Hello Everyone!
Clearing vegetation, Exploring the big hole, Pond ideas & A cabin in the shade!
It is another chilly morning here and although I awoke a few times before dawn... I did not bother to get up until long after the sun had made its way over the horizon. After my long nap yesterday afternoon I had a heck of a time falling asleep last night and was awake way later than I actually wanted to be. At least I still got up somewhat early today even if its not as early as I had hoped for.
With the weather being what it is I will probably not get to doing stuff outdoors until sometime later in the day which means I will once again spend the beginning of my day writing and trying my best not to get sucked into looking at the news cycle. As far as that last bit goes I have been doing the best that I can but whoa it seems like there is just way too much going on in the world that merits keeping abreast of. A lot of it is also total garbage as far as actual journalism goes and not worth my time but I have to wade through it any damn way to find the stuff that is worthwhile.
Yesterday I hiked to the meadow again and this time I brought a pair of hand-held loppers (pruners) so that I could clear all the thorny stuff out of that big hole there that I found a few weeks ago. Once I got in there and started clearing out the briers and vines I discovered that the hole is much longer than I initially thought that it was. There is a big pine tree that fell over a portion of the hole in one of those recent storms and that combined with all the other vegetation made it hard to properly discern the hole's size.
Anyway, with the hole more or less fully revealed I am beginning to wonder even more what might have created it. The general shape of it, the narrow bottom, its angle of orientation on the hillside all make me think that maybe it is a natural formation created by by a combination of surface and subterranean water. Perhaps at one point in the distant past the top portion of the hole was dug out with machinery of some kind but like I said most of its current shape and state seems to be due to water.
Once I finished clearing the vegetation I stepped back from it all to study the surrounding terrain around the hole and especially the slope above it where the water 'should' be coming from. The thing is that it looked a lot like the water was coming in at the end where the fallen pine is and not necessarily from the uphill side that I thought that it was entering by. I am sure some kind of runoff enters from that uphill section but not nearly enough to truly matter.
Without removing the big pine it is hard to tell but I think that the pine fell directly over a channel (ditch, depression) that directs water into the hole on the end where the pine is laying. To further my exploration/investigation I will have to section up that fallen tree and drag it all out of the way which will also require cutting down a heck of a lot more of the briers and honeysuckle growing there but it may well be worth it.
After revealing the hole and gauging what I could of the terrain and water runoff scenario I am much more inclined to experiment with making it a small pond. I will first bore for water in the bottom of it at the most downhill section and depending on what I find there will determine how I move forward. If I hit a solid enough volume of water to fill the hole itself (even partially) then I am thinking to just clean all the twigs and leaves out of it and let it fill naturally. By doing it that way I am hoping to avoid having a 'murky' pool like how that large watering-hole turned out.
The other option that I am currently entertaining with that hole (if I do not hit a good supply of underground water) is to rake everything out of it, do a bunch of shovel work on it to give it two (or hopefully three) different tiers and then look at lining it with whatever it takes to 'smooth it out' so that I can insert a pond liner. Although I am considering boring uphill of it for water to feed into it... I think that with a liner it would hold a good amount of rainwater and maybe get enough turnover that mosquitoes will not be breeding in it like crazy.
Honestly, I do not want to get over-involved with creating a pond there if there is not sufficient water for it but what I am thinking is that I could always pipe water to it with some irrigation tubing and call it good enough. Another option is building a small rain catching roof near it and straight piping the gutters into it with some downspouts. Making either investment would only be worth it if the pond was producing something or had a function beyond being for wildlife purposes.
In this case I am considering getting some fish (probably a few catfish) going in it which should not be all that hard. I was also considering incorporating it as a duck pond if I build a duck habitat in that area like I wrote about a few days back. Upon further consideration though, I do not want the ducks concentrated at the head of that little watershed area because it would pretty much 'foul' all the water downhill from it.
Having a massive fish farming pond could of course do the same (as far as fouling the water goes) but if I do any fish I am going to keep it to only a dozen or so at a time. I surely do not want to let it become a full-time job of cleaning out the pond, maintaining aeration pumps and so forth let alone having to feed a bunch of fish! In other words I want to keep at simple and as low maintenance as possible and even if I do not stock the pond eventually frogs, minnows and other critters will inhabit it on their own given that the conditions are adequate.
There is still the possibility that I might uncover a disused spring or well near (or in) that big hole. Its just going to take a heck of a lot of brush clearing and searching for clues. The way that hole is shaped it would make a lot of sense to find a water source at its head or at the very least the remnants of one. I am not ruling anything out at this point and sort of just itching to find out what the heck is going on over there.
As things stand with that area of the meadow I am thinking to transplant all the briers growing in there into a sunnier spot. I was considering the faster route of cutting them all down (and especially along the trails) but the more I think about how many blackberries that they can produce... the more that I think moving them to a better location would be more beneficial. Its a lot more work but come berry picking season I doubt that I will be complaining about it!
On a different note this morning I finally had the realization that I should quit putting off clearing out those trees that cast shadows onto the cabin early in the day because it would make the building itself get a lot more sun in the winter and make it easier to heat. On the flip-side of that is that it will get absolutely pounded by the sun in the summer... so I have been thinking that I might leave a few of the scrub oaks and just top them off well below the height of the roof located uphill of them. I think that with them cut to the appropriate height (and building those vine arbors) that they will cast shade onto the walls but not onto the roof itself.
Anyway, its now getting close to noon so I should wrap this up for now and see if I can convince myself to bundle up and get outdoors. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
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