wood pile

For as long as I have lived here, there has been an enormous pile of cut wood behind the big willow. It's where we load sawed off branches and fallen tree limbs. Winter snows and the passage of time compress the heap, but of course, each year, we add to it. The farmette has many many trees and sometimes they need to come down and oftentimes, limbs need to be removed. We've learned to hoist them up high and flick them to the top of a pile. There's a method to it. We have lots of practice.

Every once in a while Ed has wondered if he should get a wood chipper. You load the machine with branches and it shreds them. Sort of like an office shredder only you get piles of chips rather than shreds of paper. This weekend, after watching countless videos and reading endless reviews, he finally decided to buy a machine that would do the job. The super sale at Harbor Freight pushed him to move on it. He lugged the machine home two days ago.

Yesterday, he was about to set up operations out back (it will take many many days to feed it all those branches: our woodpile is very tall and very wide). But at that moment, I happen to look outside and I see them: the big groundhog, followed by two chunky little ones. 

We have had groundhogs living underneath the woodpile for years. Oh, they have other homes too -- we have holes up and down the farmette lands to prove it. But could it be that the wood pile is their principle residence? And if it is, would they be disturbed if a machine slowly ground up this place of refuge?

In other words, should we return the machine and ignore the ever growing mountain of rotting wood for their sake?

Neither of us has a good answer to this. We talk about the pros, the cons and come to no conclusion.  

(chatting over breakfast...)

(meanwhile back in the garden: see those thin stalks to the right? garlic, with long lovely scapes. somehow the garlic got started in the courtyard and we find garlic plants attractive enough to leave alone even the ones that grow right by the flower beds)

(let's see how many lilies will sport a tree froggie this summer!)

(the Big Bed is filling out; 335 spent lilies snipped today...)

In the afternoon, I ask if Snowdrop wants to go swimming again (she has daily swim lessons in the mornings). Yes she does! We meet up at our local community pool. 

 

It's a day for it: hot and humid. Like so many others this summer. Our timing is a little off though. As we enter the pool area, there is an announcement that the pool will close for twenty minutes (they have mandatory breaks throughout the day). That's okay. It gives us time to layer on the sunscreen!

Okay! Time to play! Predictably, the pool is a tiny bit crowded. I'm still into social distancing, even outside, so I steer the girl around to pockets of quiet. But of course, I would do that anyway, even before COVID.

My does Snowdrop love water play!

And then we retreat to the farmhouse.

When it's nearly time for me to take her home, I coax her into a small walk in the flower fields. 

 

 

 

I let her choose the path and the pace, though I do tell her that I want her to get closer to the flowers. 

 

 

 

She likes to put her nose to any flower within reach. To her, every bloom deserves a big whiff. She has her favorites!  (Phlox, lavender... I don't disagree.)

 

Back at her house, I have a quick visit with Sandpiper...

And then I hurry home to work on a frittata for supper. All local stuff: CSA broccoli, market mushrooms, Farmer John's cheese, cheeper eggs. I could have added garlic scapes from our yard, but I'd grown lazy by then.

At the end of the day, we're no closer to having an answer to the wood chipper question. I'm so focused on keeping the flower fields tidy in their big month of bloom that I can't seem to be able to weigh options and make decisions about other farmette issues. Do we know, for example if we are to be tilling the land around the newly planted trees? Or whether we are to transplant some of the raspberry canes that I'm about to mow down? 

Can't think about any of that. This is July. Stuff is blooming. In the garden, that's all that matters.