Finally, something colorful outside

We finally have something with more colorful than grass outside this spring. We got these daffodils on sale last fall and it looks like every one of them came up. There are still many that have yet to bloom.

New growth

It hasn't been that long since the grass fire burned about half of the hillsides south of the barn and home site. We hoped it would encourage vigorous growth since it was very early in the year. It seems it has.


I'll continue to post updates as the season progresses, but it is already looks as though the burned area is growing better than the unburned area. Some of that may be an illusion since there is no brown grass left to obscure the view of the new grass. In a few weeks it will be clear if it's actually growing better.

What does spring bring?

Turkeys!

Just as we arrived home with two of the grandkids, Brandon approached the door and cried, "I think there are raccoons!" We all looked to see three turkeys scrambling and gliding away from the east end of the barn. One took to the trees and I got this picture of him. He's smack dab in the middle.


We see lots of turkeys along the road much closer to Bloomfield. We've never seen them even within a few miles of here. Let's hope they stick around.

Preparing a garden

Last year I tried to grow some vegetables but failed miserably. The soil near the apartment is mostly clay, and hard and dry. I planted tomatoes and grape tomatoes, peppers, brussel sprouts, cabbage and cucumbers. All were bought as starts.

Though we did get maybe twenty cherry tomatoes, the other tomatoes barely survived until late September when a few of them started to produce. I brought one that was in a pot inside for the winter and it is now blooming again. About 10 tomatoes that were on it when it came inside actually ripened, so we got maybe 25 altogether, all late in the season.

We got about 8 peppers and two plants that were in the same pot are now producing again inside.

We got zero cucumbers, no cabbage grew large enough to be worth bending over to pick, and the few brussel sprouts were about the size of peanuts.

This year I decided to do something serious. Using a few truckloads of soil dumped by the county from the ditching work along the property, and a bunch of lousy old wood from a nearby barn that is being taken down, I built some terraces and filled them in with real soil. Here's how it looks so far.



Look carefully, just below the large rocks, and you'll see the first plants that Sandy has transplanted. Transplanting sounds so easy. Not here. She had to use a pick axe to get through the hard clay and the gravel nearest the barn. Then she carried the clay away and replaced it with soil. Finally the plants could be set in place. Some we had in pots brought from Indianapolis, some came from along the county road on our property where the ditch was cleaned out, and some from a neighbor's overgrown iris plots.

Inside I've started spinach and a few other plants. Next time we go to town I'll get some peas which can be planted outdoors now. The archway has some new grape cuttings at its bottom. Finally, when I clear a path to them in the barn, I'll pull out the dozens of other seed varfieties we've saved from plants we've grown, seen or eaten and see if we can get the entire hillside growing.

We've been staking out

We've spent much of this week, except for the two coldest days and the afternoon of the fire, staking out the house site.



The strings mark the outside walls and the view is looking west, from inside the boundary of the living room. There is a window planned in the short wall in the foreground to allow a view of the stream below the spring. The diagonal string that runs the full width of the picture is our north-south reference line running downhill that was established by aligning the shadows of two thin sticks at solar noon a few days ago. By the way, solar noon on that day was just seconds before 1 PM EST. Next week, after Daylight Savings Time begins, it will be about 2 PM EDT.

The large fallen tree has probably been there for 10 years and will be removed to a garden area before excavation begins on the site.



This picture looks uphill from just south of the south-east corner of the house where the kitchen will be. The hill is not as steep here and the bedroom at the back sits where there is a depression through which water runs when it rains. You can tell where the damp places are by the very light brown dry grass there.

We've got to get some advice on whether we can safely route that water around the north-east corner before it continues down the hill. We'd like to have a small retaining pond behind the bedroom which would contain the flow from most rain events.

We ran out of yellow string so we used "CAUTION" tape for the back wall of the bedroom. It's much easier to see in the picture, but not as accurate as string.

If this location is OK for the house we will lose two large trees because the excavation will be too close to them to expect them to survive the amount of root loss. The top of the house will be about 2 feet above the current grade at the north-west corner and about 6 feet above grade at the north-east corner of the master bedroom. I hope we will excavate enough soil to berm the entire north side of the building.

The rest of the story

Here's the picture I said I needed to take before explaining how the fire started.



It's actually funny, after the fact.

My neighbor, and still friend, was trying to burn this pile of sticks and brush. Notice, though the fire seems to have burned right under the fire pile, the brush hasn't even been scorched. Amazing.

Our property begins in the background, just this side of the the four cedar trees. Look carefully and you can see the barn in the distance, just over the black ridge.

Not how we planned to spend the afternoon

Yesterday Sandy and I started working to lay out the house on the hillside using stakes and string. I had started the process earlier in the week, but realized after a few corners were set that I had forgotten to account for the slope of the hill when measuring uphill distances. So I bought some 2X2s, cut them to 2- or 3-foot lengths and sawed points on one end using my miter saw - four cuts per board to get a good point. I also got some third-rate fence boards to cut and use as batter boards.

We had set about three of the twelve lines for outside walls when Sandy said, "Oh my God!" I turned around to see a wall of flames coming up the south side of the hill on the south side of the dam. Flames were 10 to 20 feet high and stretched from the county road on the east at least 50 yards onto our property.

My first thought was that it would burn right around the dam and right into the woods to our backs. At about the same time we realized that the fire trucks we heard a minute before were now coming down the county road to our property. (More about how the fire started and who called the fire department later after I get one more picture to help tell the story.)

