Earlier this year I wrote about how much work we were doing on our two acres of land to turn it into a native wildlife habitat.
Unfortunately I haven’t been much help lately, largely due to the infamous back injury, but also due to the fact that I cannot comprehend how Mom and Riley have been working through the hottest, buggiest, most humid days of the year.
I got burnt out doing a lot of deep, grueling poison ivy work early in the year, and I found that I much prefer doing jobs like building stonewalls and building dead hedges.
new magical spot unlocked 🔓✨
Every bit of progress on our property is satisfying to see, but there are some areas that are just more exciting than others, one of which has been what we now call Dogwood Grove.
This whole area had been inaccessible to us for so long (due to all the overgrown plants trying to kill us in various ways), so once it was cleared, it felt like we all the sudden had a whole new piece of property that we could appreciate and enjoy.
the beginning of the boardwalk is through a thick jungle of various dogwoods and baby shagbark hickory trees (Carya ovata) ✨
Dogwood Grove* was once the big, open chicken pen, which was surrounded by 7-foot wire fencing.
Since Mary Todd is my last girl (thirteen years of age and still doing incredibly well), it was no longer safe for her to go out in this pen. We have too many hawks around for any pen without a secure top! So it was finally time to take the fence down this spring.
*we’re creating a map of our two acres with each spot named on it, e.g. Dogwood Grove, Goldenrod Meadow, The Monarch Garden, The Christmas Tree Farm, Hickory Falls, Camp Balsam, Meadowsweet Lane, John-Boy’s Meadow, etc. Yes, it’s going to be amazing),
[left] taking down the chicken pen this spring, [right] my archenemy: oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) strangling our cherry trees
I’m hoping that the bright-red winterberry holly berries will last long enough to see a sprinkle of snow on them, but we’ll see how fast the birds find them!
Inside was a tangle of prickly raspberry plants, invasive honeysuckles, multiflora rose (so thick that it had killed the trees that it was on), poison ivy, and my #1 nemesis: oriental bittersweet.
This area took a while to clear, but while working in it, Riley discovered that in between all the problematic plants, there were actually dozens of native dogwood shrubs.
And in between those, there were a few fun surprises, like an arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum), and a winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata)!
shoutout to BANGS shoes; they just dropped a new sneaker design that has embroidered monarchs and black-eyed susans on them…will I be able to convince myself that I don’t need them!?
Somewhere along the way we realized that we had free will, and we can do whatever the hell we want, so we had the grand idea to lay down a short boardwalk through the dogwoods, using the planks that we had collected from when we took down the old goat pen fence (another project that happened this spring).
We were so psyched about the idea that we were satisfied to just lay the boards down right on the ground, but thankfully Dad stepped in and proceeded to build us an actual boardwalk (you can watch the YouTube short of it being built here).
And what started as a small boardwalk through the dogwoods, turned into a long and winding boardwalk through the dogwoods…
the dogwood flowers bloomed in June, and then produced a whole bunch of berries
…and through a grapevine arbor…
we planted our wild fox grapes (Vitis labrusca) around this arbor, so it should be covered and dripping in greenery in a year or two 🍇
…and all the way through our evergreen forest (accurately named: The Christmas Tree Farm, since these trees used to be a part of my Grampa’s Christmas tree farm)…
coincidently, we ended up finding some Christmas ferns (Polystichum acrostichoides) growing in our Christmas Tree Farm 🌲
…until it drops you off on the path that has always wrapped around out property (the path that used to wind around Grampa’s Christmas tree farm!).
Mom and Riley also made sure to plant various kinds of ferns all along both sides of the boardwalk, so they’ll fill in and give the true magical, foresty vibes that we love so much.
Everywhere we adventure to, the boardwalks are always one of our favorite parts, so now we have one of our very own right on our property.
It’s currently one of the most magical places that we’ve created, and it gets walked pretty much every day ✨🌿
art by jordan rae 