Lawns and Forests

There's Brandon, mowing the grass as he loves to do.  I've mentioned before how he keeps expanding our yard.  We both enjoy the contrast of the tidy lawn against the shaggy edges of our hay fields and natural areas.  My landscaping plans tend to have long term goals, and short term weeds, so it's nice to have something clean and even to break up the tangle. 

This area on the west side of the driveway used to be a jungle of tall weeds and old fence posts.  It's evolved to a smart looking lawn with plenty of room for guest camping and parking. 

The east side of the house is where we've allowed small volunteer tree saplings to grow.  Mostly silver maple trees, but also locust, green ash, red bud, and paw paw trees are growing here.  The trees closest to the house had their lower limbs trimmed.  I would like to keep clearing the honeysuckle vines from the tree trunks and trimming the branches so that in time it looks more and more park-like near the hammock.  

We initially let this area grow wild.  This allowed the small trees to get a foot hold, but the Japanese honeysuckle vines dominated the un-mowed vegetation.  I like wild places, and want to provide plenty of wildlife habitat, but I would prefer more diversity than a mass of honeysuckle.  We tried letting the goats eat the vines, but without fences, what worked best was to mow between the trees with the bush hog, then keep the vines suppressed with the lawn mower.  If I really want to promote native grasses and wildflowers, I think I need to exhaust the honeysuckle vines through mowing, so they don't just grow back the instant we stop cutting them.  Herbicide would work too, but I'm not ready to try that just yet.  Burning would be great, but we would have to get brave enough to try it, and I don't feel very brave so close to the house.  It's a good thing Brandon likes to mow.

This is the view from the hammock - already the sky is being covered by the leaves of our little trees!

The nature trail, as we call it, cuts through the tall vegetation near the tree line.  In the winter we see rabbit, deer, and coyote tracks in the snow on our trail, so we know we aren't the only ones to appreciate it.  

Most of these tall herbaceous plants are goldenrod, poison ivy, and honeysuckle.  The rabbits love to dart in and out of these tall plants.  In the background, you can see small sycamore trees from our early tree planting efforts.  There's also a few silky dogwood trees in the corner near the stream, where the ground stays wet.  It's nearly a wetland.  I would love to dig a small pond in this area, so we could host wetland plants and amphibians.  

See all those dead trees?  Those are the ash trees that were killed by the emerald ash borer, and our future firewood supply.  We see wood peckers drilling holes in these trees, and the hawks use them as perches while they spy on the chickens.  Brandon swears he saw a bobcat, twice, in these narrow woods on our eastern boundary.  The neighbor says she saw a cat climbing a tree, and thought it was a mountain lion.  I might believe there's a bobcat, but have my doubts about a mountain lion in farm country.  Some fat house cat might be creating a stir in the neighborhood.  

Early this summer I heard a wild turkey gobble while I relaxed in the hammock.  I grew up in a house in the forest, so I feel at home in the shelter of trees.  I'm happy to see our wild places become more like real forests.  At the rate these trees are growing, it won't be long!