Work in Progress

One trip to the gravel store, two trips to the nursery, two trips to the hardware store, one trip to the Russian River for river rocks, and a lot of hard work this weekend have half transformed the weed patch in front of the Farmhouse into something nicer to look at.

OilMan shifted over a ton of gravel , and dug holes for every plant which has to be planted in either a pot or a wire basket to prevent the gophers from eating the roots or simply dragging the whole plant underground. We have a small collection of rusty implements of dubious origin, an old grill, reinforced concrete slabs, and numerous small tools, nails, bolts and even a pie plate which we have unearthed while digging holes for plants. The little flags visible in the picture mark the locations of gopher traps, irrigation pipes and ground hugging plants (so they don't get run over by the mower).

There is a sense of accomplishment from wresting little oases from the wilderness. I can only imagine how the real farmers and pioneers must have felt. So far we haven't experienced a plague of locusts and it is unlikely that we will ever have to contend with a blizzard.

Within the house we battle dust, burrs, spiders and flies, while outside we have rescued several quail which get themselves entangled in the nets which cover the grapes to protect them from the birds. Since quail run along the ground, the nets become traps. The other morning a doe had jumped the fence but her fawn couldn't make it over and was running up and down the driveway trying to find a way in.

These all strike me as perfect examples of the tension between wild lands and development. It is difficult to know how to strike a perfect balance between them, but since we are "city slickers" in a rural place, we find ourselves much more aware of the struggle. I don't suppose we'll ever be able to raise our own lambs for meat as some friends of ours do, but we're getting pretty adept with the fly swatter and the gopher trap....