Spring Training

 We've been sitting around for three or four months now but all of our spring yard work is ahead of us.  It's time to ease into our outdoor fitness program and get these ole bones moving.  To do that we decided to start out with two days of tree cutting.  So far so good.  No aches or pains.  But today we will be back out there for day three. 

The target was the wild strip between us and the neighbors to our west.  There were a lot of White Ash in there and of course all of our White Ash are dead thanks to the Emerald Ash Borer.  We took out five of the largest trees in June of 2020.  Back in January we started to lose more tops, and last week it continued.  Might as well cut them down and get it over with.

They look like little spindly trees until you stand next to them.

These need to be roped and guided where we want them to go.

Here comes the first one.

Yep, that's where we thought it would go.

Day 1 we cut four dead ash.  Day 2 was half a dozen top heavy Poplars.  They are dirty trees with the catkins and fluff.  They are also fast growing, soft, and prone to toppling over.  Below is the tangle of leaning trees.  In the middle of all that was a young Hawthorne.  I will miss its cheery red berries in the fall but there was no way to sort it out of there.

Last but not least, a good sized Red Oak.  Not a bad looking tree, but top heavy and crooked.  

The more angles you look at it from, the more crooked it gets.

That has to come down too.  We will now have half a million fewer oak leaves in the garden and hopefully the Chipmunks won't be attracted to this area to harvest acorns anymore.

This leaves us with a whole bunch more scraggly misshapen trees.  That's the problem with old fence line trees.  They are very one-sided.  But they are all headed for the neighbor's lawn, so that will be for drier weather and will require some additional consultation with the neighbors.

We now have a huge burn pile out back, and two stacks of wood.  The Ash to the right, along with a large pile of Oak, has already been moved back to where we can split it and stack it for campfire wood.  The big pile of Poplar to the left, while pretty, is not good firewood.  As soon as it is done curing it begins to rot.  It burns fast and not very hot.  We're not sure what to do with that junk. If we threw this on a burn pile now the green wood would take forever to burn. It may end up stacked back in the woods to rot back there and in the meantime provide a home for all sorts of critters.

The underbrush is a tangled mess.  There is a lot of Sheepberry Viburnum which we want to keep but it has taken a beating.  There is lot that was already leaning over towards the drive and I will cut that out to allow the younger growth to come in straighter.  I've already cut most of the Multiflora rose and there is some wild Blackberry that will come up fast too.  But that is for another day. I am thinking of buying a batch of bare root Lilacs from Stark Brothers to supplement the undergrowth.