Saturday

This Saturday was busy busy! First I did flowers for a small wedding. I love this bouquet...peonies, old garden roses (O'Hare), mini roses (porcelina), white roses (polar star), and white peonies with a hint of blue grey dusty miller here and there.  I love dusty miller in bridal bouquets.  It's so feminine and lacy!  The O'Hare roses actually smelled wonderful.  Which is an oddity for the roses I can acquire as a florist....love these roses!

I loved them so much I made a bouquet for our church....and instead of sharing them like I usually do...I brought them home!  They make my heart melt and my eyes all dewy....no really they do!  Just Gaaargous!...as my youngest sez!

...and here is my youngest...inspecting the chair I took out for Maw Maw Vero to sit on when we had a blowout on the trailer on our way to Mississippi.  There's my Byron changing it in five minutes flat....he is the man....well I made the girls get out of the car and move away from the interstate for "safety".  Then I got the bright idea that if any of them needed to "pee" they could take advantage of the tall weeds on the side of the road......

.....thanks for a very observant Tera Bear (my oldest)!  She noticed a BLACK WIDOW!...and then...

...ANOTHER...AND ANOTHER...AND ANOTHER...We counted 10 in all in a small area.  Black widows dutifully protecting their egg sacs!   Oh quiver quiver!  We'd probably have been safer in the car...no one was bit thankfully.  Byron said it was a good thing no one needed to "pee".  It might have been awkward in the emergency room!

So we made it safely to Mississippi to check on our property, water the trees we have planted and do some work.  So far we have planted 2 camillias, 12 blueberries, 4 pecans, 3 peaches, 3 plums, 1 quince and 1 apple...  Next will be pears, figs, and more apples.   I'd like to build a pavilion for an outdoor kitchen soon.  The roof will catch rain water for use, and I would like an attached pergola for growing grapes.

I've finally identified this tree.  It's mayhaws!  and the property has plenty of them.

I can't get around without my handy boots.  Before my Father had his stroke...he asked when was I going to quit wearing those "ugly boots".  When they wear out...that's when!

This is an area of the hill that was cut and damaged somehow.  Maybe when they clear cut it.  Anyway the water rushes this direction down into the creek.  We're trying to stem the erosion by placing small trees we cut down across it, planting shrubs and plants, and seeding grass.

The blueberries are really doing well on the slope.  They seem to love being right on the edge of the larger forest.

The trees are helping as well.  You can see the sand beginning to cover the edges of the tree.  So I'm hoping this soil is no longer making its way into the creek and away!

The trees are doing well also.  Here is one of the pecans.  We mulch the base of the trees with boughs cut from other trees.  This helps to retain moisture.

Wonder what kind of berry this is?

Here's another little tree doing great.  We gave them all a nice drink of water while we were there.  Hope it lasts.  There's no rain forcasted for the next ten days and it will be well into the 80's.

Tree Self Education

On the fourth, Byron and I spent the day scoping out our new piece of property and trying to find all of the boundary posts the surveyor established.  There is a total of 21 acres and most of it is densely forested.  Animal trails criss cross the property, and the old logging road that cuts it's way diagonally across it is dotted with their tracks.

In an effort to really get the feel of the land, I spent the day just observing the lay and aspects of the land without making any immediate decisions like,  "Oh, here is where we'll put the cabin!", or "There is a perfect place for a small pasture."   This is more difficult than it seems.  But....the first order of business in establishing a permaculture garden (which I plan to do here since I will not be here that often) is to learn what nature is already doing here.  How does the water flow?  What plants are here?  What animals are here?   How are the hills situated?  What areas aren't easily accessible?  What areas naturally hold water?  etc...

But one thing I really wanted to do was identify the trees that are on the property.  Identifying trees is not one of my strong points....So I set about yesterday with the following book to identify as many trees as possible.  Quite a few of them proved elusive, but many others I've pinpointed with shaky certainty.  If I've made any mistakes please point it out and why.

Here is the book I used.  Needles and leaves were sticking out at all angles by the end of the day!  I find that this book was the most useful one I could find.  It has a really good introduction that explains exactly what to look for when identifying a tree.  It also gave a lot of additional useful information.  Each tree entry has a picture of the mature tree, it's leaves and stem, any flowers or berries as well as it's bark.  The description also includes any particularities of the tree such as branch shape, thorns, smells, etc...  It also has a map showing where they naturally grow in the United States.


We have long leaf pine....betcha don't know how I knew that was a long leaf pine....

Short leaf pine...

Spruce pine....

Laural Oak (not certain on this one)...

Post Oak (used for making fence posts, railroad ties etc...)...

Blackjack Oak  (this is an oak that grows in poor sandy soils.  It's not surprising that they are growing here since the land was clear cut about 8 years ago.  Let the healing begin!)...

