10 April 2024

In such a rush to get started work this morning I forgot to write before stepping out. By the eyes of the outside world not much has happened, despite hours of mowing I’ve yet to cover the whole yard and I’m not trying to yet. My primary concern is cutting back the over growth on the boarders and in the woods. With my mower I’ve also made several passes with hedge trimmers and a chainsaw. This morning I destroyed two more hearts of darkness, that’s what I call the brier patch that is old enough to have branches thick as a young tree. The hedge trimmer cuts through the viney brier revealing the heart and I need a chain saw to finish it off. This being the beginning of Spring all the plants are at their weakest and this is my best opportunity to not lose any ground the rest of the year, soon I will have to wait until Winter to continue this work. A great achievement to me was clearing a path on the eastern edge of the woods. Today I was mowing around the parameter of the property to asses what needs attention. I like to be able to walk everywhere on my property which means no branches hanging below six feet, we may be years from that. Beyond the path I made today there is still part of my parameter too thick to pass and the deeper I get, the thicker it is. The woods are looking lovely to me though anyone else might not notice I’ve done anything at all. What is the difference between cozy woods and wild ones?

9 April 2024

Releasing the queen bee went well and hopefully she decides to stay. The bees didn’t eat as much as I thought they would, which was good, I was afraid they’d go through all the food I gave them and be starving in a day because I don’t know how much bees eat. I had left a pollen patty on top of the frames and have a frame filled with sugar water with an additive inside the hive. The bees seem to have been eating from both food sources and had even started building around where the queens cage was before I freed her. Ideally the queen will nestle herself in between the frames and they’ll start building a normal structure. I noticed what the bees built was pure white, my understanding is the white color is because they’re food source is white sugar. There’s plenty of flowers where I live for them to get pollen, but in these beginning stages and later during Winter it is recommended to supply them with food. Having food available at the hive will decrease the chance any bee goes out for food and can’t find their way back. The photo is of the cage the queen came in. Today my big goal is the drip irrigation, there was some rain this morning which is helpful since I didn’t water the trees yesterday. The rain shouldn’t effect setting up the irrigation though I wanted to do some mowing afterwards and we’ll see how that is effected. The grass isn’t so thick yet as to disrupt the mower, but I wanted to clear some paths in the woods that have lots of sticks, the extra moisture might even help in that there won’t be a lot of dust kicked up.

8 April 2024

Another good weekend, our first normal weekend at the new house as my wife has been away doing new job training until now. The bees are off and running, on Saturday I dumped three pounds of bees into the hive and they’ve been looking good. Once I’m done here I’m going to release the queen from her cage and resupply their food. This will be my first look at how much they eat, it might even increase as they get settled in. My first time handling the bees was unnerving, even though they can’t reach me anytime a bee would land on my mask, my body would set off alarms. As with overcoming any fear, the more I work with them the easier it will be. My thuja evergreen trees only shipped today, it will probably be two days before I have them, as I set up my drip irrigation this week I want to extend it to where the edge where the evergreens will be. When Monday comes I have a lot of plans for what I want to get done this week, but Monday is really my first chance at alone time. I will take today to rest from any big projects like the irrigation, there’s no rush on it and I need to have rest days. The other big thing I had planned this week was mowing, I’ve only mowed once and that was only a portion of the yard, I still need to mow everywhere I can in order to understand what maintaining the yard will entail. Over the weekend I continued battling the heart of darkness in my woods. Previously the old thorny plants I cut down were less than an inch in thickness, I found some that were possibly over two inches thick and cut them with the chainsaw. Over the next couple weeks the brier will fall back.

