THERE IS A DENSE WOODED AREA behind our house, just deep and thickly treed enough to hide what is on the other side, which is a wide-open area and a holding pond. The pond drains into a channel that passes along the north side of our house and on into the city’s well-constructed drainage system and eventually into a lake a few miles away. We have a fence line along part of the length of this gully and, between the fence and the gully, there is abundant wild growth, trees and bushes mostly. So the past couple of days I have been working to clean this area out, an annual task in order to keep it neat looking and to maintain my view of the gully and the water flowing through it. There are also large trees, mostly hickory and tall pines, on both sides of this narrow, sheltered waterway, which I at times upgrade in my thinking to a “creek.” At the west end, where it pours out of the retention pond and into the woods, the water is only a foot or two deep but the sides are at least ten feet high and bounded by a wall of rounded, concrete shapes on both sides, now covered in moss and ferns and the natural accretion of the years. The height of the sides lessens quickly and is barely a slope where it leaves the edge of my yard and passes into the constructed passage beneath the street, emerging on the other side of a T-intersection to become someone else’s creek. Now I await the appearance of the bulbs I planted in this strip a couple of years ago, and contemplate what else to plant in a few spaces that I have my eye on. Today or tomorrow, I may don water shoes and wade into the deep end of the creek to clear out some tree debris that has accumulated. Or not; this has been work and I, after all, am officially retired from such activity.
Hello HenryM.
Work? This sounds like an idyllic pastime for someone who is now retired. I spend a great deal of my free-time doing precisely what you describe and I enjoy every minute of it. My wife also joins me on occasions when there is a need to clear the (Human created) rubbish from the stream. It is both easier and faster when there are two of us working on the project. When it is all neat and tidy and the spring plants are beginning to burst through, there is plenty of satisfaction to be had thinking of the part we played in making our environment more pleasant to live in.
Best wishes
Bill
| Bill wrote: |
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Hello HenryM. Work? This sounds like an idyllic pastime for someone who is now retired. I spend a great deal of my free-time doing precisely what you describe and I enjoy every minute of it. My wife also joins me on occasions when there is a need to clear the (Human created) rubbish from the stream. It is both easier and faster when there are two of us working on the project. When it is all neat and tidy and the spring plants are beginning to burst through, there is plenty of satisfaction to be had thinking of the part we played in making our environment more pleasant to live in. Best wishes Bill |
I couldn't agree more, Bill. I didn't mean to sound as if I was complaining, as I love getting out and doing "yard work."