Southern Red Oak (the underside of this oak leaf is a rusty color)...

American Crab apple...

Aren't the little apples so cute?!

Looks like a maple leaf...but it's not!  It's a sweet gum.  Ammunition for the kids (they make a very prickly ball seed pod that's great fun to throw at people but not so fun to run across barefoot!)  I've also heard that it's sap is sweet and edible...I'll have to check that to be sure....

Parsley leaf hawthorn...such a frilly and delicate looking tree...

Southern Red Oak...

Red Maple....

Sweet Bay Magnolia....This smells so nice when the leaves are crushed...like...well a bay tree...The underside of the leaf is a blue grey.  A regular magnolia has a furry brown underside....

Winged sumac....

I also identified flowering dogwood...no pic....there are so many more plants there to identify.  This just scratches the surface!  O.K. so did I make any mistakes?  Hope not!

Property In Mississippi

Byron and I have been looking to purchase property for a while now...finally we found it....the piece we had been looking for...a wild overgrown 21 acre place in Mississippi...that had been basically  clear cut about eight years ago.

It was really an eye opener when we started looking for land.  The majority of the land we looked at had been clear cut or abused in some way.  It seemed as if most owners didn't appreciate the land for what it was...or could be...it appeared to be about how much money they could get from the land through cutting the trees down...or selling its mineral resources...most of the land was ugly...abused...or raped seems like a fitting word.  Even when selling the land they all wanted to hang on to the mineral rights in case there was some big find (like they hadn't already tried)....I wanted the mineral rights so I could prevent huge industrial tracks on our land once I began laying out the permaculture food forest.

I wanted to buy an ugly clear cut piece of property and "heal" it.  Byron wanted to find a cultivated cared for piece of land and add our own plans to it....This is our compromise!  I'm glad he partially got his way....Guess I'm too optimistic at times...Anyway...

I really love the piece we bought and I can't wait to cut through the brambles and discover all of it's surprises...good....or bad!  We plan to leave part of it wild with gentle changes for improvement.  A few acres will be planted with a food forest.  Eventually we would like to have a small cabin.  

There is a sixteen foot flood wall going up north of my current home which totally excludes myself and many neighborhoods from the Federal flood protection projects that are going on.  The government assures us that they will take care of us and we shouldn't care so much about their insane plans...snort...(that's me laughing in a cynical way). 

I really hope their plans work...but nature doesn't work very well with those who try to thwart it and not work with it.  Instead of stopping the practices that are destroying the wet lands they are going to try to contain the Gulf with a sixteen foot concrete wall.  So this piece of property will also be an above sea level stopping off point if Katrina happens again....and beyond all that....I was born in Mississippi and always wanted a piece of property there....So....look for future posts on our Mississippi Permaculture food forest progress!!!

There is an old logging road that runs through the length of the property....and the trees are really getting quite tall....some areas need thinning...

...there are some tall pines on the property and a few oaks...

...the logging road is like a animal super highway....I guess they like to walk without being scratched by brush as well...this is a deer track...

...Byron explained to me that this is a buck track, you can tell by the two "toenail" type marks in the front...

...there are many cat tracks...every time we go there are fresh cat tracks....and this is a big cat.  These marks are at least 3 1/2 to 4 inches wide.  I am going to measure them next time I go.  Bobcat?  Panther?  They say Panthers are extinct in Mississippi, but the locals say, "Not So".  Maybe a game camera along the trail will tell the tale.

We must have startled this deer when we pulled up.  See how sharp the crumbs are around the track, and it's still wet in the track even though the sun was hot that day.

...OK help....what kind of track is this?

...Another view along the logging road...

...this is a grassy clearing at the top of the hill on the property...it makes me wonder if maybe someone lived here before...or was there once an oil rig here?

...we stumbled across this stream of water.  The brush was too thick to follow it far.  I'm anxious to find out what it's source is...is it a seasonal stream...is it always there?  The ditch it flows through is pretty deep and it meanders over an old road and continues flowing on the neighbor's property...

I can't wait to find out what types of trees, foliage and flowers are growing on the property and identify them.  Here are a few of them.  Let me know if you know what these are...

...I think this is a dogwood....

....I think this is Carolina Jasmine, there is quite a bit of it scattered around.  I also saw some rose canes with a few tiny pink roses on them.

...this is pink buds about to bloom on a tree...what kinda tree?  Don't know.

While walking a trail along the fence line we encountered some young cows. They looked at us, seemed to confer, then deemed us dangerous, and hurriedly trotted off while looking over their shoulders...we laughed...it reminded us of our girls when some strange person comes down the drive...they all run straight home...smart girls.

...these horses however trotted right over and wanted their heads scratched and their necks rubbed...I think they thought we might have good candy...