Fast moving water all over.

"Tis nothing but a sprout, but well budded out . . ."
Always a line that stuck with me from Alfred Noyes poem a May Day Carol. Of course, it's not May yet, or close to it. The pear tree doesn't seem to know that though. We will see if that works out to good or ill. It also reminds me it's time to learn how to prune fruit trees since we had one survive the winter. Though it's always worth remembering, winter isn't over.

Ice Clad World

The up side, ice clad grass is gorgeous. The down side, if there's ice clad grass while it's still raining constantly that means there is ice EVERY where else. Getting up the driveway last night in a light car was a real adventure!

Learning Experiences, and Growing Out Hutches

We've had a couple of learning experiences over the last two days. Fortunately none of them have been devastating like some of our earlier learning experiences. As you can see in this photo our driveway is still here, and with minimal damage. We had some sudden and very hard rain on Tuesday night. Fortunately the lady of the house managed to get home in time to put down 2x4s angled towards the edges of the driveway every 30 - 40 feet or so to slow the water down and prevent major erosion.

Learning Experiences 2: Drainage

Mental images of Daniel Day Lewis in "There Will be Blood" aside, drainage is definitely firmly in our minds now. Unsurprisingly Irene, or any major tropical storm will be an issue for anyone with property and even more so for people attempting to homestead. In our benefit, we don't yet have animals to care for in a deluge, and thus that ended up not being a major concern yet. That said, what did happen highlighted things we are going to have to focus on in construction and placement of our animal pens.

This is (was?) our driveway. As you can clearly see, we can't drive on that section.