Nosy Bear

 Testing the front door! Scary! This is just feet from our bedroom.

Bear Family

 

Finally! A MOOSE!!!

 Just before 5am this morning. It must have seen that truck coming because it was in a hurry!

-JC-

New Cameras!

 It's been a long time. The wildlife cameras haven't been very effective for a long time. We've recently purchased a Ring Camera and a couple of Ring Doorbells (with one more camera coming just as soon as the price drops - thank you camelcamelcamel.com). We're getting very clear pictures of cats, racoons, foxes and opossums so far. This morning, we finally caught a bear. Here it is.

We originally started with the wildlife cams after we saw a moose in that same area. We've seen 2 more since then but have had no luck with the cams. Here's hoping!

-JC-

Make that Oakham Odette!

We came to the conclusion it probably wasn't good to have an animal digging around in, and possibly damaging, our leach field. We called animal control about having our groundhog captured and relocated. Someone was supposed to call back but we were told that they would probably refer us to an outfit called Critter Control. When they didn't call back, we just went ahead and called Critter Control directly.

They came out at 7:30 this morning and set up their traps so that there was no way for the animal the leave or enter the hutch without passing through a trap. Our groundhog was in a trap by lunchtime.

When I first approached to take a picture, she rolled on her back and hid her face in the corner
revealing that Oakham Odie was really Oakham Odette.

After she calmed down a bit.

We let Critter Control know that they had an angry groundhog in their trap and they came to get her. Her release point will be many miles away. I would have released her a couple of miles down the road in the state watershed area but the Critter Control guy said she'd be back in no time.

The guy did say that she was probably 3 years old and had probably been with us most of that time. She's probably had a litter every year. Fortunately, the babies leave home a 3 months and scatter far and wide.

Just in case there are others, the traps will stay in place until until tomorrow morning. Once they are gone, I'll set a smoke bomb off in the hutch and block the entrance. That will let me know where any other entrances are. With that known, I'll lace the hole(s) and surrounding area(s) with repellant and fill the hole(s) with large rocks, gravel and dirt.

-JC-

Oakham Odie!

There has been a burrow up on the house-facing side of our leach field for the past few years. I've tried several times to fill it in but it always seems to get dug anew. I've tried setting the wildlife cameras to catch whatever lives in the burrow but, until now, all attempts have failed.

It's possible that the burrow has gone through a succession of owners but we definitely know who's living there now. We have a groundhog (woodchuck, marmot, etc.) who seems to feel so safe when its in the proximity of its burrow that it will let us approach to within a few feet before diving to safety.

We first noticed it standing tall on its mound like a prairie dog or meerkat and we now see it all the time. Its diet includes wild strawberry leaves and shagbark hickory nuts which are both abundant on our property.

Yesterday, I put one of the wildlife cameras on a short tripod and set it about 6 feet from the burrow. The results are fantastic!

For the next round, I've reset the camera to take still pictures.

-JC-

AND ONE DAY, LIKE A MIRACLE, HE'LL BE GONE

We saw this sign a couple of times. Once was next door to our daughter, Briar, in Rutland, MA and the other was in Holden, MA. Both looked homemade and the only thing that we were able to find online was a bumper sticker on Etsy. Making our own was the only option.

Briar has a printer that makes vinyl decals. She worked up a design and cut the decals. We ordered blank signs (had to order a minimum of 3) and Briar applied the decals. We're really pleased with the results.

My sister Stacy and her husband Jack saw Briar's mockup and wanted a sign. Shipping a sign to Lake Oswego, OR was prohibitively expensive so they ordered their own blank signs and we sent them a set of decals. The sign is now bicoastal!

-JC-

Wildlife

We haven't seen a lot of wildlife lately, probably because we stopped putting the bird feeders out and because of all of the brush clearing that I've done. The feeders were a big draw for the bears and the spilled seed was a draw for rodents that serve as prey for many of our other local predators.

