Picking up sticks and my parents 50th wedding anniversary

I was going to make today’s post about my parents 50th wedding anniversary, but I’m not feeling well today. My parents were married April 26, 1969. The first part is pictures of them through the years, the second part is about the yard work we did yesterday.

My Parents

Here are some pictures of my parents. My mom passed away in 2007, my dad in 2017. They were awesome parents.

My mom was in the navy before she met my dad.

My mom has the yellow sweater drapped over her shoulders ( on the right side of the picture). My dad is standing beside her. Some kind of family gathering, I think.

Yesterday was a busy day. It was supposed to rain so my boyfriend was home. He’s a roofer so when it rains he doesn’t work.

Yesterday’s Yardwork

I started out going around the back of the property picking up branches that had come down in storms. While doing this, I was keeping an eye out for logs to put around the pink dogwood.

It didn’t take us too long to get this done. We did have to get the chainsaw out and cut some wood, but that’s okay! We didn’t need to6cut too much. Maybe a wogonload.

We’re using pine for the garden edging. This is because it’s not really a good idea to burn pine in the woodstove. You can, but it has to be super seasoned. All the sap in pine causes more creosote than other seasoned wood.

Below are pictures I took throughout the morning.

Don’t know how it died…makes me sad, but it is nature after all. Survival of the fittest!

Looks like a huge slug!

Wood Ash is good for the yard. You shouldn’t put too much on it at a time, but here it’s ok. We have a berm going across probably about 2/3 of the property. A berm is elevated ground. This helps deter rushing water from washing out the lane and around the house. A berm could probably be made of rock, we use dirt I dig up from any of my gardens. I also pile branches on top, then more dirt as I dug. This dirt would be really rich if I need to use it again for anything else.

I’ve started dumping ash on the berm, I really have nowhere else to dump it. Only wood ash is good for lawn care. If you burn trash, the only good way to dispose of it is to dump it down groundhog holes. (For the most part, we send nothing to the dump. Reduce, reuse, recycle… We are renting a dumpster to get rid of junk soon. I’m sure I’ll be posting about that when the time comes!)

I need to get a better picture of this. When you touch it, it’s sticky on the underside of the leaves.

Sorry this is short and sweet. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day! I do have the weekend off, so maybe I can get back to my old self by Monday. (I do plan on posting over the weekend.)