Looking Ahead Week: What Stays, What Goes?

Tuesday's post in Looking Ahead Week gave an overview of some of the plant clean-up that I'll be doing over the coming weeks.  This post looks at the bits of human refuse and junk in the yard that I'll be cleaning up.  There's quite a bit out there, and I haven't come close to inventorying it all.  Scattered throughout the yard are bigger pieces, like cinder blocks, bricks, and logs, that I can easily use in the garden and throughout the yard.  But then there are also smaller pieces of debris and junk, like shards of broken glass and this bottle cap:

In various places across the yard lie large and small pieces of wood:

Near the neighbors' fence is quite a bit of old junk...how much can you see in this photo?

I've begun collecting some of this stuff in what I call my Pile of Eyesore.  Eventually, this stuff will either be used somewhere around the yard or discarded.

Even in the garden, I'm finding things of various usefulness.   Here's a string that I uncovered:

There are, of course, also old pieces of junk that may have been useful back when my house was a railroad cart and wagon repair shop, but now they've outgrown their utility.

Either way, for now, they get thrown on the Pile of Eyesore.

Of course, quite a bit of this stuff is junk that I've only recently discovered, either as the vegetation thinned out with the coming of fall and winter, or as I began to look harder for it.

Either way, early spring is probably the best time to find and move this stuff, before the vegetation gets too thick and after the snow has gone, as temperatures begin to warm.  Later tonight, I'll be looking ahead to later in the spring, when it's time to begin planting, with a peek at some of my thoughts for planting in the wildflower areas.

Looking Ahead Week: Clean-up

Now that we've taken a look at March weather in Freeville, Looking Ahead Week moves on with the first tasks of spring.  Since I'll have to wait until April at the earliest (probably more like May) to begin planting new things, the first task of the spring will be yard clean-up.  And yes, there's plenty to clean up.  I don't know where the clean-up will start, but this post starts with the various piles of fallen branches around the yard.  They'll have to be chopped up and taken to the recycling center, which accepts branches up to 4" in diameter.  I'll also have to collect the fallen branches from around the yard and add them to the pile.

There's also plenty of dead wood hanging out around the yard, waiting to be cleaned up. 
For example, there are dead branches and vines still leaning up against this maple tree.

And in the photo below are actually two plants: a live maple tree and what looks to be a dead vine of some kind.  All of that dead wood should be cleared away.

The back end of the yard is congested with thorny plants...both black raspberries and the other thorny plant with small red berries that I haven't identified yet.  I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with this area of the yard, but I'm thinking of turning it into a raspberry patch.  Either way, I'm pretty sure that I'll be clearing out the other thorny plants to make way for something else that might attract more birds and wildlife to the yard.

I'm also not sure what I'll do with the wildflower patch at the back of the yard - my vision is for it to eventually be teeming with wildflowers throughout the whole warm season - but I do know that I want to clear the raspberry plants (and other thorny plants) out of here.  It's possible that I'll transplant them to my new raspberry patch in the back corner of the yard.

Not sure if I'll be able to pry this branch down, but it would certainly make the tree look nicer!

And then there's the thorny plant patch at the side of the yard.  I don't plan to tackle this area until next year, but I would like to clear out the pieces of wood and other junk that's stuck in there before the plants expand with the warmer temperatures and increased sunlight.

So that's a quick look at my clean-up projects, which should take up most of March and might even bring me into April.  I haven't mentioned anything about the pieces of human eyesore - bricks, cinder blocks, chains, trash, and other junk that is scattered across the yard - but I hope to begin cleaning that up, too, before the vegetation gets thicker.  That's where tomorrow's piece of Looking Ahead Week will pick up.

The Pile of Eyesore

These days, many people move to new developments in the suburbs.  Their houses are built on land that was once farmland or a natural area, and it doesn't have much of a cultural history, at least not that the homeowner can trace.

For me, though, moving into a small town that was first settled over 200 years ago, there's a lot of history on the land, and I mean that quite literally.  Because my property is right in the heart of town and less than half a mile from the site of the first mill, my plot of land has been put to some kind of use for - this is an educated guess - at least 150 years.  I also know that it hasn't been a residential property for all that time, either.  The previous owner mentioned to me that before the house was built, about 80 years ago, this was the site of a...I forget what he called it...not a factory, but something like a workshop.

As I survey the property, and especially now as plants die off with the coming of fall, I notice random junk strewn around the yard.  Some of this junk, for now, I leave in place, and some of it I pick up and move to what I call my pile of eyesore.  The pile of eyesore sits on a pile of broken concrete slabs, which were themselves an eyesore, making it the perfect place to aggregate the junk that I don't know where to put anywhere else.  Right now, the pile includes a concrete block, a piece of wood discovered in the garden, a moss-covered brick, a couple of chains, some string discovered just outside the garden, a plastic tarp, and a rusted piece of metal that appears to be quite old.

That's not all; there's even more junk around the property.  I've seen a few more moss-covered bricks and several more cinder blocks.  There are shards of broken glass (they'll be a pain to clean up!), an empty, overturned glass bowl, smashed beer cans, and discarded wrappers that I have to collect.  And then there is natural "junk" as well - piles of branches, large and small, that have been felled by the wind, and tree trunks that were never removed after the trees were cut down.  I'll eventually get to it, but for now, if it's causing no harm and it's out of the way, I'm not worried about it.

While it's all a bit ugly, the pile of eyesore represents the history of my little patch of land.  That rusty piece of metal, found in the wooded corner of the property, could date to the workshop days, and so could those moss-covered bricks.  The cinder blocks could be of some use in the garden; right now, cinder blocks line the perimeter of the garden, helping to keep the fence in place.  And even if this stuff isn't useful to me, it's interesting to think about where - and when - it might have come from.

Related posts:
Freeville History - Origins