This small bear was our first of the season:

This was a good shot of a deer:

Racoons and skunks have been too numerous to bother with. We've had porcupines and squirrels climbing across the camera lenses. And we've had a couple of bleary foxes. Still waiting for our first bobcat.

-JC-

5th Massiversary

It's hard to believe but it's already been 5 years since we arrived in Massachusetts, here's the link to our arrival post..

That was the arrival at the Pine Acres Campground in Oakham. We had never heard of Oakham and had no idea that we'd end up living there. We still had a couple of months of house hunting, escrow and waiting for the movers ahead of us but it all worked out.

-JC-

Late Snow Storm

It's April 18th. We've had to restrain ourselves to keep from starting our vegetable garden. The rule is: "Never before Mothers Day" and, apparently, there's a reason for that.

We had 70 MPH winds and heavy rain early in the week and had a tree come down across the road.

The tree broke off about 10' up and fell across the road. Someone must have pushed it onto the shoulder before we were even aware that it was down. We got out in the rain and raked all of the remaining debris off the road and out of the driveway across the road. This picture was taken the next day.

We hauled all of the small stuff around to a new burn pile and cut the trunk up, stacked it and put a "Free" sign on it (as you can see, I took down that 10' stump). The free firewood sat there all day and then disappeared under cover of darkness {except for the splintery pieces from either side of the break - they were added to the burn pile).

I had thought that I was through with burning for the year. I had burned 12 piles and the weather had turned drier and warmer. With this good start on a 13th pile, I added some of my brush cuttings to it and had one last burn. My permit expires on May 2 so that will definitely be my last.

On Thursday morning, we had a 1/2" of snow. It never collected on the roads and was fully melted early in the day.

This morning, we had about 6" of very wet snow. Again, nothing on the roads (the roads get so much sun this time of the year that they are like heat sinks). It's almost 11 am and the amount on the ground is diminishing even as the snow continues to come down heavily.

I just fixed the windmill yesterday. The high winds had bent the blades back.

We're ready for spring with all of our garden ornaments out of storage.

The rhody on the other side of the door has a robin's nest that we can see out the window. Mama's been sitting on 2 or 3 very blue eggs. Today, it's piled high with snow. If mama's there at all, she's under it. Guess we'll see how that works out.

Our unplanted raised vegetable bed.

We're wondering where we're going to find flowers for our flower cart this year.

-JC-

Started quarantining on March 11

My 69th birthday:  4/13/20

Life under quarantine has been an experience.

This was driven home a couple of days ago when we received our Google Maps Timeline for the month of March. If you're not familiar with what that is, the Google Maps phone app keeps track of everywhere that you go and then provides a report with maps (daily/weekly/monthly), photos, milages, etc. It even knew if you are driving or walking (somehow). Nothing invasive or Big Brotherlike at all.

There have been interesting months that included Scotland and Ireland or San Francisco, Hawaii and Los Angeles. This wasn't one of them.

Kristen put a 'Q' in our calendar on March 11 to indicate that we had started to quarantine ourselves.

Before that, we were treading lightly but did some things that we knew were about to end for a while. We had lunch at 3 of our favorite spots, made trip to our local market and Kristen got her hair cut.

After March 11, grocery shopping accounted for just about everything. Kristen braved the local market a couple of times during the 6-7am senior hours. That was too stressful so, after determining that grocery delivery doesn't exist for Oakham, we landed on Wal-Mart. Kristen fills our online cart, chooses a pickup time and pays. Once we park in the designated spot, someone runs out groceries out and loads them into the back of the truck.

On March 15, I did take Gus to Lowes to get doors for his new home office (a break of quarantine but his truck wasn't working).

We did make one trip just to get out of the house. We'd never seen Quabbin Reservoir. It's just to the West of us and is the main water source for Boston and about 50 other cities. It stretches about 20 miles from North to South and the fact that the major East/West roads have to pass to the North or South of it explains why our area is as isolated as it is. We took a picnic and stayed in the car. We'll have to return when we can get out of the car.

