Hellebore Porn

I've been converted into a hellebore fan after reading Margaret Roach's first book (about checking out from her high-powered job with Martha Stewart and blissing out on gardening) and her blog, awaytogarden.com. I bought this hellebore, above, after reading that book when I first arrived on the mountain, and I'm ready to buy about 50, oh maybe 100, more. Hellebores are evergreens, love shade and shoot up these gorgeous flowers in late winter and early spring. Mine's been blooming for at least a month now. Stunning.

I still haven't made my first purchase at the Barn (my new employer), but it will definitely happen next week. I've finished shaping up that new backyard gathering area here, so now I need a little landscaping to set it all off. I'm thinking blueberry bushes, combined with some evergreen shrubs. It's always a challenge to find the right mix that doesn't look too suburban for the middle of the forest.

Today Mason celebrated the return of his main chainsaw (after a replacement part finally arrived). He took down three small maples (each about 40 feet tall) and a small oak (about 40 feet, too) to make room for downing a 70-foot oak that's got to come down for the solar panel project. He wore himself out, taking the small ones out by the roots (plus taking down a pair of dead "sourwood" trees that we have to split tomorrow for firewood, as spring is refusing to arrive), so the massive oak may not come down for a few days.

Meanwhile, can I bitch about the weather? On Tuesday, I worked 8 hours. Outside. In 40-degree weather. (That morning an inch of snow covered our yard.) It almost made my newspaper days look pleasant (almost, if I wasn't hearing about how miserable my former co-workers are ...). And the average temp here for that day? Supposed to be 67. Ugh. This prolonged winter is KILLING US!

And yes, we once again have run out of firewood and have been scavenging to keep ourselves warm at night until the real spring arrives. Mason's already built a bigger firewood storage area for next year, so maybe we'll finally get it right for our fourth winter in the woods.

Up tomorrow: A trailer load of free mulch in Soddy Daisy to tidy up some other deserving areas.

It Had To Happen

No, no, this isn't our back yard. (Yet.) Ha! I wish. This is an early spring photo from the shrub section of the Barn Nursery, my new employer. Yup, I'm a working girl again. I scored a job at the best nursery in town, only for spring, but I may possibly be able to stay on longer.  So far, I'm loving it. I get to help customers pick out plants, and even do some landscape design when a customer wants it; there's also lots of watering and deadheading, not to mention heavy lifting and constant walking around the acre's worth of plants. I work in the perennial, tree and shrub area -- pure heaven!!

Now after two years of "vacation," it's been an adjustment. (For example, I have to set an alarm clock now for the first time after decades of night-shift work. AND ... we had to buy a battery-operated alarm clock, as we don't run our precious electricity 24/7, and the cell phone alarms are unreliable, as the clock function jumps back and forth between Central and Eastern time. Our lives are tough.)

But the extra cash will come in handy for that guest cabin, not to mention my gardening addiction. It's been an adjustment for Mason, too, who has strict instructions on NO CHAINSAW work while I'm not around.

Stay tuned for the photos of the plants I blow my first paycheck on.

The Back Yard: From Embarrassment to Tiki Bar

Mark it: It took eight days of bonfires -- and 10 giant contractor bags full of trash -- and our backyard embarrassment is gone. See above? That's the ash pile from the last night of burning, and beyond that, where you see the freshly roto-tilled swath of forest floor? That's where the 12-foot-high brush pile used to be. Some damn fine dirt under that brush pile, by the way; I already stole some for the garden.

No snakes were encountered. The only injury was to Mason's hair, eyebrows and eyelashes; my Pyro Man sometimes gets a bit too close to the fire. The hair was due for a trim anyway, but we had to cut it a bit shorter than usual to tend to the yellow, crispy ends.

In between our burning chores, I worked on our new backyard gathering area. Mason calls it the future tiki bar, but it's got a way to go still. Here's the preview:

In the rear left, you'll see our new firewood pile (Attention NYT readers: we're wild and crazy Tennesseans, so it's stacked bark up AND down). That's fresh firewood for next season, from trees we've taken down to clear room for the upcoming solar panels. Meanwhile, our firewood stockpile for this season might last us another five or six cold nights, so, yes, we might be back to scavenging until spring is in full swing.

