Okay, that’s a little much. For a while I’ve been thinking about cutting some walking paths through some of our heavily wooded property. Nothing fancy, maybe four foot wide. Just to make it easier to take a little nature walk. Barb and I did a little scouting over the weekend.
My original thought was to map out a path and try to follow that on the ground…
but I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to just start walking and cutting (with my handy little electric chainsaw), making it up as I go. Truth be told, it’s pretty unlikely this will get much use by anyone except Barb and I. To launch the project –which will take a long time to complete– I picked a starting point.
Which this space for progress reports.
Category Archives: Home
Dying ivy vines
It’s been about 14 months since I cut the ivy vines that were slowly killing the big oak trees on the property next to ours. The first thing I did following the purchase. The leaves are slowing falling and I hope the vines do in time.
And stack rocks
Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. — Zen proverb.
Annex Journal: 12/10/21
The first clip shows my progress on clearing brush and junk trees away from the big oaks. The second is an example of the massive vines that are everywhere on this acreage.
Chainsaw Fun
Dismantling Big Ass Tree
A month or so back a limb broke off a big tree and blocked the road leading into our neighborhood of fifteen homes. The homeowner cleared the limb quickly but it was obvious there would be more falling he decided to have the tree taken down and today was the day.
The work was done by Korte Tree Care (the guys I use) and the crew made short work of this big ass tree, thanks to one amazing piece of equipment. I’m told the big truck cost about half a million bucks. Easy to believe watching it work. The operator appeared to be controlling it via Bluetooth unit at his waist so he could move around and see what he was doing.
They hauled off the really big sections of the trunk and left what you see here for the homeowner to use as firewood. Gonna need a big splitter.
More big rocks (revisited)
It’s been a few weeks since I showed you the other big rocks hidden on the north side of The Annex and I think it’s a little easier to appreciate the geology in the short (30 sec?) video below.
The other three sides of the house got more attention for some reason so I fired up my chainsaws and started cleaning some of the brush (Mostly wild Honeysuckle, brambles and dead cedar trees). The short clip below is a before/after look and not one tree was felled during this clean-up.
After the first hard freeze, when the bugs are dead or in Florida, I’ll take a video stroll through the new acreage.
Autumn 2021
What the birds see
My buddy George has been playing with drones for about eight years. (You can see some of his amazing video here, here and here.) In 2015 he got his drone snagged in a very tall tree while shooting some video of our place. So I was a little surprised when he agreed to come back and shoot some video of our recently expanded homestead.
As you might imagine, the technology has gotten a lot better in the last half dozen years and George has gotten even better at flying the things. The video below runs right at 2:30.
This was shot from an altitude of about 400 feet so the drone was just a black dot but the quality of the video was even better than what I’m streaming here.
I love trees. I love being surrounded by them. And I’ve tromped around our acreage over the years so I know there’s a bunch of them. But it took this birds eye view to give me a real sense of just how many trees surround us.
More big rocks
A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of a big rock on our newly acquired property. The previous owners built their house around this formation. Since then we’ve discovered another big rock on the other side (and behind) of the house. Hard to see because it’s covered in about forty years worth of dead leaves, Honeysuckles, and brambles.
We still have work to do but Rock #2 is finally getting some love.
The 20 second clip below shows what the formation looks like before and after some clean up.