Other than that, Google provided reports and maps of our daily walks.

Social distancing hasn't been a problem (except for my trip to Lowe's with Gus). Gus had a piece of wood that needed to be ripped down for one of his office doors. Briar gave me the measurements and drove it over while I got the saw set up. She handed it to me from 6' away. I made the cut and handed it back. Later, Gus needed to borrow my 1/2" drill. I set it down at the edge of the driveway as stepped back while Gus loaded it into his motorcycle an left. When I retrieved it a few days later, Briar just left it on her porch (the kids waved from inside).

One thing that was a problem with Wal-Mart was meat. Briar has told us about a local farm that raises grass fed beef and will deliver the meat. They also brew beer and have a taproom (several local farms brew beer and have taprooms). They will be delivering meat and a growler of IPA this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon (probably tomorrow since we're having a thunderstorm right now). They'll leave it in the ice chest that we have on the porch.

Glad that we got our raised vegetable garden built and filled with soil back when we did. Our normal sources for plants might not be open this year but we think that we've got alternatives lined up. We grow lettuce from seed. Briar is growing seedlings that she will share. People up the road have tomato seedlings in their greenhouse and will have them out on a table (payment via the honor system - we'd rather not touch cash but sometimes it's necessary).

-JC-

Productive Winter

Kristen put a couple of items on my winter todo list this year (for those days when it was too bone chillingly cold to work outside).

First was the kitchen range hood. For some inexplicable reason, it was set up so that it vented back into the kitchen rather than to the outside. Kristen couldn't cook a steak without opening a window so the smoke alarm wouldn't go off.

The new hood (very similar to the old except for the stupid part).

Through the wall into the garage. It was only a couple of feet over to the outside wall. I had to cut a much larger hole through the wall because, of course, a stud ran right through where the ducting needed to go and some reframing was necessary.

The new vent.

Kristen's other todo item had to do with the dryer venting. Our laundry room is on the 1st floor in the middle of the front part of the house. The dryer vent goes through the wall into the area under the front stairs where it elbows through the floor to the basement. After passing through a number of bends and constrictions, it makes its way to the outside through an old window opening that had been replaced with plywood.

My job was to replace the entire duct system and eliminate all of the constrictions. I replaced all of the bends an constrictions with metal ducting and only used flexible ducting on the straightaways. While doing that, I realized that that plywood panel needed to go. Soil was against it on the outside and the bottom was half rotted away, allowing mice to enter the basement.

Just to complicate things, the dryer vent wasn't the only thing passing through the plywood. the electrical conduit to one of the air conditioners and a drain (from something) were also there. I managed to remove them, replace the plywood with a concrete backer-board panel and then reinstall them.

Finally, there was my brush clearing and burning. When we took most of November off to go to California and Hawaii, I wondered how much of a dent I had put into my brush clearing time. Fortunately, this has been a relatively mild winter and I've managed to clear enough for 10 brush pile burns so far. I hope to do my 11th and final burn tomorrow. My burn permit is good until May 2 but, unless we get more snow, I won't feel comfortable with my infernos.

I've found a lot of metal to remove and take to the recycler. There's wire fencing on metal poles buried in the brush along the perimeter. I've removed that as I've come to it. I found a spool of barbed wire that must way a hundred pounds. I also found what I think must be a roll bar from a tractor. It weighs so much (at least 200 pounds) that I'm still puzzling over how I'm going to get it out of the woods and into the truck.

The focus this season was clearing between the lawn and the wall along Barre Rd..and along the back wall from Barre Rd. Here are a couple of pictures from the upstairs windows:

Back wall along the treeline at the left. Barre Rd. at the left.

This is to the left of the previous picture. 

To the right of the 1st picture. Corner of Coldbrook Rd and Barre Rd through the trees.

