Freeville History - Origins

I promised some history on this blog.  As some say, there’s no history better than local history.  So here’s a little bit about the origins and early history of my town (current population: 523).

My town began as a mill site.  With Fall Creek (the creek adjoining my property) and Virgil Creek, there’s plenty of flowing water to go around.  The first documented white settler was a Revolutionary War veteran named Daniel White.  He built a cabin about ½ mile downstream of my property in 1798, and followed this with a dam and a grist mill.  Other settlers moved to the area, but the town really started to blossom when a widow named Rhoda Willey moved to a location along Virgil Creek in 1815.  With her came four sons and three daughters, including the enterprising Samuel, who owned “a sawmill on Virgil Creek, the White Gristmill and a sawmill behind that on Fall Creek, a hotel (later known as Shaver’s), the first store just west of the hotel (near the northeast portion of the lower four corners), and a blacksmith shop, and he had farming and dairy interests.”

The first “big business” to be established in the town was a large mill built upstream of Daniel White’s original mill by his son, John, in 1833.  Incredibly successful, the mill employed up to 40 people.  Its staple was Teco pancake flour, which was shipped around the country until after World War I.  The mill finally closed in the 1930s, presumably a casualty of the Great Depression.  Though the mill is gone (with a park in its approximate old location), the dam remains.

This information was taken from my town’s website.  I’ll link to it once I’ve finished posting about the history of the town over the next few weeks.

More Leaves!

I went to the recycling center again this morning to drop off another seven bags of leaves and weeds.  The leaves are still piling up in my backyard...and as you can see, there are some pretty big trees!   It looks like I'll be making 1-2 trips per week for the rest of the month.  I've begun to think about setting up a composting area in the back yard to take care of all these leaves (and eventually provide mulch for the garden), but it would have to be pretty big!

Grass or weeds?

One of the bigger challenges that I face as a first-time house-owner is that I have no idea what I’m doing, in the garden or in the yard.  I guess it’s probably a good thing that I can admit that.

My grandfather, on the other hand, has decades of experience in gardening and managing a yard, and his yard and garden have always looked immaculate, so when he offers advice, I listen.  I was talking with him on the phone last week, and I mentioned all of the weeds in my lawn.  He suggested that I spray the weeds with Weed-B-Gon.  I explained that I don’t want to use any pesticide on the lawn. He replied that a little Weed-B-Gon really wouldn’t have a noticeable impact on the groundwater, which is true.  But at the same time, there are an awful lot of weedy plants in the lawn, especially the lower part of the lawn near the wildflower patch, which is mostly short, stubby weeds and very little grass.   It would take quite a bit of Weed-B-Gon to zap all of those weeds.  If I want to clear out those weeds, I think the easiest approach would be to pull or dig them up myself.

But first, I have to ask myself if it’s even worth replacing the weeds with grass.  The lower part of the yard is quite shady, so grass may not grow well there.  It’s also a matter of convenience.  In my couple of months of mowing the lawn so far, I haven’t necessarily had to mow the lower third of the yard every time; the short, stubby weeds simply don’t grow as fast as grass.  It’s an area that’s not really conducive to lawn games (like my bocce ball set), and the weeds don’t get in the way any more than grass does.  So, long story short, I’m not going to worry about the short, stubby weeds in the lower third of my lawn for now.  After all, I have a garden to build.

Frost Advisory

I took a peek ahead to this weekend's weather today.  It looks likely that we'll see our first frost of the year - and a hard frost at that - on Friday night into Saturday.  Now, if I were a normal gardener, I'd be concerned with picking my vegetables and protecting my plants in advance.  But first of all, I'm not much of a gardener, and secondly, right now I don't have much of a garden, just a bunch of weeds, wildflowers, and grass.  So I won't have to worry about that frost damaging anything important.  And it's a good thing, too, because I'll be out of town this weekend and won't get to see the damage until I get back on Sunday.  With any luck, the frost will make clearing out the rest of the garden easier.

Clearing out some Thorny Plants

I had some valuable daylight time late this afternoon and the weather was nice, so I got out to the garden and cleared out the thorny plants.  As you can see, they made up a good chunk of the growth in the densely vegetated end of the garden.  Now that those plants are out of the way, it will be easy pickings to eventually go through and clear out the rest of the vegetation.  At some point, I'll have to go back and dig out the thorny plant roots, or they'll be growing back next year. 

I also took some time to clear out the fringe of the thorny plant patch.  I wish I had done this sooner; it would have made mowing the lawn less prickly!  Here's a "before picture":

And here's an "after" picture.  It may not look all that thinned out here, but it makes a huge difference when you see it in person.  I just trimmed the branches down; the only plants that I pulled out were right near the fringe.  What to do with the rest of the thorny plant patch is a question for another day.

Weekend Yardwork

Saturday wound up being a rainy morning, and it rained Sunday late afternoon, so I didn't get as much done this weekend as I'd hoped.  I did manage to rake the front yard and back yard and bag the leaves in the front yard (8 bags worth, as you can see). 

This morning I took 7 of the bags (as many as could fit in my car) to the county's yard waste center.  This evening I bagged three bags of leaves in the backyard and mowed the lawn.  There are still five or so piles of leaves in the back yard, and the trees still have half of their leaves, at least.  I'm far from done with raking for the season.

Freedom

Freedom.

It’s not freedom to _______.

It’s not freedom from _______.

It’s just…freedom.

