It seems a shame to not have much to write about on a Saturday, but for some reason, I just don't feel like I've accomplished much of anything today. I did get the Jimmy Nardelo pepper seedlings potted up this morning. But after that, other than a quick run to town to pick up something, I don't know where the rest of the morning went.
After a quick lunch, I gathered my tools and headed back down to the woods with the intention of clearing the rest of the privet on the hillside where I've been working. I parked the cart at the top of the hill and kind of gave the area a look. There were two privet trees growing on the north side of the oak (I've been working on the south side) so I thought, "I'll just take those two out real quick before I go on down the hillside."
It sounded like a good plan at the time, but it turned out to be a much bigger job than I thought!
There were lots of slender straight shoots coming up off the trunk of the first tree, so I started cutting those off and stripping the twigs so I could put those aside in a "shred" pile.
After I got several of the straight limbs out of the way, I decided it was time to cut the tree. But when I started cutting, Walter's bar got about a third of the way into the trunk and then just didn't seem like it was going anywhere. I thought the tree would fall down hill, but I think there were limbs caught up in the top that were pulling it back uphill as I cut??? Anyway, I decided that maybe I needed to take off some of the "uphill limbs." After much pushing and pulling, I was able to get Walter's bar back out of the cut (it seemed that the bar was pinched in the cut), and I started limbing the west side of the tree to try to get it down to a more manageable size.
But even after I had removed most of the uphill limbs, I couldn't get the saw to cut. I tried using the handsaw - same thing. It made me wonder if maybe the tree had grown up around a piece of metal or a rock and I was ruining my chain!
I ended up just cutting the tree off at a higher point and treating it. Not the right way to do things, I know, and it will probably sprout up, but maybe the herbicide will knock it back a bit.
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| I finally gave up trying to cut this one off at ground level and just went up about 18" to cut it. |
As it turned out, Walter may have just been choking on wood chips and sawdust! I took the cover off the chain sprocket and the area was packed full. After I cleaned that out, he seemed to zip along fine again. I probably could have cut the stump down at that point if I hadn't already treated it with the herbicide. Oh well....
That tree made quite a pile of limbs! It was actually bigger than it looked, and I ended up spending probably an hour working to get it cut down and treated. Not a very efficient use of time.
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| Pile of privet limbs. Most are from the first tree I cut, with a few that I cut weeks ago tossed on top to get them out of the way. |
I realized by the time I finished cutting and treating the first tree that I was already running very low on herbicide. There wasn't as much in the bottle as I thought. I did have enough to cut and treat the second tree and a few small privet sprouts in that same area, but that was it.
So instead of sticking with my original plan to work on the privet that was on the south side of the downed oak tree, I took Walter back up the hill to the north and cut the tops out of the larger privet trees that were growing just east of the barn. Honestly, I should have probably had RAF help me with that because the trees were on a small, but steep drop off, and I wasn't quite sure which way some of the limbs were going to fall because they were intertwined with other tree limbs at the top and can swing unpredictably when they're cut. But I guess I'm just stubborn and I wanted them cut, so I just went ahead and cut them. I'll come back later to cut the larger limbs into more manageable sizes and drag all of the branches into a pile. The tree trunks themselves probably won't be cut and treated until next fall.
Before I headed back to the house, I decided to pull the Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) out of the top of a small wild cherry (Prunus serotina) that I had noticed growing there on the hillside. Luckily the honeysuckle had probably only started twining around the cherry tree last summer, so it hadn't yet damaged the bark of the little tree.
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| Wild cherry tree, free from the stranglehold of Japanese Honeysuckle. |
I may have included a picture of this little tree in a previous post, and if so, I'm sorry for repeating myself. But this is what happens when Japanese Honeysuckle is left to strangle a tree.
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| Deep grooves cut into the bark of a young tree that was being strangled by Japanese Honeysuckle. |
I think this is a small oak tree, but I'm not sure of that. I just hope I got the vine off in time to save it.
I also noticed a tree nearby that I think needs to go....
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| Maybe a Bradford pear? |
I'm not positive, but I think it is a Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana), another invasive that needs to be taken out. I left it this time but will do some reading to learn how to identify Bradford pear for certain, and if that's what it is, it will be flagged to be taken out next fall. It didn't show any signs of blooms, so hopefully it's not old enough to make fruit just yet.
I found a rusted-out foot tub down in the woods where I was working so I put that on the cart to bring home with me. I wish it had a bottom in it, but I think I can make it work even so. I'm thinking it can go over by the compost bins to hold my American Groundnut (Apios americana) tubers (if they are still alive!). I'll just let the vines grow up on the compost bins. I hope they make some blooms this year. I've seen them in bloom growing up in a brush pile out in The Barber Field, and they are gorgeous!
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| American Groundnut, Apios americana observed August 29, 2015 in The Barber Field. "Hopniss" or "Indian Potato" as it is also called, is a host plant for the Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus). |
With the cart loaded up with sticks, my foot tub, a nice little rock and all of my equipment, I headed back to the house. I don't feel like I had very much to show for the 2+ hours that I spent working down there today. It was a discouraging feeling to be heading back home having accomplished so little.
But in order that the afternoon didn't feel like a complete waste, I decided to go ahead and shred the privet limbs when I got back to the house.
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| Privet limbs to be shredded, and my old rusted out foot tub. |
Little Joe made quick work of the limbs since they didn't have all of those little twigs on them to clog up around the cutter! Maybe the time I spent stripping the twigs off the privet limbs was worth it after all.
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| Shredded privet. The limbs made enough chips to cover about a 2' section of a walking row with about 4" of wood chips. |
I know it doesn't show up in the picture above, but that little bit of green beside the Fava bean packet was my cilantro plant...key word being "was" because apparently rabbits like cilantro too.
What I planted today: Dill (Anethum graveolens) in toilet paper tubes and Cilantro (Coriander sativum).