By the Stream

I am weeding by the stream.

The snake grass (esquisetum) rims both sides of the stream and arches itself around the walk overs.

The hedge around the water makes me want to leave the esquisetum there.

But the down side is that I can’t see the water, although I am always conscious of it running when I am working down there. I often think that someone has come to talk to me and I look up from my work. The sound of the water has changed for me as it gurgles on by and that is what has given me the sense that someone is there.

Photo Credit: Arta

A thimble berry from deep in the woods

and only dappled with sunlight on its leaves.

Ron Treleaven built a planter on the Wedding Reach of the Stream.

A group of thimble berry bushes have invaded that space and the flowers of thimble berry vines lean down the hill  lay in the stream.

All the way from the top to the bottom.

I can’t blame the plant. The earth there was better than the silt and rocks that are usually on the side of a stream. Ron had mixed that soil so carefully. Now the rocks have fallen away but the thimble berries there are beautiful as they bend down and into the stream – four feet wide and four feet high.

I dreaded trying to take that stand of plants out. I left it until late in the afternoon while I was really tired. Procrastination works. For some reason, when all of the other josb were done, that is when I could face it. I laid the tarp out on the hill and one by one went after each root, down deep, cutting the gnarled roots of the shrub. The brown curves remind me of someone’s severely arthritic fingers, perhaps because it is mine that were trying to pull it out.

Photo Credit: Arta

Picture taken on walk along the path
that leads to the Shady Beach

I finished 80 % of the work and it began to rain.

I had to quit anyway, for next I have to get on my rubber boots and get into the stream to finish the job.

I have worked as far as I could reach downhill. Now I have to work uphill. I decide to wait until morning when I am more on my game.

On that note, getting up off of the ground is not as easy as it used to be. I have been testing myself, seeing what will happen when I am laid into a position I can’t recover from. I haven’t quite got there, but I have been close. Just testing. Today Mary reminded me that I should be carrying at the very least my nitro when I am making these tests.  I might add, I should also have my phone along with me.

Arta