Off the Grid

It’s spring and there Molly has been busy getting the garden ready, removing honeysuckle from the fence, and planting. Outside of the garden fence is a slightly different spring. The woods surrounding the garden are green again and filled with songbirds.

There isn’t a clearly defined edge between garden area and woods. Often the grass diminishes, plants and bushes appear. Sometimes there is a pine log that forms, for a space, a kind of boundary. This is looking southwest, toward where the large pines grow that shade our solar panels in winter for part of the day.

The garden area space between garden fence and woods isn’t regular. There are islands of growth. There is a huge mass of raspberry bushes just south of the garden fence. The bushes are filled with blooms and there will be berries for the birds and us in early July.

Each winter I cut, split, and stack firewood for the next heating season. In recent years the trees cut have all been windfalls and since our woods is mature second growth the trees that fall can be large.

This is a red oak that blew over a year ago. The top broke off about 10 feet or so from the ground.

There is a yellow handled splitting maul leaning against the tree. The yellow handle is 31 inches long which helps give an idea of the size of the log. I’ve already been cutting and splitting some of the large limbs.

The top of the tree is quite full of limbs. I’m working on cutting limbs before beginning cutting the tree’s trunk. There’s at least a month’s supply of wood when I get it cut and stacked. The tree is close to a road which is nice.