Please pass the (epsom) salt

The Friends and I were working over on the cabin side of the pond yesterday. I wanted to get the leaves and fallen limbs away from the cabin so that it's easier to walk around, so I spent a couple of hours raking. During a break, one of The Friends and I were wondering if we could get the big riding mower over to cut back some of the long grass. I called over to The Aussie on a two-way and asked if he could bring the mower over. He did something waaaay better. He used the land bridge and brought over the brush hog and started mowing. Man, that thing is awesome! It certainly is a beast.  When he asked if I wanted a go, I was a little hesitant because it is a serious piece of equipment. I am glad that thing is self-propelled. Mowing on a slope is not easy. If you're in to immediate gratification, this is the toy for you. It's quite the workout. Between the tree limb hauling, leaf raking, weed pulling and Beast driving, I am really sore today. Here are the before and after cabin yard pictures.

Cabin: Before

 

Cabin: After

Cool, huh? It no longer looks like a derelict house.

And just because they're adorable and photogenic, here are more puppy pictures.

 Buddies

 

My Beautiful Girl

 

And here's this week's obligatory wildlife picture. I call this one Turtle Conga Line.

 





Dreams of nature trails danced in my head

Back when The Aussie and I used to dream about having a property, I dreamed of strolling around the land with the dogs, enjoying the sunshine, peace and fresh air, maybe building a running trail. To these dreams I now say Bahahahahahaa. Good one. Mother Nature really likes to reclaim fields and woods. In a big way. Soon the vegetation will start to die back, I hope, and we'll be able to make some headway in to reclaiming our fields. In the meantime, you had to figure that a brush hog would be in our future. I was across the pond, cleaning at the cabin, when the boys took the brush hog, now named "The Beast" out for a spin. From how they described The Beast, Stephen King could write a horror story about it. You know, along the lines of The Mangler. This thing seriously chews up the brush. Which is a good thing, considering that's why The Aussie got it.

 Making headway in to the brush.

 You could do a non-corn maze in this stuff, it's so tall.

 This is the back side of the huge tree that was taken down last time.

 This is as far as they got. It's so thick here. They'll need to try to clear brush from the other side of the pond.

 Looking towards one of the hay fields.

Looking back towards the cabin where we were cleaning.

Practical use for pretty plant

This is the shrub Beautyberry, aka Callicarpa Americana. There are a large number of these shrubs on the property. I do know that birds eat the seeds, but as I've read, only after other food sources have been exhausted. Since I am interested in medicinal herbs, I kept reading about potential uses for this shrub. Imagine my surprise to read the following:

"UPDATE: One of my students, Fred, does a lot of foraging and has lived his life in mosquito-ladened Florida. He reports: [Beautyberry's]  “jelly is awesome but I really love the beautyberry for its insect repellent properties. After learning about this from a Green Deane class and being an avid forager myself I decided to use the beautyberry as a bug repellent so it wouldn’t slow down my summer foraging (Florida summer mosquitoes can be horrible). I pretty much chopped up a plant(leaves and stems) and boiled it in a pot and let it cool and strained the brown liquid into my blender, about 1 1/2 cups. In a separate pot I warmed some organic neem oil (1 cup) with 1 ounce of beeswax until melted. Then you turn the blender on and pour in the oil mixture very slowly and it becomes a cream. I have to say hands down the best insect repellent ever! Because its a creme on july/august days one application is all you need for the entire day even when your sweating.”"

Yes! I have no desire to make a jelly or wine from this shrub, but I really like the idea of making an insect repellent. Texas mosquitos will chase you down!

What a difference some rain makes

Over the last few months, I have been taking pictures, documenting if you will, the water levels of the "lake." I use quotes because the lake became two separate ponds, both shrinking. This could be all drought related, but we were told before we purchased the property that there *may* be a leak, because the water seemed to drop more rapidly than if it was just evaporating. When we were there a few weeks ago, I took the top picture. I have to tell you that it just about broke my heart seeing that side of the lake almost gone.