My one last project was a raised vegetable garden bed. The old beds were in back of the garage and were out of sight and too far from the faucet. I broke them apart last fall, added the wood to my 1st burn pile and filled in the low areas of the lawn with the dirt.

Outside the kitchen.

-JC-

Our Vacation

I ranted about vacation issues in my last posting but promised to actually cover the trip with my next effort. Here goes...

Our trip was a long one and was scheduled around my Mom's 90th Birthday Celebration in Walnut Creek, CA. From there, we continued West to spend 2 weeks in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. On the way home, we stopped for a week in Thousand Oaks, CA and spent Thanksgiving with our Son Grant and family.

When we first looked at options for getting to and from Logan Airport, we decided to rent a car going to the airport and to Uber home. Our flight to San Francisco had an early departure so our plan was to rent the car at Worcester Airport the day before and then make an early trip to the airport. When snow was forecast for that morning, we decided to go early and spend the night at a hotel near the airport. That was such a nice way to do it that we'll probably do it again.

Since I already mentioned our plan to Uber home, I'll finish that part of the story. After our issues with the car going to the airport (see my previous post), Budget gave us a free day of rental. When heavy snow was forecast for the time of our return home, we decided to use that discount to rent a car to get home.

So, we picked up the rental in Worcester on Nov. 7 and spent the night in Winthrop, MA. We left for San Francisco the next morning. We arrive just after noon, picked up our rental and drove to our hotel in Walnut Creek. Our Son Grant was there with his family and my Sisters were there with their families. We all had  great weekend with my Mom.

Saturday, Nov. 9 was Kristen's Birthday. Rather than make it a huge extended family event, the 2 of us had dinner with Grant and family and then returned to my Mom's for cake with the extended group. Sunday, Nov. 10 was Mom's 90th birthday and we celebrated with a luncheon for about 40 people at one of her favorite restaurants (Thanks to my Sister Stacy for making all of the arrangements!).

We didn't take a lot of pictures on this leg of the trip but we did go for a walk in our old neighborhood (of 22 years, 1984-2006) and talk to some of the neighbors. This is our old house.

We spent Monday night near SFO before heading to Kona on Tuesday morning. We've stayed in Kona many times. We spent most of our visits at a place a couple of miles from town so, to get to the restaurants, we had to drive and pay for parking. On our last visit, we stayed in a VRBO that had a great water view but was right in the middle of the restaurant area. It was no longer listed on VRBO but I still had the owner's contact information. The unit was available and he put his Mother-in-law in charge of setting everything up. She was unresponsive and we came to realize that the transaction was a lot riskier without VRBO guaranteeing things. We canceled and went through VRBO to book a nicer unit that was right next door to the first.

Our unit was 3rd in from the left, 3rd down from the top (shades were down on the 2 units above us). Our previous unit was 1 to the right (behind the palm).

View from our lanai. Restaurant with blue roof used to be a Bubba Gump (and was a restaurant that we liked before that). The restaurant to the left used to be a Charthouse. There's a great farmers market just across the street from the blue roof.

Looking the other direction from our porch. There's a whole row of restaurants along the left side of the street (with more restaurants up the hill behind them). One of our favorites, Huggos, is on the ocean side right next to the big hotel.

Our building from out at the big hotel.

Sunset from our lanai

Sunset from our lanai.

On past trips, liners have arrive every day or two. This time, we had two in the first week and then none. The cruise lines must avoid the time around Thanksgiving. This was taken at dawn.

Kristen with the tikis at Hikiau Heiau at Kealakekua Bay. She posed her with Briar and Grant back in December, 2001.

(Yes, that's my finger) This spot, just toward the airport from Kona is a historic site. and was a great snorkeling spot.

Lots of turtles. The ancient Hawaiians built fish traps out in the bay. The traps were walled areas that the fish could swim into and then not find their way out. Lots of fish in there and I fortunately was able to stand up to spot the way back out.

