I couldn’t resist the lure of the early evening light. After dinner I went out to dig a little more between the rambling rose and the Mystery Tree of Blue Berries. My impatiens are still in their little 6-packs, and they won’t plant themselves.
It’s been below freezing the last two nights. I draped sheets over all the outside flowers, and I think they did all right. Some I brought in and they’re wondering where all the nice sunlight went. Just one more night, I think, and it’ll be safe to put them back out.
Anyway, as I cleared small foliage and sticks from the half-round budding garden plot, I discovered the branchy stumps of two ex-bushes that had quite large root systems. The tap roots are too big to shovel through and too deep to saw. I will ask Karl if there might be a time soon when he can drive the dynahoe over here and dip its massive bucket into the lawn just there. First I’ll get his opinion as to the dimensions of the leach field. I’m sure it doesn’t extend that far, but I’ll ask anyway. I won’t be able to remove those stumps on my own.
I also dug up a couple of really impressively sized rocks, one of which looks like it might be a nice quartz. I’ll have to wash it off and see.
Having gone as far as I could there, I switched my attention to the top of the rock wall. Facing the driveway, I’d cleared the right half last year of its massive overgrowth of bittersweet, poison ivy and weeds. I left a bit of honeysuckle. But the left side had more wild rose and larger bushes, so I hadn’t tackled that yet. Bittersweet had almost completely killed a tall shrub of some kind, so I commenced pruning them both away. It’ll leave a nice hole which will one day house one of a number of lilacs. As I chopped and moved branches, careful not to get stabbed by the cascades of wild rose with the sharpest thorns ever, I noticed a three-leaved something right at the base of the brittle bush.
A closer look showed me it wasn’t poison ivy.
Removing a couple more sticks revealed the hooded flower of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit!!
I cleared a bit more around it so it would get more light, and suddenly realized I’d been hearing a thrush calling.
I heard one thrush last year, just for a while in the summer, which I determined to be a Wood Thrush. They have these miraculous calls, where they make their own diminishing echo. I wasn’t 100% sure this one was a Wood Thrush, as it lacked the final trill I’m used to, but the rest of the call was similar. I turned on the birding application on my iPhone and Thrush and I called back and forth to each other for a while. Then we both went in for the night.
All in all, satisfying in the extreme.
Healer, Musician, Bookmaker, Poet 
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