The first truck on the scene was a pumper with over 1000 gallons of water on board. It stopped at the culvert that had just been put in place a few days ago. I took the hose and started running it up the hill toward the dam. A second fireman caught up with me and took the hose, calling for the pressure to be turned on. He started wetting down the hillsides east and north of the pond. By this time the fire was burning northward across the small dam.

The fire was halted on these two hillsides, and stopped just about halfway across the dam, though I don't know what stopped it.

While this was going on the fire turned its sights on the hillside to the west and started climbing. I saw all the green on a few red cedars all but disappear as the fire passed under them. The concern now was that it would get to our woods to the northwest or, worse, go over the hill to the west and take on the neighbor's outbuildings.

By now the fire department had help from another township, and there were three small trucks on the property that could climb right up the hillsides. Two were pick-up trucks and one was a smaller four-wheel drive that was fitted for brushfires with a large water tank on the back. That small truck was able to run all over the hillside with hardly any regard for the direction it was going and the contour of the hill. The pickup stayed mostly along the top of the hill.

After about 30 minutes, the fire was under control with just small puffs of white smoke spotted here and there. The firemen took the backpack tanks to them as they left the property, and within an hour from start to finish, it was all over.

The hillsides are black today as the pictures show. But there are bright sides to all of this.

o All of the multi-flora rose bushes are very visible, as are the grape vines. This will allow us to cut many many more of them in the next few days than we would have been able to even find with all the dried grass hiding them.

o We can easy see all of the little dips and bumps that were invisible when covered with grasses and shrubs. There are lots of small places we can change the contour a bit to help encourage water to sink into the hillside rather than run down it.

o The hillsides should be beautiful when the grass and wildflowers start growing. It will be green on a black background instead of green mixed with last year's dead brown grass.

o The fire never got to our two stands of persimmon trees. I learned that for a low-wind brush fire, the narrow trails I had mowed on the hillsides served as fire stops.

Here're the pictures so far. I'll post more soon. The gray areas in the burned sections are piles of ash.

This is the view from the apartment. You can see the far hillside that was burned.

This picture and the next are taken from approximately where the house will be. The old fallen tree will be removed.

I would like to have "stitched" them together, but the service doesn't seem to be working.

This and the next three are a view over the pond, from left to right, facing south.

Contrast these pictures with the snow scene at the top of the page.

Notice how the fire just quit before it came all the way across the dam.

Sandy is cutting vines and rosebushes among the trees that are getting started on the hillside. This area had been mowed every so often prior to our purchasing the property.

This is one of the red cedars that sort of just disappeared as the fire passed.

You can see the tracks of the fire departments little vehicle. Everywhere it went it flattened the ash and exposed the dried grass at the surface that didn't burn.

And before I forget, ...

today, March 4th, is the only day of the year that gives a command.

Corny, I know, but I learned this many, many years ago and haven't had anyone to tell it too for a long time. Plus this time I don't have to listen to any groaning.

The "falls"

Last week it rained heavily on and off for a day or two. It was still raining when I took these pictures. That explains the watery look caused by rain on the lens. I think it makes the pictures even better.

They show water flowing over the large tree root from under which the spring emerges when it hasn't been raining. The lower picture is from a bit lower. Along the length of the stream, starting at the spring, and before it levels out into a year-around damp area, there are a series of small pools. I am enlarging them a little at a time. This whole series of ponds, as well as the spring, will be visible from the west end of the house.

Usually the water flows under my little dams. After it rains, though, it just gushes over them.

A few views from last month

These pictures were taken about a month ago. I forgot I had them. They're just too pretty to spend the rest of their lives in an unseen album. Both were taken from the apartment window looking east-southeast on the same very cold morning just as the sun was coming up.

At last, visible progress

After months of investigation, discussion, drawings, more discussion, and a few decisions, we finally had some action.

A few weeks ago the county highway department began cleaning out the ditch along the county road. Then we had a string of snow falls and some really cold weather that halted the progress. Monday, while I was outside, a county dump truck stopped on the state road and backed down the driveway. It was one of the guys coming to say they would like to install our culverts the next day. The ditch was ready on our side of the road.

"Great. Go ahead," I said.

So yesterday the county installed two 18" double-walled plastic culverts. One is at the bottom of the hill where almost all of the surface water drains through as it leaves the property. We had already decided that we would not use the existing opening in the fence there for our primary access because of all the water that is often there. It's too wet and slippery for a few days after it's rained, and it would sometimes be impassible in frozen winter weather, especially with the added problem of having to climb the hill almost immediately after entering the property.

The second culvert was placed about halfway up the hill where we can come onto the property at almost the exact same altitude that we plan to place the parking area. Though the driveway will meander to get there, it will not run up- nor downhill more than a foot or so all the way across to the parking spot.

The county crew was great. They cut down some of the trees that we would have had to cut ourselves and dragged them down the road and onto the property where I can cut them for various uses. The culverts were covered with a gravel-dirt mix and limestone blocks were stacked to protect the ends from erosion. The flow down the ditch along the road can be very strong sometimes.

Here are a few pictures of the installation.


Covering the lower culvert


Removing trees at the driveway


Covering the driveway culvert


Placing limestone end wall

Hawk eye

Yesterday afternoon as I was using the laptop in the living room, something moved outside in the trees that caught my eyes. One of the hawks that usually just soars overhead took up residence in a tree outside for about an hour. I suspect he was hoping he'd have a shot at some of the birds at our feeders below the window. No luck. Yesterday, and almost every day, the birds had cleaned out the feeders by mid-afternoon, and that's after the second filling.

Sandy checked to be sure. It was a red-tailed hawk. There is a tell-tale speckled band of brown across the white breast that is visible in the picture.