Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
It was a long day, but Ken and I finished building and installing the two gates today. So the fence is officially done. We let the chickens celebrate this event by letting them out of the chicken coop to scratch inside their vast new garden fence for the first time.
Ken opens the door to let the chickens out. By the way, I believe we are seeing the pecking order here, left to right. The red chicken is No. 1 in the pecking order, so she is first up to the door.
All this new ground to scratch!
The first day lily of the year bloomed today. This is a hybrid lily. My common lilies, which I call railroad lilies, should start blooming any day now.
Hmmm. Another gate.
Cats really know their territory. I had kept Lily indoors for more than two weeks, mostly to try to get her to adjust to Ken’s presence. I let her out this morning. I noticed that she immediately started checking out the changes that have happened outdoors while she was trapped indoors. She walked the fence, found the gates, and noticed all the other changes.
Something’s missing.
Where’s the trailer, my old home?
What’s that over there?
Someone’s been busy here.
This is not so bad.
For more than a week, Ken and I have been hard at work on the deer fence. The posts are all in place, and the corner reinforcements are done. We’re ready to start putting up wire. I’ll blog the whole fence-building process when the job is done.
Two years ago, I cleared an acre of pine trees to make room for the house and garden area. I was amazed to find a magnolia growing among the pines. It was tall, spindly, and starved for light. The loggers worked around the magnolia tree, and in the last two years it has started to fill out. It’s about to bloom for the first time.
The coreopsis, which I planted from seed a year ago, is flourishing.
David and Ken use a rented machine to drill post-holes for the garden fence. The trailer is gone now, by the way. I sold it the same afternoon this photo was taken. The trailer was my home while Acorn Abbey was under construction.
Now that the house is built, much outdoor work remains to be done. The first priority is a deer fence. There is an overpopulation of white-tail deer here, and they can destroy a garden overnight. There also is a great deal of planting and landscaping work to be done. I was despairing of how all this work would get done, so that my vision for Acorn Abbey can continue to unfold. Much of this work — especially the fence-building — requires two people. It’s hard work, and I am not a young’un anymore. It would be possible to pay someone to do this work, but that wouldn’t be frugal, would it, if alternatives can be found?
The alternative turns out to be Ken Ilgunas. Ken, you may recall, visited Acorn Abbey during the winter. Part scholar and part adventurer, Ken was looking for a frugal summer situation that combined peace and quiet for reading with old-fashioned outdoor physical labor. Am I lucky or what? As I mentioned when Ken first visited Acorn Abbey, he has become quite a celebrity after he wrote a piece in Salon Magazine about how he lives in his van while attending graduate school at Duke University. Here’s a link to the Salon article. Many media outlets picked up Ken’s story and interviewed him. Here’s a link to an ABC News video. A literary agent recruited Ken, and they’re working on a book proposal about Ken’s experience living in the van while going to Duke. Ken brought 50 books for summer reading from the Duke library.
On Monday, we picked three gallons of strawberries at Mabe’s Berry Farm and put up 17 pints of strawberry preserves. Photos of the preserve-making will follow soon. We also started building the garden fence. It’s an ambitious fence project. The fence is to be 365 feet long and almost 8 feet high. It will surround the garden area, the chicken house, and my small orchard of 11 trees. After several dawn-to-dusk workdays, the fence posts are all planted. Next week we’ll work on the wire. I’m planning to save the fence-building photos and post them all at once, hoping that our fence-building experience and methods may be useful to someone else who needs to build a deer fence.
I’m exhausted from a week of hard work (though Ken doesn’t seem to be). I’ve declared that we’re going to take the weekend off from hard labor outdoors.
Ken caps strawberries.
The mystery buds have bloomed. However, I still don’t know what they are. Can anyone identify them?
Update: My sister has identified them: coreopsis.
Waiting to be planted
In July of 2008, I planted 300 day lily sets on the bank above my driveway. They’re thriving, and they should start blooming later this month. All these day lilies are the humble orange “railroad” lilies like the ones that grow wild.
And now an old friend (who happens to be the best gardener I’ve ever known) has sent me six varieties of exotic day lilies. They came from Stout Gardens.
I think the most interesting of the lot is the “Joan Senior,” a white day lily that I assume is named for Joan of Arc, one of whose symbols is the fleur de lys.
Here’s one of the first roses of summer. These are low maintenance, low-growing “knockout” roses. I planted them beside the ditch along the road.
Blackberries volunteer everywhere. This one is in the ditch beside the road, but the edge of the woods is lined with young blackberry bushes.
I’ve planted a number of arbor vitae trees. They’ve become one of my favorite evergreens. They’re growing well. If you look closely, you can see the lighter-colored new growth on the edges of the leaves.
Mystery bud: Last spring I planted several pounds of bulk wildflower seeds. Most of them were perennials and didn’t bloom the first year. This year they should bloom. Here’s an example. I have no idea what it is, but any day now the bud should open, and we’ll see what the mystery buds are.
