Wildflowers

 Last summer, I built a wall. 

The small knee wall was something I always envisioned for a problematic area between the house and shed. It happens to be where I park the car and for decades it was an eyesore and a sore subject with me. I asked several men (ex-husband, a live-in boyfriend, the current spousal unit) and none of them was willing to do that much hard work. Ultimately, I did it myself.

Ultimately, the Lord of the Manor will never, I repeat NEVER, be absolved for not doing it. I ask for little, being quite self-sufficient, but I did ask for that. And he refused. It'll bite him in the ass one day, I assure you.

Last year I sprinkled the contents of a few cheap seed packets and got a bit of late summer bloom. This year, I bought a good quality pack of wildflower seeds and the wall is now exactly what I envisioned for so long. It's in full bloom and is gorgeous! I think next year I'll add a few herbs to the mix and see what happens. And next year I'll keep the seed envelope so I know what all the little flowers are because there are quite a few I don't recognize. 

It was worth an afternoon of very hard work and a lot of sweat to dry stack the rocks. Really, it was. I'm very pleased with the end result. But I can't help but think how much more it would mean if just one of those men had been willing to give me the gift of their time and strength. 

Apparently, not all of us are worth an afternoon.

No matter how pleased I am with the wall, it will always be tainted with my disappointment. It has made me examine other projects and figure in a factor for the same disappointment. I plan on doing things myself. 

So at what point does the man become nothing more than a millstone around the woman's neck? 

We are sometimes who we are forced to become, not the person we hoped to be. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

How many stages will it take?

November 2020

 We've begun to do the work to clear the old tractor path. It's been a long time coming because it will be a lot of hard, physical labor, labor that I will need to do. The Lord of the Manor no longer has the physical capability and I thank God that I do. 

Last November, on a bright sunny day, we made our way to the edge of where the work started and did a few minor things - mostly assess what really needed to happen. That led us to the purchase of a Brush Crusher.  Brush Crusher is the brand name for a front-end grapple for the John Deere 1023.  We purchased ours from Good Works Tractor and had it shipped since we knew we were capable of the assembly. 

The grapple is able to lift heavy logs and hold them while I use the chain saw to cut them to length. It can also "bite" into the brambles, yank them out, and hold them firmly for a trip to the brush pile to be burned. Oh, if we'd had this thing twenty years ago! 

June 20, 2021

There is a massive amount of work involved with clearing the old tractor path. Deuce and I took a walk along the southwestern strip of it last winter. A short video of our walk, in the snow, can be found here. 

The path was clear back in my grandfather's day. The property he gave me was at one time a small apple orchard and a strawberry patch. I still have tiny wild strawberries grow each year. 

It may not look like we accomplished much, but we can at least see the stone fence again. Our next task is to finish cleaning up as much as we can before we move on to the next twenty to thirty feet. It may take us this entire season to clear the whole stretch, but we'll keep after it, a few hours at a time, until we reach the corner of the property.

Making the turn north will have to wait for next year. Maybe. The Brush Crusher is a true game-changer. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Terrace wall repair

There's never a lack of projects to do here at the manor.  One we've put off, for one reason or another, is repairing the west terrace wall. 

This wall has a bit of a sad story. It was constructed near the end of 2004 after Himself was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. The prognosis was pretty grim. It was colon cancer that had metastasized to his liver and the doctor at Johns Hopkins deemed it to be "inoperable," and therefore terminal. 

Doctors CAN be wrong. 

It was under this dark cloud that he took on the project, firmly believing it would be the last thing he ever did to improve the manor. 

The wall lasted over a decade, but time and water will always win. The last section built has collapsed. Last summer it was only a small collapse and close inspection showed a larger one was imminent. We determined it would be better to allow the hostas to bloom another year, wait for the collapse, and then effect a more substantial repair. 

And so here we are. When the weather improves and the ground dries and firms up, we have a job to do. It's not as difficult as it may appear. The remnants of the old wall will get scooped up in the bucket of the John Deere and dropped on the lower stone fence. Using the backhoe, we'll dig out some soil and prepare level ground for the foundation. After that is finished, it will be time to select some substantial stones from the upper stone fence and rebuild the wall. 

With any luck, it will only take us a weekend. Like everything here at the manor, the weather is the key factor. No matter how many Saturday afternoons it may take, we'll both be glad to have it done. 

That wall is like a metaphor for his life. If a section crumbles, it's time to pick yourself up, fix it, and keep going. And that's how we do it at Holly Tree Manor.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor