Oh what joy...

 Really! 

I had a joyful hour of photography yesterday!

So you all have figured out by now that if I can get out and spend a bit of time with Miss Mom Nature, I am a happy camper.

I spent the morning setting up my temporary strings of fence hotwire and gates. In one direction, the gate allows the mules access to the forest. 

Moved the other way, they have access to the Merry Meadow [named by Ariel when she was little].

I'd fence, go back to the house to check on my patient -- go fence some more. Back and forth I went all morning. 

This included cutting down multiflora rose and cutting back Honeysuckle from where I was putting the electric fence. Yes, so much joy in that!

Done with that project. 

Next, I may have to revive the ancient mower and use it to cut down some thistles that are coming up in the meadow. 

If I mow the patch often with the push mower, I won't have to hack at it with the scythe. Anyway that is my industrious plan. Not sure it will happen but I'll try. 

That means putting the push mower in the cart that is attached to the old 4 wheeler and hauling it out there.

So.
Back to the photography.

Remember the odd looking moss/liverwort reproductive system in the rain? 
I found this yesterday. You can see that the little 'balls' blew open and 'spored' out for more plants.

Charlie was bored with me getting down low. But I can see the world better from his perspective.

I do have a fascination of little things. Big broad landscapes are really not easy to do in our landscapes of steep hills and valleys. So I find the little things.

The Spring Beauties as we call them were literally covering a section of our woods.

How lucky was I to not only sit among them, but when I studied the flowers I was able to find bees working the flowers.

I was using my Lensbaby SOL 22 lens. It is a frustrating and beautiful lens with an f stop that is set at 3.5 with a movable focal point. All of the work with this lens is purely manual as the lens doesn't communicate with the camera. 

I love the challenge.

Forest violets and yard violets....

Where the Maidenhair Fern Grows....

That's it for today.

It is Sunday morning and the day is looking bright and beautiful.

Time to get going and see what I can find today and work on my flower beds.

Storms and smoke

About midnight the storms that were supposed to go around us hit and hit hard. The lightening was so often that it looked like a weird SciFi daylight film. 

Charlie had a conniption fit. The nonstop thunder unnerved the poor fella. I got up and comforted him as best I could. Rich got up and Charlie decided he was his savior. 

We watched the storm as best we could and at times we couldn't see past the porch either from the rain or a fog. Or was it both? We had winds.

7 22 

garden

7 29
the garden :(

So the damage around our place was mostly to the trees. I'd moved Lil Richard and Sven out of one of the little paddocks I have for them to the Shed Pens. Sven can get into his little indoor area through a large 'goat'/doggy type door. And Lil Richard can maneuver around to get out of inclement weather. 

[He is the only equine that will behave inside a stall in the winter..the mules try to tear the indoor pen apart]

Seems the dead ash trees to the northeast threw their branches at Lil Richard. He showed me the tiny mess when I checked on him. Sven was still sleeping.

The pen that I moved them out of had a new tree top in it.

This was Thor's old pen and the tree to the right was the one that was struck by lightening a few years ago. 

I spent an hour or so just picking up branches and debri to toss over the fence to the mules and even to Sven. They all eat the leaves, so they do a pretty good clean up. I just have to pick up the branches later and toss them on my fall burn pile.

There was actually more than anyone could eat so I dragged them off the hot wire and just left them be.

I grabbed a hand saw, a machete, and the heavy duty loppers. Off to the woods I went to check on the rest of the fence. One nice thing about this rope hot wire is that it is a cinch to fix. It generally doesn't break, but will sag and just needs tightening. I usually have to replace the plastic insulators that will break before the wire.

This box elder and another locust split and fell in the forest pasture. I'll let the mules eat the leaves off of them if they want to and then this fall hand saw it up. No chain saw for me and I know my neighbor would help, but he has had a stressful year at his work. I won't ask for help.

It will be good for me to have a late fall project.

I went all the way around the whole fence and chopped weeds off from some places and stopped to eat black berries! It started to get 'close' and I could feel myself heating up. Long sleeves, long pants, boots, and gloves... phew...

