74\u00a0 bar steady\u00a0 29.89\u00a0 4mph NNE dew-point 64\u00a0\u00a0 Summer, warmish and stickyish<\/p>\n
Full Thunder Moon<\/p>\n
Ah, the power of suggestion.\u00a0 Especially from a spouse.\u00a0 Spent an hour and a half clearing burdock, nettles, black locust, burrs, climbing wild cucumbers and virginia creeper from the site of the soon to be firepit cum family gathering spot.\u00a0 An area in which everything has been removed invites the emergence of those plants whose seeds or rhizomes remain in the soil.<\/p>\n
Over the last few rainy, hot weeks nettles have taken nourishment from the former compost heap to grow large, reaching for the sun and laden with formic acid to prevent uprooting.\u00a0\u00a0 The wild cucumber which climbs, then produces lacy transparent fruit liked the compost as did the virginia creeper.<\/p>\n
While yanking on the long above ground runs of vine and pulling out their equally long runs of below the soil surface roots\/rhizomes, I decided to change the name of our property from 7 Oaks, named for the 7 Oaks on the hill outside my writing room window, to Vineland Place.\u00a0 I have no idea why, but our property is the ideal happy home for vines:\u00a0 wild cucumbers, Virginia creeper and wild grape.\u00a0 The wild grape in particular grows vines thicker than my upper arm (OK, so I’m not Ahnold, but still).\u00a0 We have nurtured a wild\u00a0 grape that has chosen the six foot fence we had put in the front after Celt began climbing the fence to go greet the neighbors on walks by our house.\u00a0 At 200 pounds Celt, an Irish Wolfhound, was not a pleasant surprise, though in manner gentle and loving.<\/p>\n
As the CO2 level rises with global warming, it favors vines.\u00a0 I do not recall why.\u00a0 I could not help but recall this piece of trivia as I drove through Alabama, Mississippi and Lousiana where kudzu has a presence akin to an alien invader.\u00a0 It grows over lower shrubs and covers the entire highway easement up to the drainage ditches on divided highways.\u00a0 In more than one case I saw old homes, uninhabited (I think), shrouded under the green of this conqueror vine.<\/p>\n
Jon did many projects around Vineland Place when he lived here.\u00a0 One of the early ones was to cut back the large grape vines that had begun to strangle the oak, ironwood, ash, elm, pin cherry and poplar that make up our woods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
74\u00a0 bar steady\u00a0 29.89\u00a0 4mph NNE dew-point 64\u00a0\u00a0 Summer, warmish and stickyish Full Thunder Moon Ah, the power of suggestion.\u00a0 Especially from a spouse.\u00a0 Spent an hour and a half clearing burdock, nettles, black locust, burrs, climbing wild cucumbers and virginia creeper from the site of the soon to be firepit cum family gathering spot.\u00a0 … Continue reading Vineland Place<\/span>