So I've spent a lot of time this past winter cutting trails and burning slash piles.
Early on in the exploration of our land, while hiking up the main creek bed, I found this huge old live oak tree. It must be more than 100 years old, judging by the circumfrence. I haven't measured it, but it's way bigger around than my arms can reach. Once I got the creek cleared of overgrown trees, and a separate trail to get to it also, I started clearing around the big oak. When I first found it, it was dark as a dungeon in there, the mountain cedars were so thick. I pruned the big oak also; it had grown completely natural and had some weird horizontal limbs and strange ones almost touching the ground, so I pruned it up some. My wife likes it so much now that she wants to have her next birthday party there, so we started calling it the Party Oak. Eventually i will haul in a picnic table and a permanent charcoal grill like at a state park. I've cleared enough cedars so far that there is room for small-ish groups to camp there now.
Then came the news that our youngest child/daughter is getting married, and she wants to get married there by the Party Oak. Fortunately, not until this fall, so I have time to clear more space up on the level area just above the oak, but I have been working on it while the weather is still (more or less) cool. Daughter is saying 55-60 people will be here for the wedding, so I have to clear or at least trim up enough trees so they can all fit. I'm leaving all the hardwood trees and only cutting down the cedars. I'm pruning the hardwood trees up so that people will be able to stand/sit under them.
These photos were taken this morning; I burned a ton of stuff I had previously cut. The fire is up on the level space just uphill form the tree. You can see my 4-wheeler parked behind the Party Oak, to get an idea of how big it is.
All the brown in the photos is mix of old dead oak leaves and natural cedar needle mulch. It was so dark that not much grass would grow there, but I'm hoping the native grasses will fill in now that there is light on the ground. I will have to mow it several times to get rid of a thousand tiny oak and cedar saplings that are everywhere. Hope I can get my tractor in there, but I'm not sure I can.
The other good news is that my income has picked up a bit, and if it stays up for a few months we will start working on the house again. Maybe not until the wedding and all its attendant expenses are over though. Hopefully before the end of the year anyway.