The First Trilliums of The Year

We went for a walk this evening because the sun had come out for a few minutes. Mike wanted to look for Triliums. It's still a bit early, but we thought we might see the small, curled up stalks poking through the soil. As we had driven down the road several hours earlier, I had slowed to look for them in the usual places and had not seen any. So, beer and wine in hand, Riley and the two of us strolled down the lawn. The Star Magnolia is recovering from the bashing of fallen trees and is blooming beautifuly. There are some daffodils that the elk have not eaten. There are 5 and six foot baby hemlock trees growing from the top of the horizontal root of a large fallen hemlock tree. The root ball and stump have become a "nurse" log and will likely grow several new trees from what is left. As we walked a few feet further, we spied our first fully formed and blooming Trilium! It is pictured here. What a beauty. Further on, across the road, we saw four more Triliums in full bloom. This was the area that we had looked at four hours earlier and seen none. It is just amazing what just a few hours of sunshine will do.

On our walk we came upon a wheelbarrow that Mike had thrown some "sticks" into while cleaning up the area earlier in the week. Those "sticks" were growing! That is what is in the wheelbarrow pictured here. I swear, you could root a toothpick here and it would grow. Even the Salmon-berry bush was beginning to bloom. It has a lovely pink blossom and the plant is not anywhere near as obnoxious as a blackberry.

There are many areas that I hope to be able to work on and restore this summer. I wish I had more time to give this beautiful piece of property the attention it deserves. I love working in my tiny yard in St. Helens and in this large one as well. They are so different but both are very rewarding when they look good. One could make a career of this........which often seems very inviting.

A Great Invention

As a result of the many storms and high winds for the last three years, many, many trees
have fallen at the coast. There are huge fallen trees everywhere we look. It seems that
we barely get the debris from one storm collected when another episode of wind blows
through and fells another tree or two or three. It's very discouraging. Mike totally
dreads the wind these days and I can't blame him. I've helping drag branches and roll logs many weekends.

The [only] upside to these fallen trees is firewood. As we both heat our homes with a woodstove, we try to cut and split wood whenever we can. Using a chainsaw on a fallen tree is kind of like playing dice with rocks. One "nick" of the chain on a hidden rock under a log pretty much destroys the sharpness of the chainsaw. Mike has come up with an invention to raise even the largest of these fallen trees, even when working by himself. This tool is a large tripod of 6' 2x4s with a come-along suspended from a bolt thru the top. A steel cable attached to the come-along is wrapped around the girth of the tree. As the tree is raised, he simply places a short log or 6 x 6 under one end and then the other end. By placing this tripod in the center of the tree and sawing from first one end, then the other, he can use the chainsaw without risk of hitting the ground and a rock.

By the time I arrived to see this wonderful tool, Mike had sawn up over 6 large trees, including one that had fallen in a place where we had already removed two others last year. Of course, the trick is now to haul these rounds to the splitter, split them and stack them in the woodpile.

If wood is left stacked too long, some really beautiful things grow on them. The last photo here is a picture of the ends of some wood that was cut two winters ago and not yet split. These growths are quite hard and I've actually seen some "artwork" done on them that looks a lot like scrimshaw. I just like to look at them and take pictures. But they don't smell very good when they burn!