Since I took this picture, we have gotten some significant rain. I cannot describe how happy it made me to see the pond coming back, almost to where it was when we first saw the property.

 

 

I also managed to get a picture of one of the hummingbirds. Our friends say that there are even babies, half the size of the adults, that are coming to the second feeder we put up. It's really cool to sit outside and watch them. They dart around the yard, perching up in the trees, chittering at each other. Please excuse the crud on the window. The Aussie was mowing the lawn one day in the wrong direction and grass was flung up towards the house and stuck there. Just another thing that needs cleaning. ;)

 

 

We also had a larger avian visitor. I've seen one of the huge grey herons around the pond before, but it always took off as we arrived. We had a white heron visit this weekend. Very cool.

 

In less quiet moments, the guys were at it with the chainsaw again. While I like the look of many of the dead trees, it would be very dangerous to keep certain ones standing. This is one of them. When I drove up and saw what they'd been up to, I must admit that my jaw dropped, and some expletives came out of my mouth. It took them 4 hours to get this one down. I'm really glad we'll be able to haul the wood with Tigger and the trailer. Now if only we knew where to store to store the wood, since the log racks are already full. 

Lastly, just because he's my beautiful boy, I give you this picture for your viewing pleasure. :)

Cheers!

Kyra

 

 



A new toy for me

After quite a while researching and drooling over dSLRs, I actually own one! I took some time the other day and wandered the property, trying to take artsy photographs. Some of them, if I do say so myself, came out kind of neat!

"The Glade" at sunset. I call it a glade, but it's really just an overgrown area off to the side of the house. It's kind of cool and spooky when it's getting dark.

 

I love the texture of the bark on this tree.

 

 

Getting artsy with the logs in the wood pile.

 

And with the rusted metal drum.

And lastly, a zoomed in shot of little Bambi. I didn't have the longer lens on, so I got as close as I could. She's a pretty little thing.  Other than on the game camera, we haven't seen the males, but our friends who were there the night before us did. Clashing of antlers and lots of bugling.  Maybe we'll catch their show next visit.

The answer is no

The question? If The Aussie could get the mower down the bank of the pond and mow around the edges for a bit. He got it down there. And got it stuck. 

 

Enter Tigger (yes, I named the UTV) to the rescue. We were able to winch the mower out of the soft sandy area and back up on to slightly more stable ground. This little thing is a serious workhorse. She was hauling stuff all weekend. On a side note, we aren't always there working alone. We are blessed to have some really good friends to help us with this place, and rescue me when the car breaks down, over an hour away, with a car full of three dogs and a parrot, in 104 degree heat on a getaway Friday. Things could have turned out very badly for my pups, but Someone was keeping watch over us and I was able to limp to a gas station and made it under the shade cover over the gas pumps. (Thank you, also, to the man who gave me bottles of water for the dogs, and Angie and Brooke, who kept me company while I was waiting for my rescuer, my husband (who wasn't allowed to leave work, even though it was an emergency, thank you very much corporate person who doesn't know what Texas heat is like), and a tow truck.

 

Some of these friends are REALLY, REALLY handy with chain saws. The guys were able to finish cutting down a number of dead trees and get them cut in to logs. We really need to research converting a gas fireplace (no chimney) in to a wood burning fireplace to take advantage of all of the dead wood we have. (Another side note: I wonder if we can get Gatorade to be a corporate sponsor of our work weekends.)

 

Last time we were there, we noticed a hummingbird flitting around the patio. When we went in to town, we picked up a hummingbird feeder and some nectar. As it turns out, we don't have one hummingbird. We have four that regularly visit. One of them is a bit of a bully, too, but it's really neat seeing hummingbirds so close. If you look just to the left of the bottom of the feeder, you'll see a little light brown shape. That's one of the regulars. They are seriously tiny!

