Fetching a Pail of Water...

Here's another update on today's projects including the front yard clean up, boxwood care, and a perfect evening walk in the woods.  I have been in class all week long and am always hurrying to get to Hearthstone as soon as I can in the evenings.  I am always in awe of how much was accomplished during that day.  I'm like a little kid running around to my favorite spots to see if anything has changed. :)  

Today, I arrived to yet another enormous black walnut tree dropped on the front yard...YAY!!  I was just in time to help collect the logs for the woodpile...which is officially taller than Roger.  Roger says that it's getting to be as tall as the house!  I will have to take a picture of it tomorrow to show you what we mean.  We worked on cleaning up the brush and debris.  One of my "Brey Jobs" is to collect all the walnut balls that fall out of the tree.  They are these stinky, green shelled balls that apparently have an edible walnut inside.  Seems like a lot of work for such a small snack!  Anyways, taking down these black walnut trees is so much work that I definitely don't want any baby walnut trees growing in the front yard.  Prevention is key!  When we got down to sawing up the stump, water came pouring out of it.  It was so interesting to watch this drip into a huge puddle of water on the ground.  I learned that all live trees have water in them.

 The walnut tree down on the front yard.

Hauling the walnut logs up to the enormous wood pile (pictures to come)

My diligent pile and bag of "walnut balls."

Chopping it up.

Here's the stump that was draining water.  The dark spot on the ground is the puddle.  It's hard to see.

While the boys were working on clearing the walnut tree with the backhoe, I was working on this crazy looking boxwood on the driveway wall.  The top of it is sorta dead looking...very brown and irregularly shaped.  I attempted to shake out the dead leaves (as I have read you are supposed to do) and try to get it to come back to life.  The walnut's root system was poisoning this plant.  Of course I decide this poor plant was thirsty and needed water.  So...I  go get a bucket and head to the creek/waterfall to fetch water (yes, I was humming the Jack and Jill song for a moment too!).  Now this sounds like an easy task.  Yet a large drywall bucket is difficult to fill in shallow water.  To solve this problem, I used my newly acquired rock jumping skills to creep down to the deeper water.  I was so proud of myself for filling the bucket with the slightly deeper and more steady flow of water!  I very carefully worked my way back to the bank and dragged that bucket of water up the hill to the driveway.  Finally, maybe 20 minutes later, I had half a bucket filled with enough water to give my struggling and thirsty boxwood. Then I carefully built a little moat around the roots to help the ground absorb the water.  Roger snuck these pictures of Rocky and I watering the boxwood.  

AFter all of this exhausting and rewarding work, we walked the property loop as a "cool down exercise."  Here is a picture of us coming out from the pine walk on the side yard.  It shows how clear the ice house is getting with all of the trees down.  What a busy day today!  

 The ice house as sunset

Thank you all for your incredibly positive comments and emails.  You are so awesome to be supporting us through al this.  We really appreciate you sharing in our excitement.  

Xoxo...B