Before the Storm~

Up Inland Isle Trail~

Knowing the weather was going to change, it was hard to spend a beautiful day out of the saddle!  I turned Farah out - she spent the day cruising her pasture & then the yard.  I got out my big pruners, a saw & went down to our SE property corner - where the creek goes out under the fence & on down the hill.  Years ago, I'd planted red-twig, yellow leaved dogwoods.  They have ended up being the bane of my existence!  The boxwood's though - that I planted along the road a few years ago - have done great!  No maintenance, surviving Summer's heat, Winter's cold & all the water from the creek.

Nika~

I spend the entire afternoon cutting the dogwoods down.  What a mess - blackberry had managed to get started under their cover, bindweed too, both coming in from the far side of the fence.  The roots of the dogwoods had even started new shoots in the creek bed - making it easier for the creek to leave it's bed when the heavy rains come.  By the time I was done, it was dark.

11-13-2008 - Kitt in the corner :-)

Over the years, I tried the pines here, they died off last year.  I'd just put the dogwoods in, thinking that they would thrive & provide lots of winter color.  They did!  But keeping them under control just isn't working anymore - Way too much work!  They'd be perfect if you had a large wet area that you wanted to go wild - but here - if I let them, the creek would overflow & flood over the road.

Nika at Cottonwood X-ing

Butch & I sat out & enjoyed the stars, really a mild evening for mid-November.  We discussed all the hard work we did in the early days here, work we were naive enough to think would last forever :-)  The most destruction, has been caused by moles.  When they moved up the valley, it was the beginning of the end, of keeping things nice.  All the hardscape rocks etc. that we put in, have been dropped inches into the dirt.  Plant roots dug up, bulbs gone, piles of dirt everywhere etc.

The creek~

The easiest to maintain though?  The woods!  Washington's Native Habitat is the best!  The only struggle is to keep all the invasive plants from adjoining properties Out!  We've never regretted our decision to keep the woods intact, after all - the main reason we bought the property, was the thrill of having our own forest as part of the Homestead!