road.
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