. I have a small collection of head planters. They're not looking too spiffy at the moment, but they look great with the right kind of plant in there.
I had an incredibly productive day.
* I took a small pussy willow cutting from my one pussy willow shrub back in APRIL, and the poor thing sat in water all these months. I wanted to plant it sooner but couldn't find the right spot for it. It needs a lot of room but also needs sun. I tucked it in the ground today, FINALLY. It had quite the root system on it. I will be curious to see how it does.
* I also transplanted one black oak seedling from a bad spot where it popped up early in the spring and put it in a better spot. I have 3 or 4 more I'd like to do the same with.
* I finished cutting down a kousa dogwood. I noticed it a year or two ago; I had mixed feelings about taking it down, but it doesn't have much wildlife value. And then I noticed it was starting to steal sunlight from a nearby oak sapling which I very much want to thrive. In 31 years I've never had a single oak here, and now this year I have at least 5 or 6 popping up all over. This sapling was about 6 feet high last year and has doubled in height this year.
The kousa dogwood was a lot of work since this involved cutting up larger branches and then dragging them to a brush pile hidden in the woods. I got almost 13,000 steps in today, and this was a big reason why.
* I mowed part of the lawn.
* I started organizing the garage so I can store lawn furniture in there and all my plant pots. Maybe even my SUV. Didn't quite finish but made great headway. Also filled 4 trash bags with old newspapers I had used a few years ago to suppress weeds but decided I didn't like it as it required mulch on top of it and inevitably the ugly newspaper sheets would show thru the mulch. I'm doing a more natural mulch now of just leaves. Mice had gotten into the newspaper anyway.
* Continued work cutting rampant trumpet vine at the base near soil and then dabbing it with herbicide. There are a zillion individual plants. I feel like I did quite a bit but then when I look around at how it has gotten into every nook and cranny in this area, it's quite discouraging. Yesterday I was doing the same thing and pretty much cleared and treated the vine that had been growing up a very large evergreen I'd like to save. Vines will kill a tree pretty quickly. It's really a challenge to eradicate it because by June this whole area becomes impenetrable and the best time to treat this particular plant is late summer/early fall. So I get just one shot at it all year. I CAN try to maintain some sort of narrow pathways in there in spring and if I can do that, I can at least cut back the vines even if I don't treat them. This can help maintain some sort of control.
Tomorrow we're getting a fairly significant storm, big enough that I charged up my 2 "power stations" just in case I lose power. The big one can keep my fridge and freezer going for 4 days. So, maybe I'll squeeze in another mowing session before the rain starts in the afternoon.
October 15th, 2025 at 12:01 pm 1760526106