5 April 2024

This morning I had a missed call from the post office, they had received my bees and I went down to pick them up. I’m happy to get them sooner than later even if I had to adjust on the fly, holding the baby in one arm while picking up a package of bees. Surprisingly the bees weren’t in a box of cardboard, the shipping label was on the side of a mesh cage for the bees and I’m sure the people at the post office were happy to have it out of their building. My thinking is to wait until tomorrow to let them out into the bee box I have, currently I’ll let the bees stay the night inside the box inside their cage. Tomorrow I’ll have more time to focus on releasing them. Since my plan was to mulch my peach trees tomorrow, I went ahead and did that today. Thankfully the baby was good while I worked, she had picked up a landscaping flag and had fun sticking it in each pile of mulch I made. We even had the dog out with us while working, unfortunately there’s no fence between my yard and the road, so I have to keep a close eye that no one gets too far. Once I have the thuja trees planted, the will at least act as a reminder to the dog not to go farther. My wife complimented me on how much faster I’ve got at digging holes and planting trees, I’m grateful and amazed myself because not only have I improved but the situation has gotten more complicated with having to juggle a child at the same time. The biggest improvement in ease getting rid of the hill from the old house, now the wheelbarrow is helpful on flat land.

4 April 2024

The peach trees are in the ground and wouldn’t you know it as soon as I was done I got an email about a flash sale on giant green thuja trees, they will start my privacy wall of trees. Thujas are a fast growing evergreen that has a mature height of 60 feet, walnut trees are 40 feet for reference. Another email I got was that my bees shipped, but they aren’t expected to be delivered until Saturday which isn’t great for the bees and is annoying since it’s shipping from the same state as me, maybe a three hour drive away. I don’t have the highest expectations for these bees and in the future I won’t have them shipped. There is also a different method of buying bees called a Nuc, short for nucleus, that has a higher chance of success. In the future I will drive and pick up a Nuc. For now we’re celebrating peach tree beginnings, over the next week I’m going to get some mulch around the trees base to hold in moisture and set up the drip irrigation. Since I know the thuja trees are on their way I’ll extend my tubing to their future planting site. I did give the peach trees their first watering with a hose and might go out tonight for a second pass. For now I’m going to take a rest before it’s time to get baby.

3 April 2024

Today is digging day, after I’m finished writing I have to dig 14 holes for my peach trees. After digging I’ll need to go to the store to get nutritious soil. First I need to gather up my tools, in the future I will get a utility vehicle for transporting tools. For now my wheelbarrow will do fine for transport, without the steep hill of my last home work should be a lot easier and going back for forgotten items is more forgiving. Loaded up in the wheelbarrow will be my auger, the drill bit, and I’ll have to grab a battery from the house. I’d also like to get my headphones in before starting, so I can listen to an audiobook. Drilling should be mindless work. There was rain last night, the soil might be heavier from the moisture, but hopefully the digging will be smoother. Gloves and uniform would be nice. I’ll move my tools to the digging location, go down one row putting a hole at each flag and come back down the second row. Hopefully I’ll finish close to where I started, then I can load the auger back into the wheel barrow and clean up. Getting the soil today give me an opportunity to clean out my van for picking up the trees tomorrow. I considered getting the soil when I get the trees only I don’t know if I’ll have room for both and it’s better to get a job done when you have the opportunity since that opportunity might be gone later. Setting up the drip irrigation will have to wait until next week, that means I’ll have to drag a couple hundred feet of hose out front to water the new trees, it’s better for new trees to be over watered the first days of planting anyway. A photo of my suit to the wedding.

1 April 2024

Today I’m flying to Philadelphia for my brother’s wedding and tomorrow I’ll flight back home. This is the beginning of my whirlwind week, in the military they always like to call a hard week, heck week. During that time a person can expect little sleep with a lot of running around. I haven’t even flown since before the pandemic started, I don’t know what to expect. My biggest danger will be getting lost, whenever I have important information like a gate terminal or a time, that’s when my brain loves to get dyslexic and mix things up. Go to Philly, wait around until the wedding, have a nice celebration and then get on the road tomorrow at 6 AM. I’ve planned for Tuesday to be a bit of a recovery and for tying up any lose ends, then Wednesday will be the bulk of my physical labor this week where I have to dig the holes for my trees and get bags of soil to fill the holes with. I’ve learned that using good soil is worth the effort for planting a new fruit or nut tree. Thursday I’ll be planting the peach trees and receiving bees. The trees will need daily watering to start and then until I can set up my drip irrigation. There might be time on Thursday for the irrigation, but I think next Monday will be more likely. Friday is back with baby and I’m sure by the end of the week, my schedule for next week will fill in. I’ve got to get some more mowing and tree trimming done soon. Last but not least the big tree that’s been blocking my driveway since I moved in will hopefully be removed, it’ll finally feel like home.

