Unconventional Workout, or How Mother Nature Takes Back Her Own

I have to tell you, pushing around a brush hog (lawn mower on super steroids) for almost two hours really gives you a workout. I don't care if it is "self-propelled." It isn't self-steering or self-turning, and it weighs about 350 pounds. I got quite a lot of brush clearing done yesterday. I didn't make it all the way to the berm at the end of the narrow side of the pond, but close. 

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!

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.