Looks kind of wild and wonderful doesn't it?
However, turn the camera less that 45 degrees and all you can see is traffic....trains, trucks, cars and in the summer really expensive boats.Since the snow has momentarily mostly melted, the guys and I brought in wood today.
Not together. They worked all day getting a dead elm up out of the ravine between the house and barn. A good friend stopped by the other day to pick up some Holstein semen we were giving him to make room in the tanks for Promise. He took a look around and saw the massive, bare-limbed monster where it loomed dangerously between barn and house.
"Why don't you cut that one down?" he asked, "Right handy to the stove and all..."
The boss admitted that with his bad arm he was a little afraid to mess with it. Elms are treacherous droppers of huge, brittle limbs and will kill you if you aren't careful (or maybe even if you are.) This friend has a long history with logging and firewood and a really big chain saw. He made short work of getting it down, but there was no way to avoid it going into the creek.
I stayed away from that job and went up into the orchard instead to bring down pieces of a dead apple limb that Alan cut up for me a few weeks ago. They have been buried under snow, tantalizing me by being so close and yet so inaccessible. With a whole mess more snow in the forecast it seemed like a plan to get them in. I had already hauled down a lot before the snow flew and still scavenged three heaping wheelbarrows full from just one limb. The apple trees are part of an old orchard that we used to use as a horse pasture. I like it up there.
I have never seen a yellow bellied sapsucker, but they may very well have seen me.
The horse pond. We have always wanted a willow tree and this little shrub volunteered. Don't know if it is a black or crack willow but it serves the purpose.
If I had just a little more zoom and a bit faster camera you could see the gulls like paper darts that flashed across this dramatic sky. I am grateful to the apple trees. For branches to keep me warm, for looking so pretty even in the winter, and for an excuse to be out here all afternoon and still call it work.
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12 comments:
Nice photos. Elms were called "widow makers." No need to wonder why.
We had a sapsucker (and his whole family) stay with us for quite a while in these parts. They completely destroyed my European Mountain Ash tree, a lovely ornamental... the kids and I took it down last summer. How I wish I'd taken photos!
So do those old apple trees still give you apples?
Mrs. M, thanks
The sapsucker was probably eating the insects that love to infest mountain ash. They are really hard to keep alive because of some boring critter that fills them with holes and kills them. We have one, but I don't know how long it will live....and I would have loved to have seen photos
FC, they give a few gnarly little things. Sometimes we eat a couple or put some into jelly
Your little 'orchard' area looks like a place Cooper would like to inspect. Lots of interesting trees and smells I have a feeling.
A mockingbird eh? Let us know if he sticks around. You know we have them in the summer here.
I enjoyed the look around. It looks a lot like this area...right down to country in one direction and encroaching civilization in the other.
Nice photos, it almost looks like spring is about to arrive. I have a crab tree that last marks like that but I think it was a woodpecker that did mine.
Joni, I'll bet he would have fun up there. Our Nick loves to run around sniffing and bolting through the snow.
Stacy, it amazes me how rural it can be so close to the interstate, the rr and the river...plus two main state highways
Linda, it felt like spring too for a couple of days and you could smell wet earth and grass. Tonight though, you can smell the snow on the air. I think winter may be back.
It seems like the apple trees always have sapsucker holes in them! Great post and thanks for sharing this with us!
Great pictures. Thanks for putting them up.
Mon@rch, it is silly to have a sap sucker be as yet unseen at my age, but I have never seen one...and obviously we have a lot of them, as our apple trees are indeed full of holes. Hopefully one of these days I will spot one.
The Jesse, thanks, and thanks for visiting!
There's an old apple orchard I like hanging out in too. Yours looks like it should be part of a story book. Sort of like The Secret Garden.
AMWD, it is a pleasantly magical place. Wish the guys would get the fence up so we could put horses back out there....my old saddle horse is buried there.
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