From the Roof

I found myself on the roof the other day and decided get some aerial shots of some items I mention in this blog. I didn’t just wander up there by accident. I was waterproofing the chimneys and took a break to enjoy the view. This is the water garden I talked about back in June. The light colored area around the edge is the shallow shelf for holding potted plants. I still need to find some more rocks suitable for edging. I found that peering through a camera viewfinder while leaning forward from a pitched roof can give you an eerie feeling of vertigo.

This is the leaky pond. It goes dry every summer, but it’s perfect for salamanders and frogs in the spring. I mow it in August or September. Cutting the vegetation causes the salamanders to lay their eggs close to the pond bottom, so they are not so susceptible to fluctuating water levels prior to hatching.

The prairie garden is located beside the driveway so people can ask why I don’t mow those weeds. The plants in the garden all came from Blue Jay Barrens seeds. It’s a nice way to keep track of plant development when you don’t have time to run back into the prairie. This coming spring I’ll be expanding the garden toward the right side of the picture.

Here is the woodpecker tree. The branch on the left was growing almost completely across the house when I had the tree taken down. I left this much so I wouldn’t totally lose the wildlife value. I think the bark has about one more year before it all comes off.
The bare area to the right of the tree is where the turkey and deer eat cracked corn.

This tree normally provides plenty of apples for me and the deer. This year, the squirrels took every apple before any started to ripen. The bare area at the base of the tree is another bird feeding area.

The view behind the house. Variations in bedrock depth and water drainage have influenced the successional pattern developing in this field. The light brown indicates areas dominated by grasses and the dark areas are predominately wildflowers. I told my wife we could enjoy this view together if I installed a staircase into the living room ceiling and punched an observation room up through the roof, but I don’t think she’s quite ready to let me do that.