A couple of weeks ago we took a morning walk just a 20 minute drive from us in the George Washington National Forest. It was early enough on a hot day that we were comfortable even in the sun.
We started to go up this path which led into the woods. It soon got muddy so we turned back. We’ll do that loop another day.
Those are two red winged black birds on the cattails in the middle of the photo above.
Fun!
Iris blooming in front of the Soft Rush.
We’ve been harvesting strawberries for about 2 weeks now. They are big and beautiful and lacking in flavor. I’m guessing that is because we had so much rain while they were ripening. Our weather is perfect this week and the berries taste a little better.
Some of the rain came in the form of fierce storms. After once such storm we noticed that one of our big elms in the front yard is splitting in two! One estimate is $3400 to take it down. Ouch! We are now looking into the possibility of cabling it.
An opossum inside the tree crack.
Here are some photos I took yesterday of our mostly native plant garden that was planted by The Natural Garden of Harrisonburg. Above is a little Fringe Tree. It’s showing a lot of flirty blooms and new growth.
The purple blooms in the left background are wild geraniums. The white blooms in the foreground are woodland stonecrop. The mass of green in the middle is bleeding heart. I read it doesn’t transplant well but this did. I think you can still see some of it’s white and pink blooms.
Most of the rhododendrons are doing well. There is one that was planted right next to a stump that is dying and TNG is going to replace it. Some of the rhododendrons are have a bloom or two and showing new growth.
Smokey takes a walk. I love this stone. I was really impressed with their stonework. That is a creeping thyme between the walkway and the stone. Most of that survived the winter. TNG replaced what didn’t when they were here on Wednesday. I wonder if it will ever cover the entire area between the walkway stones.
That is strawberry that covers the ground around the redbud tree. It has a lot of berries and blooms. We have to decide if we want to remove it. It is being a bit of a bully. Otherwise, we will have to keep cutting it back. We already transplanted some of it last fall. That, too, is doing well.
It’s been a long while since I’ve posted because I broke my left wrist. I slipped on some ice in the driveway. It has slowed me down quite a bit. Good and frustrating at the same time.
Above is a spice bush we discovered back in March. I’d been keeping an eye out for one. This poor thing was engulfed by honeysuckle vine and bush. Dave came to it’s rescue.
You can see where the honeysuckle vine was wrapped around it’s trunk in the above photo.
It has a pretty little bloom.
A bloom on one of our Paw Paw trees.
The chokeberries we planted last fall finally bloomed a couple weeks ago. I was expecting more pollinators enjoying it. Instead, the ants seemed to love the blooms. Will have to investigate if that is normal.
They had a faint, sweet scent.
Samantha and her boyfriend, Luca, helped us unearth these willows back in February and March. I showed a photo and mentioned identifying them in my Feb 20 post. Fortunately, the honeysuckle that was on the tree hadn’t reached strangling proportions but they had to beat back a lot of it to reach the tree itself. Here, I caught a photo with it’s new leaves. A pretty yellow green that we can now identify in the distance when we look out the family room window.
On one of my walks around our property I found some blooms reaching out from a honeysuckle bush that I knew wasn’t honeysuckle. A couple days later Dave came to the rescue again and freed this Blackhaw Viburnum.
A beautiful white flower. I can’t wait to see this in bloom next year.
Another Blackhaw underneath honeysuckle. We’ll go after this another time.
Can you see the Blackhaw behind all this honeysuckle? Another that will have to wait.
These beautiful mushrooms arrive earlier last week.
Among the flowering Woodland Stonecrop
Len enjoys the cool grass on a pretty morning.
We’ve had a lot of rain this week. It started off with a bad storm Monday evening when we got over 2 inches of rain in an hour. The next day Dave noticed that our brick wall had finally tumbled. Fixing the driveway has just become a priority. It’s a good thing the plasterers finally came on Thursday and replastered the parlor ceiling and one wall in the front guestroom and patched up the walls in the dining room.
