Haven’t had any major projects lately but have had a lot of small miscellaneous stuff that kind of adds up to a few hours with the tractor. This afternoon was pretty typical. After church and lunch, was sitting by the pond with my wife. The area where the chairs are has a little clearing to the water and not only were a few weeds and saplings starting but, as I was thinking I should get the weedeater after them, I got to noticing there were a bunch of sweet gum saplings starting about where the stump is in the below pic and they were getting big enough I didn’t like them. Below is about half done.
View attachment 100957
Installed the new Piranha tooth bar yesterday. Today was first day using the bucket with it. It still carries tools and supplies quite nicely.
Would have been nice to run over the whole mess with the bush hog but the pond is pretty deep through part of the area we were working on, I don’t trust the bank but so much, and I’m NOT ending up with the tractor in the pond.
View attachment 100958
Wife assisted with running the saplings through the chipper. We also ran some of those ubiquitous thorn vines through it. The kind that has leathery leaves and the vine part has the tensile strength and cut resistance of 0.155 weedeater line plus the thorns to make it even more attractive and endearing. Hadn’t tried that before. Worked quite nicely.
View attachment 100959
When we were ready to move to clean up a small brush pile left for later about a month ago, saw a regen was in process. It was doing it on its own so I just left it wound up and let it run while we moved.
View attachment 100960
End result was about 100’ of additional bank cleared of gum saplings.
Considered poking at the old pine stump with the tooth bar to see if it was up to cutting some of the exposed roots but figured that’s for another day when the chipper isn’t part of the maneuvering in tight quarters.
View attachment 100961
After that, we moved on to the remains of a little brush pile comprised of the remains of a small pine beside one of the trails. When it fell, didn’t have much time so cleared the trail and figured we’d finish cleaning up later. Today was later.
View attachment 100962
It was just the top of one 75’ spindly Virginia Pine so it didn’t make much of a pile of chips. Still, needed some chips for a bush, so got about 1/2 a bucket of chips and spread the rest out where they were. The Piranha did a swell job cutting into the fresh chips. Of course so did my boot when I kicked the remains around to spread them out. No real test for the Piranha today.
View attachment 100963
So the aforementioned bush…
A few weeks ago, removed about a half dozen scraggly old azalea bushes from beside the unoccupied house. They were all about 25 to 30 years old, not very large, and performing so poorly I didn’t know what color they were because I have NEVER seen them bloom in the 28 years I’ve lived here. So I had popped them out one at a time with the grapple and carried them off to this dump area. Never touched them or got out of the operator seat. As the pic above shows, there’s a pile of biodegradable junk too big to chip, a small brush pile we’ll chip someday, and a few old azalea bushes, roots and all in the middle.
One of the bushes was laying there in the pile with a few rotten fence slats on top of it. Leaves stayed green and for the first time in at least 25 years, it bloomed right there in the trash pile laying sideways with the rootball exposed.
View attachment 100964
Out of respect for its tenacity, dug it out of the trash pile, planted it beside the pond, and dumped the chips around it. If it lives, it lives. If it doesn’t, we’ll grapple it back to the trash pile.
