the grounds

 

Renovating the three acres surrounding Brickman House is the one project most likely to drive us to hard drugs. No, really, it's true... we took a poll between the two of us, and it was unanimous.

The house sits high on top of the hill on the way back of the property, so the vast majority of the three acres are to the front and the sides of the house. This photo is taken from the bottom of the driveway, looking up toward the house and the back of the property:

 

We spent the vast majority of time our first year in the house getting the interior liveable, and didn't have a lot of time to concentrate on the outside. In the Spring of 2002, though, the very first thing we did was get rid of the six foot tall shrubbery that was eating the front and west side of the house:

Ahh, much better. The house could breathe, and we could actually see out of our windows.

The grounds contain a wide variety of mature trees, most of which we haven't identified yet, except to walk around and say "wowww, this one's really pretty... and this one... and this one..." Forget a class in the Fundamentals of Botany-- we need Botany for Mentals.

Anyway, none of the poor trees had been pruned in thirty years, and a large number of them were slowly being consumed by vines, brush and brambles. So after we freed the house, we spent some time in the Summer of 2002 pruning and limbing up the trees. Believe it or not, just pruning the trees and clearing the easily accessible parts of the property yielded a 30 cu yard dumpster filled with 9 tons of wood chips.

We ran out of time that summer to even begin to tackle the far reaches of the property then, so we tried to make a dent in those in February 2003. The photos below show the west side of the property, before we began clearing. Looking from the driveway, we saw this:

     

Believe it or not, there's actually an acre of fenced in pasture back there... Bushwacking further back, we found this:

  

Hmm... definitely looking like a long-term project. We made a dent in it so far, thanks to our dumpster service (told ya we love those guys!) and a heavy duty chipper (roll your mouse over the photos below for before and after views, or click any photo for a larger view):

We've still got a huge mess of brush to remove, not to mention lawn renovation to tackle, and a pasture fence to rebuild... no surprises there! Just like everything else about this sorely neglected property, once you unearth it, you realize how decrepit it is and how much it needs to be repaired. Even so, we're glad to have finally reached, even in a small way, the western border of the property.

Even with all the clearing and renovation left to do, the arrival of spring makes us glad we live here. There are parts of the property that are really lovely this time of year, if you just don't look too closely at the edges. This is the view from the top of our driveway:

The green tree in the left foreground is a magnolia that's absolutely gorgeous when it blooms in the early Spring, but when it starts dropping its petals, watch out. Those buggers are slippery when wet, and it's all too easy to take a header if you're not looking where you're going. G'head, ask us how we know...   Anyway, the pink bush on the right is a very pretty Weigela, but it's in desperate need of a haircut-- Lenny Kravitz just called to complain about being upstaged.

 

This is the view from our front door:

This side of the property is bordered by a double row of ornamental, shade and evergreen trees, all of which have clearly been deliberately planted. Other than a pathetic-looking weeping cherry (shaded out by three large oaks), the rest of the trees are now looking healthy and well-groomed after last season's pruning spree.

 

The stand of trees in the two photos below line the driveway, and separate the house from the pasture:

   

This group also contains a nice mix of trees, though actually, the two large trees you see toward the left side of the photo on the right are a story in themselves...

They're Ailanthus trees, a.k.a. "Tree of Heaven." Ailanthus is native to China, and was brought to America in the late 1700's, touted as the answer to All. Spaces. Bare. They're fast growing, low-maintenance and tolerant of all kinds of awful conditions. Colonial city planners started planting it with abandon, and by 1850, farmers everywhere were buying the trees at their local nurseries for fast shade around their farmhouses. Problem is, all this went on before they figured out the tree was horribly invasive, and would multiply in numbers sufficient to eat entire third world countries in a single growing season. Ouch-- hate it when you discover that trees that you love to plant because, no matter how badly you neglect them, they just won't die, are now choking out your native landscape because, well... they just won't die.

Anyway, the Ailanthus on our property are huge, mature trees, obviously planted many years ago by one of the Smith farmers. We manage them carefully, and will replace them with something else when they've reached the end of their lifespan, but much like the mirrored wall and iridescent peacocks in the master bedroom, they're currently part of the fabric of the property's evolution.

Moving on... the driveway itself needs some help, but boy, it's a nice view to turn into this after a long day's work:

 

Most of the western part of the property, which has been fenced off for a livestock pasture for years, is on the left side of the driveway:

We concentrated our clearing efforts in February 2003 on the area in front of the pasture, near the road. Next time we get around to doing more clearing, we'll work on the side of the pasture-- it's a truly impenetrable mass of vines, brush, and thorns.

 

This is the site of our future barn:

Actually how far into the future is the "future barn" is currently up for debate. We're torn between building/renovating all the outbuildings necessary in Summer 2004 in a huge renovation blitz (which always offers a significant economy of effort, scale and tools) or piecemeal-ing it out according to the immediate needs of the critters that will inhabit each structure. Shamefully, the whole piecemeal-ing idea engenders evil thoughts of surreptitously scheduling deliveries of livestock animals, which will immediately bump their housing needs waaaay up in the building priority chain... but we're too mature to play that game, right? Right???

 

Putting aside the notion of sneaking herds of ponies onto the property... this is the orchard:

   

The orchard is on the other side of the pool, on the easternmost part of the property. If you look on the edge of the orchard closest to the lane, you can see a row of large evergreen trees. They're huge, and absolutely beautiful. Shortly after we moved in, our neighbor across the lane confessed that she had planted them fifty years ago. Yes... our neighbor.

Apparently, when she and her late husband built their house across the lane in 1950 (when the Smiths finally decided to sell off the farm land), the pool was still in its previous incarnation as a garbage dump. She couldn't stand the sight of it or the smell, so she planted a stand of evergreens between her house and the lane. She wasn't satisfied, though, that the small group of trees on her property alone would block the sight and smell. So one night, very late and dark, she snuck across the lane and planted three small evergreen trees on the Smiths' property across the lane between her house and the dump.

No one ever noticed, and if they did, they never questioned how those evergreens all of a sudden just appeared there. Now they're beautiful, and we'll have to figure out a way to incorporate them into the fence we'll ultimately build on this side of the property.

Anyway, stay tuned to this page for the next round of brush clearing, hopefully some time during the summer...

 

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