The silver maples along the road are starting to bud.
These poor trees have been topped by the power company for decades.
We talked about taking them down but I’m sure they are home to the screech and hoot owls we hear and other creatures, too.
They’ll stay for now.
I think there are eight of them.
I should have gotten a far away shot of them. Will try to do that tomorrow.
Our daughters boyfriend, Luca, finished pruning this apple tree for us.
Luca, Samantha, Dave and I spent a couple hours yesterday afternoon hacking away at the honeysuckle between the pasture and the creek.
Forgot a before photo. This tree on the left was covered with honeysuckle.
We have so much more to do.
Above is the pile we created for the honeysuckle and the big tooth aspen we cut down some time ago. We are taking down the aspen because it is spreading into our meadow and most of it dies once it reaches a certain size anyway.
Once we clear, oh, another 20 feet or so of honeysuckle we will reach this tree. I can’t wait to get closer to identify it. It looks like it has an aspen growing through the middle of its many trunks.
I took all of the above photos this morning.
Took this photo this afternoon after I finished taking all this honeysuckle in the foreground away from the tree, top center. We’ll just keep chipping away at this invasive weed. Some of it is vines and some the bush variety. Many places on our property have both type. I also cut some out around the pines in the backyard and the maples along the road. I’ll need some help getting the roots out. Luca is coming back out later this week to help and Damian will help too once he recovers from a head cold.
Our church owns a small cemetery up the road from us. We said we’d help clear a path as the place is very overgrown. Dave and I went up there Sunday to get a start.
Yucca dominates which apparently isn’t unusual for an overgrown cemetery. It was a popular plant for cemeteries in the 19th century.
Found some little hollies, too.
I got these philodendron clippings from my mom last May.
Here they are today.
And a very healthy looking African Violet.
We crossed our creek to our pine forest today to plant some pignut hickory nuts, willow oak acorns and beech nuts. The pignut hickory nuts came from a walk we took on Christmas day at Betsy Bell Park here in Staunton. The acorns came from downtown Richmond and the beech nuts from my mom’s in Maryland.
Notice this ridiculously large vine wrapped around this tree. It’s probably japanese honeysuckle. We’ve started trying to rid our property of this invasive species. It totally covers the trees and kills them. Total eradication might be impossible. We will do our best.
Dave sees a bitty crayfish in the creek.
I just couldn’t take it any longer. Last week we started taking down wallpaper in our dining room. I knew there were at least two layers and we found that there were actually three layers.
Wallpaper doesn’t hide cracked plaster.
Seeing this 1920’s wallpaper for the first time.
We found a razor blade stuck to the wall beneath the chair rail. I’m confidant this chair rail isn’t original and it isn’t going back up.
I made the first rips and then Dave got out his tools and got to work.
We’ve filled many bags.
Isn’t this gorgeous. It is a block print. The ink runs as soon as we spray it with the warm water and vinegar solution.
Some evidence of plaster repair over this paper.
circa 1970?
There used to be a stove here and they did an awful job of patching. The area around it bows out noticeably. Fortunately, we have a plasterer coming out this Friday about some other work so we will show him this too.
doggie break
This is a good pic of all three wallpapers. I think the top layer was circa 1990.
Just as I suspected – the crown molding wasn’t original. We can tell because the first two layers of wallpaper go to the ceiling, but the last layer stops short. It seems to me it was around 1990 that chair rails and crown molding became popular again.
I thought the crown molding was overkill with these beautiful french doors.
This wall needs a lot of love.
Fashion might not be the only reason they put up the crown molding. Looks like they had to do some plumbing work here. This will have to be patched because the crown molding isn’t going back up.
Dave uncovered some patterned wallpaper on the ceiling. I think I’ve seen that patterned wallpaper is back in style.
I’m excited to get the walls repaired, primed and painted. I’m going to get a test pot of paint called Tomato Cream Sauce – a little bold for me but I’m going for a warm, cozy color as this is the room we gather most often with family and friends.