Planted in loving memory of the trees which once stood here. They are buried here btw 🙂
:( November 29, 2012
1 day a week for 21 weeks straight I have dedicated my self to laboring to make this project happen ON THE WRONG PLOT OF LAND!!! I can not even convey the stream of emotions I have gone through since I discovered the mistake. It all started because I was attempting to get the project site on the map on thePOOSH.org and it was showing up in the “wrong place”….or I have been in the wrong place. I am not arrogant enough to assume that I know more than google earth so I looked into things. It took a few minutes to track the right page down and then I had to open internet exploder because I couldn’t look at the plot maps online using google…anyway when I looked at the deed and looked at the plot maps I could clearly see I was in fact in the wrong. I wasn’t sure what to do so I gave Pug a call. You all might remember him from the post Neighbors. He’s the guy that offered to help with getting a driveway in. He is also a builder and as soon as I told him I could tell it kind of blew his mind. He got off the phone long enough to take a look at some plot maps himself and sure enough I am supposed to be directly across the street from Pug, not down the street. Bottom line is the lady from the real estate office made a mistake when she showed me the plots and then again when she marked the plot for me. You know this is one of the things I was worried about. I still have the e-mail I sent her asking her to please meet me out there because I wanted to make sure I was certain which plot it was before closing. We talked on the phone later and she told me she had marked it with pink tape for me and that I shouldn’t have a problem finding it. You can see the bits of pink marking tape in some of the early blog pictures.
On the good side I have friends getting involved and we will be having a work party there this Sunday to try to get as much of my stuff as possible moved to the correct plot. The real estate lady says she will “get it right” and I am trusting her that she will do so. If you can lend a hand let me know. The property is in Ravenel on Fox Dr and I should be there by 11am. Many hands make light work!
Work party November 23, 2012
I will be out at my property this Sunday 11/25/12. I’m not sure exactly what I will be doing but a friend wanted to come over and hang out with me for the day so I thought why not make a party out of it. I have brush mounds that still need covered, wood that needs to be cut, split, and stacked to dry and an idea for a greenhouse from french doors and old windows that I have. I’m not sure exactly what time I will get out there but it will be before noon. If anyone wants to ride out with me let me know. I live in North Charleston and the property is in Ravenel on Fox Dr. It is easy to find and impossible to miss but let me know if you need directions. You can leave a message here or message me on facebook http://www.facebook.com/revivalnatural
Roundwood arbor (work in progress) September 11, 2012
I found a use for small trees I am cutting down 🙂
TIMBER! (Well hopefully anyway.) August 10, 2012
I just got off the phone with a guy that has a small sawmill and would be interested in clearing out the huge pines on my property. He will come take a look to make sure it is worth his time and then hopefully he will take down the big pines and remove them. He doesn’t have a way to deal with the stumps but that is ok. I will take them into account when placing buildings and overtime they will decompose. I let him know that it was fine for him to leave the tops, crooked parts, branches etc. Those will actually be perfect for what I need. The huge logs would be way too much for me to handle and it would be such a shame for such lovely trees to be cut into cordwood instead of being used as poles or lumber. He says he needs to build a barn and this will make it so he won’t have to cut so many trees on his own place. If all goes as planned it should be of benefit to everyone involved. I LOVE BARTERING!
Shoes
A whole garbage bag of them. This was the weirdest thing I found today. I knew there was some garbage in the ditch, but I had no idea it was this bad until I started clearing back the brush and ferns.
Looking up July 14, 2012
I spent the night on my plot of land for the first time last night. I stayed up until 2:30am slowly feeding a small fire limbs from the 3 trees I cut down on 7-4-12 . When I woke up this morning and crawled out of my makeshift tarp shelter I looked up. I actually have a small clearing now 🙂
Some tree IDs:
Lower middle- southern yellow pine. I have many of these but plan to take most of them down because they seem to rot at the base and fall over. The one you can see in the picture is actually quite a ways away but leans quite a bit. It seems stable and that particular tree isn’t showing signs of rot yet, but another one out on the property is rotting at the base, and leaning. I want all of these away from my future building site so won’t have to go through the hassle of removing them while trying not to hit the house 10 years from now or have one fall on my home or outbuildings.
Just left of the pine, on the lower edge of the picture, is a swamp magnolia, also known by sweet bay, and many other common names. This is not the same as the sweet bay leaves used in cooking. The sweet bay used for cooking is Laurus noblis. Magnolia virginiana is the tree I am talking about here and it does have some folk remedies associated with it but to my knowledge is not used for culinary purposes. It produces a white flower, much like a magnolia tree and I guess they are cousins. The swamp magnolia has a smaller flower and isn’t quite as messy as the southern magnolia tree common to my areas residential landscapes. These can get bigger here than they do in other areas of the country but typically they only get 20 ft tall, which will make them easy enough to manage. Their fruit/seed pod isn’t anything I have heard of people eating but they are a valuable food resource for birds, squirrels and other wild life. http://www.bellarmine.edu/faculty/drobinson/SweetBayMagnolia.asp
Entire right side is a gumball tree. Notice the lovely star shaped leaves. Unfortunately they also produce “gumballs” which are a nasty thorny seed pod. They will get stuck in your foot if you step on one barefoot. Since I prefer to go barefoot 90+% of the time, the gumballs must all die MUAHAHAHAHA
I have not identified the other trees in this picture (or on the land in general) but these three types of trees seem to be dominant. Right now I can’t even see the tops of some trees because it is so thick. The variety of trees here is different from my home state of Michigan so it is a bit of a challenge sometimes. I would not have been able to ID the swamp magnolia so easily, but the flowers are all on the ground and I noticed the leaves looked similar to the magnolia trees commonly used in landscapes here, but with silver on the underside.
Revival 