Half a year in review... What's been going on at ArborVilla?
Hello Hive, I hope this post finds you well! I myself still am not, but I'm getting closer to 'normal' each day. If you like a good cry, you can read all about why I'm not well in my last post here.
Moving on to some moments of merriment, (or at least a tale of the less terrible tidbits in my timeline)...
It's been a year, dear friends, in which I have not set the best example. Though the year started very strong, with many additions to garden spaces, and much beautification of our outdoor living spaces, by early June I found myself fighting illnesses, an associated lack of energy, and general frustration with the weather and the havoc it wrought both at home and work. I'm not one who allows himself to mounted by insurmountable obstacles, though, and I find myself looking forward to looking back on 2021 with a raised middle finger, and new determination going into 2022.
Storms in early July brought some damage to the deck, roof, and utility lines. This was mother nature slapping me in the face for procrastinating about taking down some of the impossible trees I still need to drop around the property. In the picture above, we see one of the less manageable limbs of one of the larger trees laying on the power lines that come into the house. The lines did not break, but did pull out about half of the anchors that hold them to the house. The telephone and fiber optic lines that come in for the internet were also torn free, but not broken. All in all, not a disastrous disaster, but since it rained every day here all summer and fall, it was certainly some dangerous clean up on my hillside.
Despite being pulled so violently from the house that a few pictures fell off the wall, these couple scuff marks were all the damage that I could find on the lines themselves, so I feel that this was a bit of a lucky break. It will be a lot of work getting them anchored back up where they belong, but I don't think I'm going to need to replace any of the lines, which gets very expensive very fast, and would require me to buy some new tools or hire out some of the work.
It was around 95°F, very humid, and raining occasionally while I spent the day carefully knocking down weeds, shrubs, and trees, to get the lines to a point where they were hanging freely. There is still one troublesome small black cherry tree that needs to come down while the lines are already on the ground, before I get the lines tied back up where they belong. If I had the time and money, I would rather bury them, but that's unlikely to happen. At some point, years down the road, I would like to do some serious upgrades to all the utilities coming into the house, and get the meters moved to a more easily accessible spot.
The little black bunny in the picture above appeared around this same time that old ash trees started shedding dead limbs. We called her Elvira, and she wasn't quite tame enough to pet and pick up, but she let me take some wonderful pictures.
I'm not a superstitious guy, or I probably would have seen her for the omen of death that she was. Being an omen of ill tidings didn't make her any less adorable, though. We quit seeing her just before we went down to SC, and I remain hopeful that she went off to have a litter of little bunnies. She had attracted the attention of more than a couple local male cottontails before she vanished.
That hope is slightly tempered by that fact that we lost our last 3 chickens to predators around this same time. We've really struggled keeping our chickens alive the last couple years, so I'm holding off on getting any new ones until we get a better home set up for them. I'll keep the old enclosures for future use, but while we're just keeping a few hens, I want them in a more secure enclosure closer to the house.
All of the lilies had a spectacular year, and this tree lily is one of five that have been in the ground about 3 years now, but never bloomed properly. We fought really hard against some red beetle that is much like a cucumber beetle, but really has a thing for lilies. This year, since we lost all our livestock and weren't growing much for consumption, we dusted the lilies with Sevin. I don't like spreading poison around the house, but it definitely worked.
It was also a great year for mushrooms and other fungi. It was too wet and sunless for the crops to do very well this year, but I have a feeling next year will be very productive, if I don't get too far behind on the maintenance.
Rainbows were also in abundance this year, so much so that I may do a post just with rainbow pictures. I guess if there is anything good about it raining every day, it's that you get to see a nice rainbow about once a week. Of course, the dark side of that cloud is that they get to be common, and lose a bit of their magic. That has also happened with the bald eagles around here, though I haven't been lucky enough to get any good pics of them yet. Bald eagles are quite a bit harder to photograph than rainbows.
Our sugar pumpkins had a great year, and we harvested way more than we will eat. They weren't ripening on the vine very well, but all turned a nice satisfying orange within a couple weeks of being picked. I like taking pictures of them at this in-between stage. I use the color patterns to make desktop wallpaper and other background images.
We added a lot of solar lights this year, and this little owl with light up eyes is definitely my favorite. All of that turkey-tail fungus growth that you see around it happened in about one month. This fungus is edible, but not very palatable in my opinion. It's also very attractive, and we often use small clumps that we find on dead logs to decorate around our mulched flowers.
The van that we use to move the road painting equipment was stolen from one of our work sites this summer. Although we recovered the van, it had been scavenged pretty thoroughly, and the wheels on the rear passenger had been loose for so long that it wore about a third of the way through the wheel studs.
It also wore the holes on the inside rims quite a bit. I assume that this is why the thieves ditched the van, and though it was an extra repair task that I didn't really have time for this year, I'm really just glad we recovered it. We don't really have a good backup vehicle for this one, and striping without it is a LOT less comfortable.
I also had some problems with one of the wheels on the $500 Honda that I hadn't expected. In the end, I was happy that it wasn't a larger issue with the steering, which was what I suspected when it first started wobbling. These tires should have had close to 15,000 miles of use left in them still. I would have hit that limit by the end of this year anyway, so I had already planned for this expense, it just came a few months sooner than I expected.
People across the street have been clearing out a lot of dead ash trees and expanding their lawns all year, which has changed the view from the front deck a bit. The sound of chain saws and brush hogs gets a bit annoying at times, but for the last several years I'VE been the jerk making all the noise, so I certainly won't complain. That's the phone and fiber optic line you see laying across the deck there. We don't even have a landline phone, but the hook up was a requirement back when the internet was DSL.
Besides, all the noise is opening up a very picturesque view. A lot of paint in this town has been freshened up since I was a child, and it is a spectacular vista from up here on the hill in the winter. The light blue house with the spire on the corner is one that a friend of mine and I tried acquiring to 'flip' earlier this year. It has a lot of exquisite hand crafted woodwork inside, and pretty unique architecture for the area. The people who outbid us have been doing a wonderful job, so I don't mind much that we missed out on it.
Of course, that's not everything that happened this summer, but it makes for a consumably-sized post, and I didn't take a lot of pictures this year. My super cheap phone doesn't really like getting raindrops on the screen, and it literally rained EVERY day, so...
So, that's a wrap. Am I back? We shall see, I suppose. The universe seems intent on impeding the completion of my promises this year, so I'm not promising anything. Maybe I'll promise again in 2022. I hope we get to find out together.