SPRING HAS SPRUNG . . . FINALLY!

Spring has finally arrived to Oregon. Many of you have already been enjoying spring and the onset of summer. It was just a month ago that my bulbs dared to breach the earth. Flowers are beginning to bloom. Sunny days come for more than 1 day in a row.

Air balloons venture the skies.

Turkeys hatch.

And other babies are born like this colt and calves and llamas. It is all so enjoyable to view.BUT, with all the splendor of spring comes the "to do" list of the spring and summer months. On Memorial Day weekend we dug some ditches and annihilated some blackberries. And here's Mr. Ditch Digger himself. The rental company accidentally rented out the riding ditch witch we reserved. So, as you can see, we got an upgrade -- Bobcat with a trencher. It's hard to tell in the picture, but Jim is grinning ear to ear. He was like a little boy on Christmas morning with a new toy or shall we say "tank".

He trenched for irrigation to go to the garden.
When we lived in the city, we had a garden most every year. Then we move onto 10 acres and it took 5 years to get one in. The main reason was the need for water and now we can grow a garden. We are getting it in a little late, but next year will be better. We still have to put up a fence to keep out the deer and bunnies and other "vege munchin' critters".He trenched for drainage pipes from the driveway and the gutter system. Last year, we did the curtain drains. When the house was built the builder put the pipes the permitted distance from the house. They came up in 3 places in our field. So we trenched them to the edge of the property into the drainage ditch.
Then Jim took the trencher back and had the rental people put on the brush hog, which they also gave us a good deal on. Then testosterone filled the air!

We affectionately called it the "blackberry annihilator". Oh, Yeah! This baby disinigrated blackberries and small scrubby trees. Jim cleared at least 2-3 acres of land that we have never walked on because of the wall of blackberries. The blackberries were easily over 10 feet tall and unpenitrible. Places like this . . .
soon looked like this.

Blackberries literally "knitted" together these rows of sugar pines, not anymore.

You can see on all 3 sides the undergrowth and now it is cleared Jim would start on one side of the blackberries . . .
. . . push his way through and . . . . . . come out on the other side. Well, I guess I've carried on enough about this "fun" we had.

THE END.