And one final note. Spring is starting to sprout here on Flat Top. Redbud trees are already blooming in town, but here, we're just starting to see daffodils sprout and little green buds on shrubs. All that gray you see in the top photo? Give us four more weeks, and the same shot will be awash in green! Our giant maples are already budding out, and check out my cute little lungwort in the front bed:

Burn Notice

So, we had a bonfire going for five days. For five days, we spent hours yanking tree trunks, root balls, brush and trash out of that damn pile and tossing them into the fire. And for five days we went to bed groaning about how every joint in our bodies ached.

But by Day Five, you really could tell we were making a dent in our Pile of Shame.  That's the pile in the background. We now have a new pile there in front, of all the trash that had been piled up inside the brush pile. We'll be making a trip to the dump/recycling center soon to get rid of it all. (We've triiiiiied to get that blue tarp out in the brush pile, but it's buried under a mound of dirt -- maybe on Day 6 or 7...)

We've encountered no snakes so far, thankfully, though we rousted a bunny from its winter quarters. Mason singed his hair pretty good while feeding the fire (thereby staving off the need for a haircut anytime soon), and slightly burned a wrist, but that's what he gets for being a pyro.

We predict it will take another five full burn days to get through the rest of the pile. But today we woke up to rain and wind, so we luckily get a day off. Instead, we're brewing up a fresh batch of beer. Sweet rewards for work well done.

Our Pile of Shame

When we moved into our cabin in the woods (more than two years ago!), near the top of our to-do list was to burn off the shameful heap of brush that was piled up in the "back yard." Since then, I've been careful when taking photos, trying not to show the ugly pile. At one point during our first summer here, Mason pulled out non-organic items that had been thrown in the pile -- roofing material, metal cabinets, all sorts of crap. The original owner of this cabin treated his back yard like a personal landfill. It's shameful.

So, since spring's rains are soon upon us -- and because our busted chainsaw has kept us from cutting down the last two massive trees in the way of our solar project -- today we finally launched into the massive Brush Pile Burn Project. We started about 1 p.m. and burned, burned, burned 'til about 7 p.m. Hardly made a dent in the pile.

It's slow-going, mostly because snakes love brush piles, and we don't love snakes. So you kinda have to bang around a bit before you dare stick your hand into the mangled pile. I wanted Mason to just riddle the pile with bullets before we started, but surprisingly, he didn't go for the idea.

It's also slow-going because Nervous Nelly Nan refuses to let the fire get too big, for fear of setting the whole damn mountain ablaze.

So, for the next month, when you're wondering what we've been up to, this is it. Walk to brush pile, look for snakes, yank something off, walk to fire, repeat.

Now What Are They Doing?

NOW what are they doing? I know that's what y'all are thinking. And it's the same answer we've been giving for months: Taking down trees to get ready for solar panels. Have we mentioned we have just a few trees up here?

The cluster Mason is working on above was the smallest of the day's harvest of five. The biggest was a 75-foot-tall oak, and made an unbelievable "THUD" as it came crashing down. Last week when we spent all day on this same chore, we couldn't move the next day, so keep your expectations low for productivity tomorrow.

If you squint your eyes and look closely, you'll see a pile of dirt about halfway back toward the shed in that photo.  A few days ago I started digging out what will soon be our backyard "tiki bar" patio area. That's where the new adirondack chairs will go. (Yup, we built a second one. We've been on a productive streak lately.)  Stay tuned for more progress on that patio project.

As for all the tree removal ... I'm consumed with guilt every time we bring down a healthy one. I avert my eyes from all the little buds that were just waiting to burst open in the coming weeks, but we WILL need lots more seasoned firewood by next fall. But to make matters worse, today I accidentally killed a fine-lookin' toad who had been hibernating under the dirt at the foot of one tree. I was clearing the dirt away with a sharp shovel so we could yank up the tree's root ball because I'm planning a veggie garden in the soon-to-be sunny patch. Yup, that's ANOTHER project on the calendar ... but it's not scheduled until spring 2014, so cool your jets on that one.

Minnesota Memories

Woke up this morning at sunrise to see gorgeous pink and gold clouds and the sun beaming through our trees. Then slept for a few more hours and woke to a sky full of snowflakes! Only about an inch fell, but it was lovely. And even lovelier because it will be gone by tomorrow.