Springtime
It's been a while since I messed with your mailbox so Howdy and I hope each of you are doing well. A few of you have sent notes and updates and they are always appreciated.
This is too long but summarizes our life the past few months.
We have been busy this spring with some major cleanup of the woods/brush around our house. The area in front of our house was cleaned up in the original construction. By cleaned up, I mean you could safely walk (mostly erect) through the area without fear of death by 1000 thorns. The other areas were left much less accessible with survival maintenance only but still no clear access. Though I have always wanted to see the garage-side area to look more like our front, we never made it happen in the 11+ years we have lived here. We had three obstacles that are more like excuses but they were very real. The first issue is our fundamental frugality. We could not bring ourselves to pay the several thousand dollars to have someone come in and do the work. The second issue was that teaching gig I had created a massive workload at this critical time of the year. Critical time is defined by weather - past the winter nasty and before high temperatures set in - critical since you must be in layers to survive the onslaught of thorns to do the work. Nights and weekends were simply not available mid-February through late April. The third issue was Donnice's allergies to the various plants in those areas. Yes I know, her issues shouldn't impact me but they do in terms of motivation. Thankfully, those allergies have shifted and eased following her multiple eye surgeries and a bout of COVID over a year ago. Surgeries (anesthesia) and illnesses are known the shift immune response and hers got better - an upside to those challenges. Though I was retired last spring, challenges supporting Donnice's dad had us pretty tied up and we missed that sweet-spot of weather for such work.
Two years of extreme drought with each year including 6 weeks or better of over 100°F temperatures took a major toll in the areas around our house. I used a new company in town (one of their first customers) to get rid of some dead material last fall (drop in a bucket just to keep the HOA off our ass). I got them back out in early February as they had time available before their business gets crazy with spring. It is hard to find someone willing to do unpleasant one-time work around here. Most yard/landscape companies will only do this for their year-round customers and I'm not ready to pay for grass mowing yet - that first issue noted above! These guys are very reasonable and great to work with. You see that first load of mostly dead stuff from the droughts. Something attacked the cedar trees around here so they took some of those down also. That trailer is absolutely packed with material from about 1/3 of the garage-side area.
As part of that work, we had them spread about 3.5 yards of sand in our front grass area to try and fill potholes created by our armadillo that digs up grubs and really made a mess of things during the droughts. That area is covered by sprinklers and probably one of the few places the critter could find something to eat. I'm OK with my armadillos and opossums. In fact, they did a bit of service to us when the late winter rains came our way. The water ran off most areas around here because it was so dry and hard that the water couldn't soak in. That was not true in our yard! Who needs aeration when you have critters? The only issue was staying seated on my tractor when mowing!
We have three major bad guys in our brush area - smilax, trumpet vine, and black locust. Photos of those are below. The smilax is the most volume in these areas. It provides the major obstacle to access. 1,000's, of these vines growing throughout the area with shred you to pieces. The great find of the day was some major-thick/tough gloves labeled Iron Fencer - advertised for barbed wire work. These are the first gloves we have found that can withstand smilax. You still get poked a bit if you happen to grab a thorn in a seam but they are otherwise great. You have to hold very tight with the fine wrapped around your hand to pull with all your might and weight to get these vines out of the area. They grow to the top of the trees/brush and entangle themselves in the canopy. There were several where it took both Donnice and I pulling on them to get them out of the trees. Smilax propagates by root and has a very waxy leaf. It laughs at Roundup. The best we can do is semi-control it by regular pruning at ground level. Of course the challenge is getting access in the first place to be able to maintain that ground-level prune. The smilax damages your trees/brush by stealing sunlight in the canopy.
The trumpet vine also propagates by root and is virtually impossible to kill. This bad guy is very damaging to the brush and trees. Not only does it climb to the canopy for light, it wraps itself around and around the tree so tight it will actually kill the tree by reducing / stopping water flow up the tree - much like a python killing its prey. It's so bad that if it can't find a nearby tree where it popped its nasty head up, it will climb on itself until it reaches its next victim. Some of the stems we cut required a chain saw as they were several inches in diameter at ground level. The photo is a piece where you see several stalks using themselves to climb to a tree.
The black locust are not really a pest. They are a tree with massive thorns on its trunk as well as branches. We only have a few of these guys and have no intention of killing them - just watch out where you walk if you get close to them!
The landscape guys visited us once more the following week to spread another 3.5 yards of sand and to pick up the pile of crap Donnice and I pulled out during that week. It was another full trailer to the dump for them.
Having such a good start to the cleanup and good weather, we kept working for the next few weeks. We hauled 5 pickup loads to the dump. In our load this past week, we rented a trailer due to the large volume. It's not a great sign when the people at the dump recognize and greet you...
We are at a pause at this point with MAJOR improvement to the areas around the house. There is still much work to be done but it is bird season and we need to stop so the birds get their nests built. We are also waiting to see exactly what is dead or alive as leaves are coming out. We know we still have a lot of dead in the areas but hope the thinning and elimination of smilax and trumpet vine will let these areas recover a bit. We are hoping even more to not have another horrible drought but that may not be in the cards.
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