 

 We also had a couple of Bambi sightings. The light tan spot in the middle of this picture is a young fawn. We didn't see her mom, but the guys said that momma was likely hidden in the trees. Little one was grazing on some of the brush near the edge of the pond. It was so cool, seeing her!

 

Next work weekend trip we'll be making bread. Start to finish, I'll grind the wheat to make flour, and then make bread. Okay, so we'll be using a bread maker, but still. It will be very fun. Now if only we could get some cooler weather. I want to do some campfire cooking!

My wishlist

We bit off a lot

It's a lot of work, but we'll get it figured out. Hopefully we'll also figure out why we can't get the chainsaw started a second time. It worked once that day, but wouldn't start a second time. Maybe the tree in question had a better connection to the Greater Powers than my husband. Frustrating. I did manage to lop off some of the offending branches from the offending tree limb so that it doesn't hang down quite so far.  Hauled a lot of brush and branches. Husband had a good old time driving the UTV around. I informed him that I named it Tigger, because it's orange and black. He said "but tigers are yellow." "Tigers are yellow, yes, but Tigger is orange." He rolled his eyes at me. ;)

Nope, not edible

I took this picture last weekend, and emailed it to my sister to find out what this plant is. I was hoping it might be elderberry, but as it turns out, it's a pokeweed plant.  I'm going to start cataloging the various plants that I find on the property. What's edible, what's medicinal, what's poisonous... Very useful information to have. Hopefully I'll be getting a decent DSLR so that I can take much better pictures.

 

Three most hated words

Brown recluse spider.

Yuck, yuck, yuck. My husband put down some glue traps last time we were up, and in June had the house sprayed, and we put off bug bombs. There were a couple caught in the traps and found several dead ones in various rooms. I went on a serious spraying frenzy. This freaks me out. Just reading up on  how to eradicate them freaks me out.  We got tubs and large space bags to put stuff in when we aren't there. Bedding, clothes that aren't hanging, dog beds. You name it, it's getting sealed up.

Hey, are you taking my picture?? Cheese!

The mystery of what made the footprints in the sand in the backyard has been solved. We weren't sure if it was deer or hog. Trust me, I was praying for deer. The thought of feral hogs that close to the house freaked me out. The Aussie set up a game camera and hung it on one of the trees is the back. Bambi and friends made their camera debut. I guess this means I'm going to have to fence in any garden I plant. Seriously fence. With a roof.

 

Who needs Crossfit?

Between 6:30 am and 10:30 pm yesterday, I logged 4 hours and 18 minutes of physical activity. Let me tell you, in 90+ degree heat, you feel each and every minute. A lot of those minutes were spent hauling this thing around. We had to get it down driveway #1, on to a metal trailer (which had to be pulled down the driveway and on to the road by hand), strapped down, moved off of a trailer, and pulled up driveway #2 and positioned sideways (so it doesn't roll) in the garage. That little black trailer dolly you see me pulling on is a godsend. This "garden cart on steroids," as The Aussie describes this cart, weighs 1500 pounds. Not easy. I earn more WW activity points doing yard and ranch-type work than I do lifting weights and walking dogs.

 

My only injury of the weekend came when I momentarily let go of the dolly and the leg smacked in to my shin. Getting the dolly back under the ball of the hitch was a minor miracle, so I can't complain too much. The bruise and bump are impressive, but I'll just count them as another badge of honor. (Badge number 1 came the weekend The Aussie learned how to use a chainsaw and I got scraped up by some branches while clearing brush.)

 

Speaking of branches, while we were wandering around, we heard a really loud crack. The Aussie was actually looking at this tree when a huge branch came down. You can see the broken off section halfway up the tree the branch was.  I'm glad we weren't near the tree. Eventually, it may have to come down, but even dead trees serve a purpose. Especially if you're one of the resident woodpeckers.  In the meantime, I'll just keep working on my farmer tan.