Category: June 2011

Summer 2011 – We Have Lots of Help

The H.S. football guys found it fairly easy to dig, say, a 6-foot-tall buckthorn out of the ground, roots and all. Multiflora rose roots aren’t as deep, so they were easier (for them).

While the big guys went after the slope, Elisha and I started cutting a path through the NW corner of the pond, where several beautiful quaking aspen trees were being strangled by massive bittersweet vines.

I wish I had a photo of it, but atop the steepest part of our riprap, was a giant old multiflora rose. Its stems were easily a couple of inches thick. It was scary. We had to at least have another way of reaching this thing, aside from above!

The back acre beyond the pond is now ours, acquired through a trade with the neighbors.

Just to get a general idea of what it took to accomplish what we did in summer of 2011, here’s a partial list of who did what, and when:

6/17/11 – Kirk helping with invasives
6/18/11 – Kirk helping with invasives
6/24 -25-26/11 – Alisha, Kirk, Leon
6/1-2/11 – Alisha, Kirk
7/1/11 – Alisha
7/6/11 – Alisha, Kirk, Reggie
7/7/11 – Kirk, Reggie
7/13/11 – Kirk, Reggie, Alisha
7/19/11 – Kirk
7/20/11 – Kirk
7/25/11 – Kirk
8/2/11 – Kirk, Reggie
8/3/11 – Kirk, Reggie
8/4/11 – Kirk
8/5/11 – Jim Henderson brush hogged the back acre.
8/20/11 – Kirk, Yaseen, Justin and I pulled phragmites for 6 hours.
9/26/11 – I pick up plants at Garden in the Woods. This feels like a reward.

2011 – Work Begins in Earnest

Now that the septic system has been replaced, and the apartment is almost done, we can finally begin work in earnest, getting rid of our invasive plants!

In April 2011, we had a Public Hearing at Town Hall, where our wetlands consultant presented the necessary documents.

We are lucky to have a good friend who is knowledgeable about all kinds of shrubs and trees. We’re also fortunate to have a connection to a number of big and strong H.S. football players/weight lifters, willing to come over and help us.

My neighbor’s daughter, Elisha, and I hacked through the densest parts of our “jungle.” The centermost area of the north side of our pond, which was, ironically, not the largest patch of knotweed or phragmites, was a tangled mess of other invasives: buckthorn, autumn olive, multiflora rose, bittersweet and knotweed, and once we could see that far down, a smattering of spurge. There were also some rubrus (some sort of brambles) and grapevines all helping to knit it together. At that point in time, I could not imagine anything at all, ever growing on that slope. If nothing else, we wanted to at least create pathways, so it would be possible to access areas of infestation from various angles.

photo of slope
The middle part of the slope, looking down from the house, before we hacked through it.
photo of slope
Middle part of slope, after Elisha and I had hacked through it

We managed to uncover what looked like a pretty decent willow, as well as the beautiful Juniperus virginiana. The latter is definitely a native. Note the brush pile in the back acre, above. We had covered the Phragmites and rhizomes already on a tarp, with another tarp, then weighted it down, because a strong tropical storm was expected, and we didn’t want anything to escape or blow away.