We left Kona on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and spent a great week with Grant, Melissa and the grandkids.

We finally returned home on Tuesday, December 3. A huge snowstorm that was forecast for Sunday continued on through Tuesday morning. Fortunately, Kristen had the foresight to find someone through Facebook to clear the driveway before we got home.

Some pictures of the snow the next morning:

We had taken the bird feeders down back in early summer after the bears had mangled them (see earlier blog). We finally thought that the bears would be in hibernation and that it would be same to put the feeders back out. The bears struck again within 2 days.

Just to complicate things, we were responsible for cutting, installing and decorating the town tree

and bandstand. The tree was several hundred feet from the road in the deep snow so that was a lot of fun. Before we could even go for the tree, we had to clear a path across the town common to the band stand and clear the snow from the grandstand.

We had had a number of volunteers to help us decorate but the 20 degree temperatures on Saturday helped all but one find reasons to bail. Even so, we were pleased with the result (but they may have to find someone else to do it next year).

-JC-

Trip Issues

We just returned from almost 4 weeks away from home. We started out with a few days in Walnut Creek, CA to celebrate my Mom's 90th birthday. From there, we went to Kona, HI for a couple of weeks. Finally, we spent Thanksgiving week with our Son and his family in Thousand Oaks, CA.

Sorry if the rest of this sounds like a rant, but that's kind of what it is it is.

Our flights were, for the most part, on time. BOS-SFO, SFO-KOA and KOA-LAX came off without a hitch (we even had an empty seat between us on the to/from KOA flights). Then there was the LAX-BOS flight.

The 8:20am flight was rescheduled to 9:39am because of snow issues in Boston and then it was moved back to 8:20am. When boarding time rolled United realize that they had forgotten to notify the crew that the flight was back on schedule (they were able to keep passengers aware of what was happening through a multitude of texts but, somehow, the crew didn't get the word). The flight was rescheduled to 9:00am, boarding proceeded and we were just about to the door of the plane when they had us return to the terminal. The delay had cost us our place in the lineup and our eventual departure was moved to 11:10am (with actual departure closer to noon).

That was flights. Then we had car rentals. Our original plan was to pick a rental car up at Worcester Airport the day before and drive it to BOS and then Uber back home at the end of the trip (the rental prices were much higher coming home). We booked that rental and rentals at SFO, KOA, and LAX.

On rentals between airports, you usually get whatever it is that needs to be moved. Our Worcester Airport to KOA rental was a new Camero that reeked like a dirty bong (I wish that I'd noticed it sooner). It was threatening to snow so we decided to spend the night before our flight near the airport. We drove all the way into Boston with the windows open (Brrr).

I wrote to Budget about their foul car and was eventually given a coupon that was good for one day of rental. In order to claim that coupon, I had to register on their site. The coupon made renting a car a favorable alternative to taking an Uber so we booked a rental for our trip home from the airport.

Our rentals at SFO and KOA were uneventful (non-Budget). Then we got to LAX. It was Tuesday of Thanksgiving week so it's understandable that things were busy at Budget. We inched through their line for over an hour and were then told that we should have gone to their FastBreak kiosk and avoided the line. That would have been nice to know. Apparently, when I registered to receive the coupon, I became a member of their FastBreak program. The car that they gave us only had 8 miles on the odometer so that was a plus.

Then there was that final rental home from BOS. We followed the FastBreak signs past the Budget counter to the line of cars in FastBreak slots. There was no indication whatsoever of who those cars might be for. We backtracked, looking for a FastBreak board with our name/contract on it. Eventually, we found a FastBreak counter with a long, long line with one person at the counter (and another that wandered in ever 10 minutes or so, helped one person and then wandered off again). When we reached the counter 30 minutes later, they were unable to print the contract because the printer was out of paper (you'd think that it would have been pre-printed). We were told where to find our car (not in the FastBreak line) and that the person at the exit would print our contract for us. That person didn't know how to do that so we had to park the car and return to the desk. The line was still long but I went straight to the person at the counter. Miraculously, he was able to immediately produce a contract. Fastbreak seems to be a wonderful thing (avoid it like the plague).

