Brambles, Brambles Everywhere

Every year, since we bought our property, Ross and I clear a little more land.  Sometimes this new land becomes part of the yard, and sometimes it becomes something else-like the orchard. This year we decided to clear the land the left of our house.  It is a small tract with several young trees in it and blackberry brambles right along the small, stone fence.  The reason why we feel the need to clear it is that this land is a bit of a hill, and all the young trees are close enough to pose a danger to our roof someday.  We decided to cut down most of the trees and clear out the old, dead brambles to give us better access to the live ones.

I decided today that I would work on the brambles (as this will make taking care of the trees much easier).  The goal was to cut out the dead stalks; blackberries work on a two year cycle where the new shoots (primocanes) do not bear fruit, and the one year old shoots (floricanes) do.  The floricanes will die after bearing fruit so they need removed, or they will turn into a hard, prickly mess designed to tear your clothes and flesh.  I knew going into this that I was coming out scratched and scathed.

The biggest problem that I knew I had to tackle was the Oriental Bittersweet.  This stuff was everywhere on our property when we bought it.  I have cut it, pulled it, ripped it from the ground, cursed at it, and even contemplated doing the old slash and burn on all our land in hopes of killing this crap of a plant off.  It is invasive, and every time I go out to tackle it I secretly curse the previous owners of our property for allowing it to get so overgrown.  I am so used to it I can spot it half a mile away and even can spot it in the winter when it has no leaves.  I am winning the war here, but I had never really attacked it in the brambles-that is until today.  I pulled some and then pulled some more.  I'd turn around and there would be another strand.  I would start pulling out a root that would go on for ten feet.  I hate this stuff, and my recommendation would be to kill it everywhere you see it.  Even if it is in your neighbor's yard!  Tell them you're doing them a community service.  Believe me, it would be better to do it before you're stuck in the middle of a bramble patch getting sliced to threads trying to kill the bugger.

You Know It's Spring at The Farm...

This is the first sound of Spring here.  Every year about this time the Spring Peeper Frogs start 'peeping' at the fire pond across the street.  This is the sound they make (the video starts with me walking towards the pond from the back of our house, but I don't think there is any difference in the noise).  By the way, there is no picture as I took this at night when they are much louder; our neighbor asked how we can stand the sound.  We actually love it.

Happy Summer, ehrr, um, Spring!

Why the confusion you ask? Cause on the first day of Spring I'm wearing shorts and a short sleeved shirt and working up a sweat doing yard work!  Winter was more like Spring this year so it makes perfect sense that Summer should come early.  I was at the hardware store today and they had Pansies out for sale.  I kept telling myself, "it's still March; it's still March; it's still March."  We did receive a nice Spring surprise today-our first Daffodil bloom.  The Crocus are also starting to bloom, and the Hyacinth, Tulips, and Allium are all peeking their heads above the ground.  Hopefully we get some nice Spring rain here soon to water all these young sprouts as we had no real snow melt this year.

There is only bad thing about not having Winter-lots of bugs.  We have already been smacking mosquitos, and the ticks are really bad.  I picked two off my leg just before I came inside, Ross has already removed several from his clothes today, and Max, well, Max is just a walking tick motel. We have to thoroughly check him every time he goes outside. We usually get from two to four ticks off him each time.  I'm thinking of teaching him how to use the toilet, but am worried he might try to flush his brother Bootsy for fun.

My last offering for this first day of Spring, before I head back outside, is a thank you to our friends John and Jane.  They recently gave us a gourd they had grown and dried so that it could be made into a bird house.  I had not ever done something like this before so it was a fun learning process.  I cleaned it the other day, and cut the holes and painted it today-Sunburst Yellow.  I can't wait to see what takes residence in it! There were a bunch of seeds in it.  I'm hoping that we may grow some gourds of our own this year so I might be able to return the gift!