Yard Work Plans 10/7

If the weather holds out, I'll finish raking the leaves.  I should also mow the lawn, since the grass is getting tall again.

The Garden

You know, there was something that always haunted me about the Garden of Eden story.  It was a setup.  The garden was put in place, and Adam was put in the garden.  He had no say over how it looked, what animals and plants it included, or what his role in it would be.  He simply had to tend the garden and avoid that one tree.  But what if, like me, he wasn’t much of a gardener?

Last weekend I began my own Garden of Eden story.  I cleared the brush away, like sweeping away the demons of my past...demons that goaded me into things I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing or saying when I was younger.  The thorny plant patch by the garden, like my life, wasn’t full of thorny plants, but it was the thorny plants that held it all together.  It can be awfully hard to let go of those things that link us to our past – habits, thoughts, beliefs – and move on to bigger and better things.  It can be easy to hold on to being unhappy, upset…miserable. 

For years I subscribed to the “if only” belief…if only this person and I get along better…if only I solve this stumbling block at work…if only the world becomes a happier place…then things will get better.  But these “if only” contingencies were like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – illusions that kept me from making real progress.  All along, there were plenty of things to hold onto, plenty of things to be happy about…if only I was to look for them.

This is the problem with the Garden of Eden story.  There was no opportunity for growth.  In a perfect world, how does one become better?  We strive for perfection in our lives: more comfortable surroundings, better relationships, being more kind and caring, showing more love.  But for Adam and Eve, eating the apple led to not merely an awareness of good and evil…it led to the awareness that perfection is not a physical state, but a state of mind.  It’s possible to find perfection in an apple or a banana…in a simple meal with friends…in the satisfaction one finds from a job well done.  Growth comes not always from becoming better – behaving in a more loving way, for example – but from understanding our behaviors and how they affect others and ourselves.  Growth is a conscious – and sometimes unconscious – process of appreciating that which we have.  We aren’t striving toward a perfect life…we’re looking to see how the things in our lives reflect the perfection that we’re striving toward.

Every once in a while, something comes along to clear out the weeds.  Like the entrance to the garden that I uncovered in my backyard, a portal to happiness opens up in our lives.  In my life, embracing the yard work that I have to do has become such a portal.  Unlike Adam in the Garden, I can build my own garden into what I want.

Yard Work Plans 10/6

It's a dreary morning out there, but it looks like the rain is almost through.  If it clears up and dries out a bit, I'll do some raking this afternoon.

Last Weekend

 

I haven't described in much detail what I did in the yard last weekend.  It was the first chance I've had to leave my own footprint on the yard.  I want to clean up the garden, so I started with the brush on the outside fringe of the garden.  It had become overgrown, and I was curious to see what I'd uncover.

The first thing I uncovered was the old entrance to the garden.  There were stones on either side of the entranceway and some small logs to mark a path of entry.  It's something I plan to keep, though I'll probably enhance it a bit with more logs and maybe more decorations.

As I dug in the ground, I unearthed rocks, bugs, worms, a nut (possibly buried by a squirrel), and some string buried by a previous owner.  I dug up the roots of plants to make sure they don't grow back next year.  

I left a few things in place: a couple of shrubs and a couple of flowering plants.  I figure that leaving them there, at least for another few weeks, won't hurt anything and will make it look better than bare soil.

As I uncovered the ground, I began to think about what I'll do with this area in the spring when it's time to plant.  There quite a few rocks in the ground, so it doesn't seem to make sense to put grass in and try to mow around all of those rocks.  I plan to leave the two shrubs in place and add a few more shrubs and flowering plants to make it a welcoming entrance area to the garden.  It should be a nice complement to the garden.  Now that that's been cleared out, I'm itching to get to the garden itself.

Raking

It's looking like it will be a rainy weekend, so I'm getting some late afternoon/early evening raking in before the bad weather hits.  It's warm and muggy right now, 71F with a dew point of 58 (though it feels more humid than that).  I'm wearing shorts!

And literally just as I was posting this, a shower brought rain and rain-cooled air.  Fortunately, it looks like it will pass soon.


...in the end, I got a good bit of raking done in the backyard today, but the front yard will have to wait until the weather clears this weekend.

Yard Waste Update

I stopped by the village's department of public works on Wednesday, and my two bags of yard waste were still sitting right where I'd left them.  I contacted the county and found out that I can drop off yard waste free of charge at the Recycling and Solid Waste Center, 7:00-3:30, Monday through Friday.  I'll have to get up early one day next week and drop off the rest of my bags.  It's good to know that I can get rid of this stuff.

Poop

Sometimes you don't find out it's poop

Until you step in it

Imperfection

I really like the way the entrance to my garden looks, with all the brush cleared out.  

But in a way, I miss the way it used to be...ugly as it was.

Falling in love with a piece of property is like falling in love with a person.

You appreciate the imperfections more and more each and every day.

Yard waste

It's one thing to collect yard waste; it's another to get rid of it.  My town only collects brush once a year, in the summer.  What we're supposed to do with it the rest of the year...I don't know.  They said that I could take a couple bags to the garage by the Department of Public Works, so I dropped a couple of bags off.  I'll swing by this week and try to unload another couple of bags.  I can also try calling the county to see if they have a place to take it.  The other option is to burn it, but I don't particularly care to try to burn the brush in my own yard.  In any event, getting rid of this yard waste is a lot harder than I thought it would be!

Vision

You have to clear out the weeds 

To be able to see the bees.

Progress

Photos showing progress outside the garden over the weekend: