Louisiana Iris

We've told the irises that they can have the whole lower pond now and they are working hard to fill it up.  I also moved some cuttings to the BOD pond and they are doing well - even after last years' drought that almost dried up the pond.

I think this is the worst flooding we've seen in Jacobs' Creek!

The pond from the BOD.  You can see the "V" support at the end of the zip line if you look very carefully on the left side of the picture.

"New Creek" - new because it wasn't there before!

"Lake Oscars' Pasture"

We had about 5 inches of rain in a little less than 12 hours.  This is as close as I could get to the west bridge without wading more than shoe top height.  The bottom posts of the stairs show almost two feet of water depth. Along the path to the Treehouse, the water is over 200 feet wide!.

Progress on multiple fronts

A dam at the West Bridge

After many months of drought the pond is full again

First day's work on the new stage

The upper picture shows the little dam at the West Bridge that I finished yesterday.  From previous measurements this looked to be about the correct height to keep the pond full.  Now after all of the rain, the pond is full but there is about 3-4 inches of water going over the dam.  So I'll add one more row of bags of concrete mix and that will keep the pond at about the level it is in the second picture.  Before the dam, water would back up like this but after the rain it would quickly drain away.  Maybe we can keep more of it now - and this should keep water in the creek too.  The last picture is the stage after one day's work.  We've moved it back and added to it.  It was 96 square feet and will now be 240 square feet.

The Orange Trail is under there somewhere!

Conversation at breakfast after the storm last night:

Glynda: How much water was in the rain gauge?
Jim: None.
Glynda: None?  How can that be?
Jim:  It had blown over!

Gift cards

. . . paid for a new bench at the chapel!

Darn near done!

Looking better all the time!!  I was hoping to post video of Alex riding the new zip line but for technical reasons beyond my control those are not available.  In the first test Daniel came very close to landing in the pond - missed it by just 2-3 feet.  So we tightened it up a bit and now Daniel clears the pond fine but Alex is the one that comes close now - and no more tightening available (without major efforts).  So excuse us if we get all excited if you tell us that you weigh over 220 and you want to ride this thing.  We just know something that you don't!

On a more serious note - when we walked to trail early this morning after the heavy rains last night the water in the pond was beautiful - not a word that you can normally come even close to using when talking about the pond,  Then we climbed up to the tower and was admiring it from there when a couple of wood ducks landed there and started to swim around.  Really nice!

Here's one from the top. You can see the cable running from the upper left.  It goes just to the right side of the pier.

A few visual updates on the "Tower Bridge"

From a couple days ago -

Big honkin handrails!!!!

It's beginning to look almost park-like! It is smoke - stuff burning in the creek bed - including the big tree that took down the test zip line.  It's gonna be burning for several days - but it's OK,  it's in the creek bed!

Two Wildernest construction projects

This is the project we've been working on and we're almost to the point of adding the final bracing and hand rails. Then we'll need to redo the Zipline part of it.

This is the other construction project. It's being built on a candle holder in the chapel and the builder-artist has put many more hours into it than we have on our bridge-tower project. It's really very well done and there's a lot of beauty to it.

West Bridge Zipline Tower progress

This picture was taken from the BOD (overlook deck at the pond),  Look carefully at the area in the rectangle formed by the branches in the upper center of the picture.  Is that - stairs??  (You might want to double click the picture to make it bigger and then do it again to make it much bigger.)

This is the way it looks from the Orange Trail going toward the Treehouse!

This is looking even more impressive than our original concept!  We only worked on this in the afternoon.  Alex and Daniel are volunteering their time and talents to building a project at the Master Gardener Wildscape Garden and we worked there in the morning.  Goint to do the same thing again tomorrow.

Here comes the West Bridge Zipline Tower!

The red rope goes from the top of the tall post laying on the ground way in front of you, up to a pulley at the top of the ladder, and then towards you to the pick-up truck not in the picture.  It lifted the pole into place easily!  Daniel's idea!!

 

The Zipline deck was ready for the planking when we called it a day! 

(Just so you know - I know that zip line is two words, as is tree house, but at Wildernest they are capitalized and they are Zipline and Treehouse.  Of course we'll now have West Bridge Zipline and Treehouse Zipline!)

The Orange Trail West Bridge is underway!

Yes - we've got a lot happening here right now! Alex and Daniel started the Orange Trail West Bridge today!

4:06 PM - First stringer of the new bridge going in.  Daniel is standing on the old one.

4:47 PM - Old bridge is gone and both sides of the new bridge are in.

5:41 PM - Daniel driving home the last pier of the new bridge

6:38 PM - The last board of the new bridge going on!

Two hours and thirty-two minutes of work today.  But this structure is not finished.  This is going to be impressive when it's finished!  The zip-line tower part of it goes up tomorrow. And, yes, this did happen the very same day as the removal of the old camper trailer. (See the next post.)

Daniel killed a wild hog on the Red Trail

Daniel has been leaving bait for a couple weeks and it paid off last night.  This guy had his last meal just a moment before Daniel shot him.  (My flashlight was shining on his large tusks when Daniel took the picture with his phone camera.)  We are guessing that he must have weighed a couple hundred pounds.  Don't ask how we do know that his head weighed 25lbs. The hole in the ground where they have been digging for the bait is about four feet deep. How'd you like to meet him on the trail some day.  Glad this one is gone but there are a lot more where he came from!

After a slow, steady rain all night . . .

there's water in the creek again - and the pond level is rising!

Unusual tree

I've been making some walking sticks and canes recently. (I made one a while back and haven't been able to stop.) Walking the trail the other day I found this tree that's now becoming a cane. Not too often that a tree twists itself a couple times and then falls over at a ninety degree angle. But it's becoming a nice cane since it saw fit to do that!

How cows stay warm on a cold but sunny day

Walking the red trail, I detoured over to the fence where I could see some of Oscar's cows trying to stay warm. I like the picture! Before I could get off a second shot, half of them were standing up and the picture was gone.

What buzzards do on sunny mornings after a cold night

We saw this guy sunning himself as we left for our walk on the trail this morning. He was nice enough to sit there while I went back to the house, got the camera, changed lenses, and walked back across the meadow.

BTW - for family and friends and for future reference - we've renamed the long part of the "Orange Trail" to the "Red Trail" so there won't be any more discussions about the "Long Orange Trail" and the "Short Orange Trail".

Is this what old people do -

I've tried to make a map of the Orange Trail in the past but it was mostly guess work. This morning we walked the trail (using walking sticks that I've made recently) and, using the Garmin, making notes of the coordinates of key spots along the trail. It's suppose to be accurate within 17 ft. so we'll see what comes of that. But I had one of those moments as we approached the Treehouse - other people are out in the world working at their jobs and we're out here doing this. Oh well! (I need to do some more vacation posts.)

Feral hogs

This is just a picture from the internet but they're very much like the one we saw on the property this morning. On the way to the mailbox we would heard the sound of a hog in the woods very close to the house. I took a few steps down the Green Trail and saw one of these and heard a bunch of them scattering away in the undergrowth. Later in the day we walked the Orange Trail and saw places where they had been digging from one end of the trail to the other. I guess they had moved on to adjoining properties by then because we saw no more of them. But then they could have still been back along the long trail.

Zip2, ZODZip,

We're not sure what to call it but here's Daniel riding it. This was the third and final test after building it. At this point you still have to start from a twenty foot ladder. It goes over the pond (west to east) and the pond is looking really yucky (That's a technical term) right now. We're not sure what it was but something got Daniel's heart beating sorta fast on this ride!

I'm getting behind on my posting so I'll catch up here

Last week we drove over to Athens because that's the only place we could find to accept the kittens with a good chance of them being adopted rather than the alternative. When we were there we spent a little time at their arboretum where I took this picture. Kinda like it!



Yesterday we were in Carrollton and had lunch at a cafe on Addison Circle. We walked around the main plaza there and I took this similar photo. Also took the one below of a resident there helping me clean my plate:





It's been a week or so since the storm and we're seeing new tree losses down along the trail. The leaves on the fallen trees are beginning to die and what we didn't notice as fallen trees then, we do now. We also walked the long trail today and found several more - one was huge and it was along the west property line. This one, although the picture doesn't really show it, was a good size tree too.



This weekend was Mayfest in Winnsboro. This is a street shot and a picture taken in Art & Espresso. The guy in the black shirt is Gene. His wife, Suzanne, is the one with the white hair and the boy is their grandson. (They're looking at someone coming in the door.) Marilyn is the one that owns the shop. She's short but not as short as she looks here - she's getting something from under the cabinet. They make what's been recognized as the best coffee in Northeast Texas and their lunches are excellent too. It's every Wednesday lunch for us and Gene and Suzanne - and, as you can see, we were all there on Saturday too.





And you know what this:



Oh - one last thing. I posted a picture a while back of me and another Master Gardener accepting a local award for the Quitman Special Education greenhouse project we worked on last year. Recently the project won another award - a second place award for the Texas Master Gardner's 2009 Project.