Comin' Home Part 1

It occurred to me the other day that I have not posted any photos of the land or garden areas in some time and that a lot of readers may have no idea what type of surroundings are here. I am tired of posting shots of the unfinished house so I thought I would show some other stuff. Allen and I have a little over 17 acres here although it is divided between us. It is basically a whole valley. My house sits back off the road about 1,000 feet. The terrain, my desire for privacy and layout of the property lines are the reason for this. Basically, the best home site was just that far back. When we first acquired the property it was completely inaccessible. Fortunately, since I work for a large construction company, I was able to procure the use of some heavy equipment to make things work out. Still, I tried not to disturb the terrain any more than necessary. Oh, a large part of the land was once under water because back the 50's, this was the site of a man-made lake. This photo shows the beginning of my drive. There is a very large sycamore tree right there on the right.
I enjoyed Pablo's video he made of his drive into his land and so that is part of where this comes from. I have no idea how to make and download a video though so this will have to do. Basically, I just walked up to the furthest point you see in the photo to take the next one. The sloping banks you see on either side of the drive here are what is left of the old earth dam. I was very fortunate to be able to use this soil as the fill and base for the driveway. It would have been very expensive to haul in that much dirt and very destructive to have tried to gather it from around the property.
This is just past the dam and right before the big rock bluff that I showed a few days ago. Some of the areas on the sides of the drive are fairly bare and I would like to eventually have these all planted with native shrubs and flowers. The rock bluff is on the left but it is mostly obscured by the trees now. We had to move a few very large boulders here to be able to get the road in but just moved them over to the other side to help shore up that soil. We also moved the small, spring creek over just a few feet to give a little more room! What you can do with even small equipment. Of course, we got a backhoe stuck right here so bad I thought we were going to have to call a wrecker. If you look off to the right at the turn there in the drive you can see where the spring creek joins the main creek. I have planted some groups of irises and there are at least 2 different types of ferns that grow there naturally. Maybe you can make them out in this photo. You can see the main creek over to the right for most of the drive. It makes for a very pleasant walk too.

I will show the rest of the drive tomorrow maybe. I have this whole week off from work and hope to get a large portion of the siding up. I received the trim yesterday afternoon and will start staining that Sunday since it is raining here today.

*Deep Purple