Year Three of the Tree Cleanup

Those of you who have been following for awhile may remember the year of the trees, 2021, when all we did was work on trees.  Half of our road frontage was wooded, but the many white pine trees (and white ash) had reached the end of their lifespan and had begun to come down.  The first tree came down in March 2021.  We did two rounds of tree removal resulting in two truck loads of useable logs and many days of cleanup. and we are still putting money into it.  We have never wanted to turn it into lawn, but we do want to be able to brush hog it now and then.  For the most part it turns into a nice wildflower meadow but does get to looking shaggy and unkempt now and then and needs to be mowed. Despite having the big stumps ground, and several sessions of smaller stump pulling on a somewhat recreational basis, there were still stumps and roots that would rattle the mower.

A week ago we had our excavator friend come and help out with the biggest remaining stump problem.

He plucked the stumps that were all entangled in a big mass, then he dug a big hole, put the stumps back in the bottom of the hole, and covered them over with that nice black loam.  We also had a few loads of clean fill brought in to level off the whoopdeedoos left from all of the grinding and digging.

Just a visual refresher....

Mid-Project

We had a driveway put in the middle of the frontage just to allow us to get equipment in and out without ruining our house drive.  We used a big landscape rake to smooth everything out towards the low spot to the right.

The rake kicks up any roots or big rocks which need to be hand picked.  You have to be careful of poison ivy.  In fact, I am sure that some of these roots are not tree roots, but massive poison ivy roots.  Afterall, the vines were as thick as your wrist.

This time of year we are picking up after a lot of trees, both alive and dead.  The big, beautiful Horse Chestnut tree in the front yard is a real mess.  The chestnuts are falling at the rate of about a five gallon bucket a day.

Just what fell overnight.  This is bucket #3 of the season and it was full by afternoon.

This time of year you walk under this tree at your own peril.  She is throwing things!  And they are spikey.  If they hit you in the noggin they rattle your teeth!  And if one falls from higher up by the time it gets through all of the lower branches it will have created an avalanche of ten or twenty nuts which shower down on you.

By the end of the season we will have collected at least seven buckets of nuts and thrown them into the woods to keep the deer and squirrels back away from the house.  We also have to rake the shells and sticks before we mow each time to make sure we have all of the nuts picked up.  You certainly don't want the mower picking up one of those big nuts and whipping it at your house!

Some more peaceful views of autumn trees....