I found cool fungi and wondered what these were. I will try to ID them at a later time.

Ohhhh! And next to the top of a split oak, I found this on a log. I can't wait to get back to the woods and explore instead of checking fences!

Who doesn't love the brilliant colors of slime mold!

I got back to the house just in time to have lunch. I got an alert on my phone regarding Air Quality. They were not kidding. Cell Phone photo of what we first thought was fog. I went back out and man...IT smelled like burning plastic and wood.

And...

It did get much worse.

This was at 2pm when I went out for a few moments to pick some Queen Anne's Lace and Fleabane for a wild white bouquet.

That air was bad and I stayed in until late evening.

I worked on a project of dying Queen Anne's Lace and trying to figure out how to dry them for this winter. 

The haze and smoke let up a bit before sunset so I spent a little time watching the birds.

This morning there was nothing but an orange haze that turned into a grey overcast sky with another Air Quality Alert.

I'm bummed. 

This weekend it looks like I will spend my hours mowing. According to the NOAA we are to experience times of heavy smoke. 

So I'll mow and stop and do something crafty? The garden is toast so I will let it be, the squash and cukes can grow without much more help from me.

My flower garden took a huge hit too. The rain decimated most of my petunias and the winds flattened my 4 o'clocks. Once it dries out [2.5 inches of rain] I'll see what I can do to revive it.

Pfft.

Onward.

One day at a Time

We'd met with the Speech Therapist at the VA. The young lady was fresh faced and new, doing her internship with Veterans. I sat quietly while she did an assessment. I think that was the hardest part for me, watching my husband struggle with certain things.

However, the ST said he was doing quite well and normally they weren't able to see 'stroke patients' this soon after a stroke. She felt that he would make great strides.

Rich isn't sure about the great strides. But the therapist kept encouraging Rich to challenge himself with tasks, but to remember that when he got tired it would not go as well.

She looked forward to meeting with us next week.

We got home just as the first thunderstorm hit. The animals were eating hay quietly and the grand kids were sitting on the couch watching a DVD on a small portable player.

After the second round of storms blew through [we made a quick trip to the basement when that storm came through], the kids broke out a new deck of cards and asked their Grandpa to teach them some card games.

Without really knowing it, the kids were helping with Speech Therapy and Cognitive Thinking skill therapy.

Yesterday was a busy one even though Rich didn't think it was. We put round bales in with the gelding lot, the calf lot, and the cow lot.
For lunch we went to the local restaurant and had a really great meal with the kids.
We stopped afterwards to see Rich's mom.

For a person who has had a stroke just 12 days ago, that is a lot of activity.
I could tell that he was getting rather tired.

Our week has been busy with visiting helpers and drives to the Madison VA for appointments. Not to mention the phone calls I have had to make or receive for more appointments and follow ups.

After the kids left, Rich proclaimed that he needed to rest. Indeed he did.

I thought I'd run down to the "Morel Area" and see if I could find us a handful to cook up as a tasty treat.

I found some rather large ones on the upper north side of the creek bed.

Morris and I gathered up a small bunch and headed back home. I walked fast, but still managed to stop and photograph some wild Columbine, wild Geranium, Jacob's Ladder, and wild Strawberry flowers. The Mayflowers are blossoming now.
I wanted to head to the back valley to photograph the Trillium that litter the north hillside.
And I thought to myself.
Perhaps next year.

This spring was going to be too busy for long wanderings.

I took a slightly different path than normal home. The storms that blew through the night before had uprooted an old oak tree which fell onto a box elder, which fell onto another box elder and basically made a huge mess.

Unfortunately, it laid across our hot-wire fence. I do have to say that the fencing we use is amazing. it is 1/4" soft braided rope fence. After Rich cut a chunk out of the log we were able to replace the broken insulators and the fence was back on and hot.

And no. He probably shouldn't have been running a chain saw. However, it needed to be taken care of.

It basically wore him out physically. And I told him that the rest of the work would just have to wait until we had a chainsaw party.

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” James Baldwin