On Thursday morning, I got my post up and headed out at 7AM to do chores and start the last section for picking up downed wood. I was working along the treeline on the right, all the way to where the grass stops at the sandhill.
It took me about 2 hours to do, then I came back to the house, tossed my clothes in the washer (poison ivy), got a shower and sat and rested until my brother got home around 2PM.
New West – pink lily of the valley
In past years, I’d be lucky to have 1 stalk of blooms of the white lily of the valley by May 9th, our anniversary. The pink ones bloomed a little later in May. But here they are on May 2nd.
My brother and I started by the Small garden, working our way up the north side of the middle pasture. I was driving the truck and he was in the back with the hybrid pole saw, made of Tom’s electric base, and our pole with chainsaw.
We got it all cut in no time and then stopped and picked it up. The grass is really high in the middle pasture and I wanted to be done driving out there. So the middle pasture is finished.
New West – Star of Bethlehem
These are typically not flowering until mid May.
Then we moved to the back 40, working our way down the north side and then going back to pick it up. We decided to try to do the section across the back of the pasture, as long as the truck didn’t sink in the mud. But it has dried up enough since I was back there 3 days ago that we only had to put the truck into 4WD to get through just fine. We didn’t pick up these cuttings.
We worked our way down the south side, leaving the cuttings. It wasn’t quite 4PM so we decided to work our way up the driveway. We’d have to pick up those cuttings before we could stop.
We made it this far and had to stop because the wood guy had shown up with our 2nd load of wood.
I was worried the bag of wood would be in the way, but they just angled in. They said they’d gotten all the wood finally and would have plenty to fill my shed. By the time I got back to my brother and the truck, he’d decided he was done for the day.
So we started to load the cuttings on the truck. He kept piling it higher and higher and it was pretty precarious. But we made it out to the brush pile on the sandhill and were able to flip it off onto the pile.
We have this much of the driveway to do, getting the branches cut up higher so they don’t hit trucks and farm equipment.
We decided getting Chinese takeout sounded good, so that was supper.
On Friday, it’s my job to pick up the cuttings along the south and back side and get them onto the brush pile. We’ll see how far I get. I can’t start til after I’ve called in the milk order at 8AM. It’s to be cool and cloudy all day.