Dammed if you do…

A couple weekends ago, we all spent an afternoon cleaning up the creek.  It’s been dry this summer, so we walked along the bed singing songs with the birds and tossing a stray twig here and there.  (Just kidding…that’s the Snow White version.)  Really what happened was, we collected an entire 30-gallon trash can’s worth of trash, including broken glass, cans, and an entire teapot.  We piled dead wood high on the banks.  We relocated a patch of Jewelweed that was growing out of a pile of dead wood.  Paul brought his chainsaw along and cut up several trees that had fallen across or into the creek and dammed it up.  We stacked that wood, too, as well as all the rubbish that had caught on those trees.  It was dirty work, hot and tiring, but we all celebrated the work because it had so badly needed doing…the backup of the creek during the spring rains is incredible.  Everyone congratulated everyone else.  Good job.

Yesterday Paul informed us that there was a tree lying across the creek.  ‘Thing was big, and with a little less patting of the backs, we got that straightened out, too–mostly Paul, really, and just the creek part.  There’s still about twenty feet of dead tree in the woods, just lyin’ there laughing at us.

Here’s hoping the creek flows free this spring.