72  bar steady 29.56 4mph WSW dew-point 27  Beltane, cloudy

                     Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

The younger folks, Steve and Aimee, worked the whole morning on the buckthorn.  I worked nearby on a 14 year old project, thinning the woods.  When we first moved to Andover, I had a state forester come out and advise me on how to manage our woods for wildlife.  His major advised involved taking out trees growing too close to each other, opening up the understory and getting rid of the buckthorn.  He also suggested creating brushpiles because small critters love brushpiles for home building.

I’ve made some progress against the demon buckthorn and we’ve created many brushpiles over the years.  The thinning of the woods, though, has taken a back seat to gardening, creating beds, planting, nurturing.  Last year I began to thin, starting in the northwest corner of our property.  I cleared it of buckthorn and black locust, cut out some other understory and now have it 3/4’s cleared.  I also began, again last fall, to develop midden heap park.  First I cleared out a whole variety of a plant life that had grown up on our compost pile.  Then I cut down and debarked three diseased elms.  I also removed buckthorn, cutting down the larger ones to 2′ stumps (which Steve and Aimee pulled today).  In addition I began removing, thinning trees.

Today three oak and one elm bit the dust.  Literally.  After limbing them, I cut them up into smaller sections–log sized–and lugged them onto a pile.  I slept well during my nap.