Arriving home, we found that we'd had about 18" of snow. We had been warned and Kristen had hired someone to clear the driveway. As agreed, he cleared the straight part of the driveway all the way to the back edge. We were able to pull all the way in but still had to cross about 20' of 18" snow to get to the house. Interestingly, we'd had at least one package delivered (well ahead of what the tracking indicated) and it was just sitting in the yard on top of the snow. If there are other packages, we may not find them until the snow melts. I got the blower out to clear a path so we could bring the luggage in. We cleared the rest of it in the morning.

Which brings us to our first day home. Lots to do to get the house out of vacation mode. Once the driveway was cleared, we had to return the rental to Worcester Airport and then to a large marketing. An unexpected bonus task was dealing with a pellet stove that worked fine when we got home and in the morning but wouldn't fire up when we returned from marketing (the stove has a long history of issues). No one can look at it before late on Christmas Eve.

The big task on day 2 was to get ready to decorate the town common on Saturday afternoon. We somehow acquired that responsibility a couple of years ago but we've never had to deal with snow before. But first, we decide to pay a visit to the people who sold us our stove. It seems to be a real lemon and we're working on them to replace it. We did manage to get their service call moved up to the 18th (from Christmas Eve).

Back at home, we cleared a path across the town commons, shoveled the snow out of the bandstand and got things set up to receive the tree. After lunch, we headed out to the New Braintree tree farm that always donates the town tree. It was hard work hauling a large tree across the tundra but the tree is now in it's stand in the bandstand.

We'll have lots of help for the much easier decorating job on Saturday but we sure could have used some of that help today.

That's enough of my bitching and moaning. Maybe my next vacation blog will actually deal with the vacation,

-JC-

Baby Bobcat

-JC-

Brush Cutting: Explanation and Progress

Kristen was mentioning the other day that many of our friends and family members that aren't local to New England (and that's just about all of them) probably have no real idea of the reasoning behind or the extent of the brush cutting that I've been doing each year.

The house, driveway and lawn area account for less than 1/2 of our 2.6 acres. The remaining acreage is mostly woods and leach field. The entire property is surrounded by fieldstone walls that were thrown up when the property was cleared for farming 150-180 years ago. Here's a link to a post that I made in 2015 about our Plot Lines.

The leach field was put in place when the house was restored in 2006. It's maybe 1/2 acre and is essentially a very large mound of sand that was trucked in for the purpose. People plant lawns over their leach fields but, from what we've read, it would be a bad idea to let trees or larger plants take over the leach field.

The primary plant on our leach field has been a native New England bamboo. It is dense and can easily grow 6-8 feet in a month. It disappears with the first frost but comes back with a vengeance in the Spring. From what I've read, as long as it has leaves, it stores energy in its root. Cut it off and it has to use that stored energy to regrow. Keep it cut off and it will eventually use up its supply of stored energy and die.

This summer, I have kept the bamboo cut off at ground level. It has needed cutting less and less often so I'm pretty sure that it's working. We'll have our first freeze this week so I guess we'll see what happens in the Spring. I'll get after any that shows up at first sprout.

We don't seem to have bamboo anyplace else on the property. What we do have is multiflora rose, poison ivy and tree strangling bittersweet vines.

The multiflora rose is an Asian plant that some idiot thought would make excellent fencing to keep cattle in (or out). It gets huge and it's large thorny branches wrap themselves around everything in reach. Multiflora likes sun to it grows on the edge of the woods and climbs trees to get closer to the sun.

Poison ivy seems to prefer the shade. There seems to be 2 varieties. One variety covers the forest floor line a ground cover. The other variety grows like a vine and climbs trees.

