Burned honeysuckle, garlic mustard

All the honeysuckle that was cut last Sunday was burned, along with bunches and bunches of garlic mustard. There is still a lot of garlic mustard and honeysuckle out there, but it's a (small) dent.

Roadway fixed

The main drive and the berm on the western side of the property have been fixed. They were both washed out during the massive storm of a few weeks ago. Now they look new again. Hopefully, March's storm wasn't a harbinger.

Pulling garlic mustard

Spent about 1 hour pulling garlic mustard. It looks like they are coming in with a vengeance this year: I am pulling up about 1 paper grocery-bag-full of garlic mustard each morning, and I have barely gotten from the house to the frog pond! (And there are a lot under the Douglas Fir that I'm waiting until they start to stalk out for flowering before I go after them; the ones along the roadway are just about to pop, so they are a bigger concern.)

Spring peepers calling again

The temperature is back up to the 60s today, and it's almost like a second spring, with a few *pweep... pweeep* sounds coming once again from the frog pond.

Cut a bunch of honeysuckle

Yesterday, I had some help to cut a lot of honeysuckle from near the cabin. There are tons of other invasive shrubbery throughout the area near the cabin and frog pond, but it's just more work to do! Maybe for the next volunteer work day...

One-plus year of photos

Since 1/1/2011 through to 3/18/2012 I have been taking a photo (or two) every day from the front of the cabin.



I had put together a version last May, in which I organized things in a more systematic way (and included photos from before 2011), but this one took each photo, put them through Windows Movie Maker (without centering them all to a common point) and then running it through the "stabilize" function in YouTube, and adding a music track that YouTube suggested might work. Admittedly, it is quite jerky (compared to the previous version), but it still (hopefully) shows the many faces of Saginaw Forest through a year.

Spring dawning

Various photos of our early spring:

Blossoming maples around the campfire circle


Damnable garlic mustard popping up


Invasives are already leafing out


A wonderful sunset