Rocks and roses

Last week while walking the property Sandy discovered some rocks she thought might be useful at the barn. Today she took me to see them.

Holy cow! Some of them are huge. The rock next to the fallen tree below is about 6 feet across one way and about 8 feet the other. Maybe some day we can get it dragged down the hill to use in building a dam below the spring. I doubt it would be worth the effort of moving it up the hill.



Apparently not wanting to waste the walk, Sandy decided to whack off a large multiflora rose. This is one of Indiana's most invasive exotic plants. We have them scattered around the property. They're not a big problem yet, but we don't want them to get ahead of us.

The species is such a problem in the state that it is against Indiana State Law to plant any variety of Rosa multiflora without a permit issued by the director of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources' Division of Entomology & Plant Pathology (IC 14-24-12-5).

One of the smaller large rocks can be seen in this picture also.

Inch and a half worm

As I came back from a short hike yesterday, this little fellow came along for the ride. I put him back into the high grasses after taking this picture. Click on the picture for a detailed closeup.


Near the bottom of the hill there are a lot of milkweed plants expelling their seeds. This one was particularly bushy. Each seed is attached to its own tiny cluster of silky down that serves as its own parachute. Unfortunately the other grasses are growing so tightly around each plant that most of them don't get to fly very far. I took a handful of the seeds and their down to the barn. In the spring I'll see if we can get them to grow so I can plant them in more areas of the property. I'm thinking of it as growing my own monarch butterflies.


Here's a nice link to the Kid Zone web site about milkweed and monarch butterflies.

Making a barn a home - Entryway

For the past few days Sandy has been working with a shovel and pry bar digging up pieces of broken concrete that were apparently dumped as the barn was being built between the gravel leading to the sliding barn door and the side door. I've helped lift the largest pieces, but she's done all the hard work otherwise.

This is what it looked like before she started. You can see weeds along the wall which are thick and grow in dense clumps. She is pulling them out as she goes. Then she flips the concrete pieces over and away to the south (left in this picture).

Notice Sandy's homey touch - the welcome mat.

There is a wood apron around the entire building except directly under this door. This will allow us to slide a concrete chunk right up to the concrete at the doorway without risking moisture seeping into the bottom of the wall there.

Here's what it looks like after the concrete is pulled away. In the soil underneath there is a thick network of roots from the grasses and weeds that were there. She is trying to pull all of them and toss them down the small bank. Next she plans to replace the concrete pieces so they form a flat walkway sloping away from the building just enough to encourage water. We will need to import some sand to level the concrete and we'll probably

leave a small border of soil for planting something at the wall.