29 March 2024

Another week down, there’s no daycare on Fridays leaving me with the baby, it’s nice to spend time with her though I notice with using daycare my baby care muscles are getting weaker. Digging holes and cutting down trees is different than handling a baby, she also grows up so quick that after four days it’s practically a new baby. We went grocery shopping this morning and restocked the fridge. Going to the tree nursery yesterday was a success, I was anticipating the trees to be in pots and that’s why they would take up so much room leading me to need a truck. Turns out the trees are kept in cold storage bare root, that means I’ll be able to pile them up in my van. I’m trying to get the trees in the ground as soon as possible to give them a longer growing season, plus when the owner pulled a tree out to show me I could see the tree starting to bud. I’ve scheduled to pick the trees up next week, until then there is still a lot of prep work to do. The location has been measured and marked, next I’ll have to dig 14 holes, it’ll be fairly quick work with my auger. Then I have to set up drip irrigation to water the trees, I got my first 500 foot roll of ½ inch plastic tubing today. Laying down irrigation feels like home, I’ve done it for the last two places I’ve lived, that makes me think about how the scale of my operation has increased exponentially. I learn through doing, more accurately through making mistakes, what I learned from visiting the tree nursery was that peach trees are to have their main branch cut back to allow air to flow between the branches. There were a couple packets of information on various fruit trees I’m excited to learn from.

28 March 2024

Today is a big day, I’m going to a tree nursery to see if I can get some peach trees. The location is also a vineyard so I’m sure there will be lots to interest me. There’s not much time so I’ll have to stay on point. Yesterday I was able to mow my pool area and measure the front yard for the trees. My set up will have room for 14 trees, a little less than I was hoping, but more than I’ll need. Of course there’s plenty of land and I could go wild planting peach trees everywhere, that’s not how I operate, I believe in aesthetics. The peach trees will frame the house, I’d also like build a wall of evergreen trees next to the road to hide from the world. As the first steps in a plan take place they reveal what the next steps may be. I like to make sections, then the different sections have points of interest, that way while walking the property there’s something to walk towards rather than wandering through an endless array of monocultures. The other activity was the pool mowing, I got so focused on using the bag to catch grass that installed the bag plug because it had the word bag and not thinking what plug would refer to. The plug is for push clippings out the side, thankfully it didn’t mess anything up and the mowing was simple enough, there’s a lot to keep track of. When I picked the baby up at daycare I had a tree service guy waiting for me at home to meet about removing my downed tree. I remember a time when I used to lay in bed all day, now there’s no time, as soon as one activity is complete it’s on to the next. Rest too much made my body ache, I’m happier on the move. Here’s a photo of the fern covered in thorns from yesterday’s post.

27 March 2024

Not much happened yesterday, I spent most of the day sleeping. By the end of the end around 8 PM I was feeling better and took the dog for a walk while I examined the side boarders to think about what I’d like to do with the overgrowth. Eventually our walking led us to a spot in the back forest I called the heart of darkness there. Bramble grows on bramble making an impenetrable wall of thorns. I saw where the root of the problem and decided to do some late night yard work cutting a hole in the thorns with a hedge trimmer until I got to the base of where a lot of the bramble is growing out of. The trunk was too thick for trimmers, so I got tree branch loppers cut out the source. Now I’ll leave that mess for some time to wither away, the thorns won’t be as sharp or will start to fall off as the plant dies back and sun will begin to shine in those parts. Among all the mess I saw a nice fern growing, I deemed it the heart of light that will begin anew. My plans for today are to mow a small patch of grass around the pool and measure my front yard. There is a smaller battery powered mower for the pool that I still need to assemble, this will also be the first time I’ve cared to use the bag for collecting grass clippings. Measuring the front yard is to determine where the future peach trees will be planted, the white flags in the picture were placed by me in an attempt to make a straight line down the middle. As I measure I’m going to create two rows on each side and put a flag every 20 feet for a potential tree, then I’ll know how many trees I need.