The multiflora and poison ivy are the nastiest to get rid of but their climbing vines don't seem to be particularly threatening to the trees. The bittersweet vines are another case. Bittersweet can be 2" in diameter and they can choke the life right out of the trees. They are very leafy and they can completely cover a tree. We've had cases where we didn't realize that a tree was dead until we killed the bittersweet vines (by severing their connections to the ground).

When we first moved in, the brush had encroached to the point where it was overhanging the edges of the lawn. The multiflora thorns frequently made mowing a painful experience.

These lilac bushes were tangled up in multiflora vines. The closest lilac and row of forsythia bushes were planted later.

We had no idea that these rocks were even there.

Looking across the back of the lawn toward the leach field.

Looking from the back corner of the lawn toward Coldbrook Rd. The non-lawn area here was completely overgrown with multiflora.

That same stretch of lawn looking back from the Coldbrook Rd. end.

 Part of my clearing operation has been cleaning up under the trees on Coldbrook Rd.

Cleaned woods to the left of the lawn. Our property line hits Coldbrook Rd. at the storm drain which is just to the left of the concrete post.

At the other side of the driveway, I've cleaned under the woods to the corner with Barre Rd.

There's a a lot of clearing still to be done once you round the corner.

There's a stone wall along Barre Rd. that was so overgrown that it was invisible and inaccessible from both sides. After the town came by this summer and mowed down the big stuff, I sprayed the entire Barre side of the wall with brush killer. It's still a work in progress but I've been working on cutting the now-dead brush.

From Barre Rd., looking down the wall that marks the back edge of our property.

From that same point, looking down the Barre Rd. property line / wall. That building down at the corner is Rose Cottage, the oldest surviving house it Oakham (1790's I think). It's been empty for years but our friend Brian just bought it and is in the process of restoring it.

Closer to the corner.

 Now let's look at that wall from the inside.

Looking across the leach field toward the point where the back wall meets the Barre Rd. wall (back wall is across the top and a little of the Barre Rd. wall is visible on the right). I have never been able  to clear all the way to the wall because, at some point long ago, the property was fenced in for goats. The overgrown wire fencing was several inside the stone wall and nearly invisible inside the tangle of brush (deadly for chainsaw and brush cutter blades). My project this year has been to remove the fencing and posts so that I could clear brush all the way to the wall. So far, I've removed the fencing all the way up Barre Rd. and maybe a third of the way across the back.

Closer look at that same corner. A couple of my burn piles are in the shot (I'll be able to burn from Jan 15 through May 1).

Rose Cottage through the trees. There's still a lot of clearing to do in this area.

Looking further along the back wall. 

This patch will definitely get my attention this year. I learned a long time ago that, since the multiflora vines grow toward the light, it's much easier to approach and cut the trunks from the woods side. The last couple of pictures have been the woods area that I've cleaned up as I approach this final tier of multiflora.

Back wall straight back from the house. Just to the left of this, the wall turns uphill before continuing farther to the left. It then turns left again and becomes our common border with all of the houses on Maple St. An old hand-dug stone well is up at that highest corner but it may take a couple of more years before that can be easily accessed.

This area is scary. It's back behind the huge log that was in some of the earlier pictures. The multiflora will have to be cut out first but most of the trees are being choked out by bitterroot. We had a tree blow over back here recently. It hung up midair on a smaller tree so I cut the smaller tree to eliminate the hazard. With the smaller tree cut, neither tree budged. Both were suspended by vines from a third tree. Quite a crash when I cut that one.

This is near the back corner of the lawn. The end of the huge log is behind this bunch of multiflora. This is pretty much the same bitterroot section of woods that was in the last shot. The red dots mark treed that are dead and need to be cut.

I've been inching my way toward the backs of the Maple St. properties each year. This clump of multiflora in the front is the last bit that I'll need to do in this area...

...Then it's like this all the way back to the well. This kind of area just needs some thinning out.

The house from the back wall / Barre Rd. corner.

-JC-