{"id":3617,"date":"2018-10-16T23:20:12","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T23:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/?p=3617"},"modified":"2018-10-17T20:23:04","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T20:23:04","slug":"first-things-first-the-tree-farm-gets-her-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/first-things-first-the-tree-farm-gets-her-name\/","title":{"rendered":"First Things First…The Tree Farm Gets Her Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the art\/life trail! <\/span><\/h4>\n

As promised, this edition is written by BD. This is the second excerpt on the monthly installment of our tree farm adventure.<\/span><\/h4>\n

If you missed last month read it here<\/a><\/span><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

First Things First<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

But What Are They??<\/span><\/h4>\n

Naming things has always been natural for Drozda and me. <\/span>It makes it easier to refer to places (like a bend in a trail where the old enamel buckets are, or an unknown neighbors yard…the one with the St. Francis statue on the left) and things (the dog with the sparkly collar who walks with the guy with the red baseball cap – that sort of thing.) <\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

So, our new land needed a name and a \u201cbrand\u201d so to speak. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

Because of my heartache and guilt over selling the century farm in Michigan I wanted to honor my folks, all their hard work on that farm and the things that they loved.<\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"Davidson Family Farmhouse, BD<\/span><\/p>\n

My dad was, plainly, a bluebird fanatic, who would sit in his lawn chair for hours with binoculars focused on his row of bluebird houses making important observations and decisions about how to manage his bluebirds.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/h4>\n

I suppose because he no longer had livestock to manage the birds took over that niche for him. So, Bluebirds had to figure in the naming. <\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

Bluebird Farm didn\u2019t fit for a ravaged ex-timbered brush pile, which is what we had purchased.<\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"Blue Bird Gulch, spring 2010<\/span><\/p>\n

But on the day we hiked over hill and dale and scrap heaps of timber and snow and swampy places to get a look at what we might buy I found myself alone in a small trickling stream of clear icy water looking down at little mounds of multicolored stones and swirling eddys with tiny fish thinking, <\/span>\u201cThis looks like a place to pan for gold.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Creek bed, Blue Bird Gulch, BD, 2009<\/span><\/p>\n

And so Bluebird Gulch was named. <\/span><\/h4>\n

Later I found out that before the Gold Rush in California one of the primary gold mining areas of the country was in central Virginia a few miles from where I stood on that day, <\/span><\/h4>\n

If you\u2019re going to name it for the bluebirds you better invite them in. So, I looked up some plans, built the first batch of houses:\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"BD building Blue Bird houses, Drozda, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

\"\"First batch of Blue Bird houses, Drozda, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0and when Spring hinted at arriving we put em up.<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Blue Bird house installation day, Drozda, March 2010<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

When we came back two weeks later we found…<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jeannie, the first Blue Bird of Blue Bird Gulch, BD, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

That was miraculous.\u00a0 That female blu<\/span>ebird was promptly named Jeanie, after my mom.<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

We found out that it\u2019s way more complicated than just putting up the houses when hosting bluebirds they do indeed need some management. \u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Bears like to rip open the boxes looking for snack food. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And black rat snakes and racers keep track of when the baby birds are big enough to make a tasty meal.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

And might as well hang out and make some snake babies after a eating.<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Mating Black Rat Snakes, BD, 2016<\/span><\/p>\n

Join me for my next installment\u2026.<\/span><\/h4>\n

How to Make a Tree Farm.<\/span><\/h4>\n

BD<\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Visit:<\/p>\n

Wren House Studio\u00a0Painting website:\u00a0<\/span>Donna Iona Drozda<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Lifecycle Creative Coaching website:\u00a0<\/span>Lifecycle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

You Tube : Two Minute Creative Tune-UP^<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

22 Prayer Poems for Care Givers<\/span>\u00a0book\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Wren House Studio Face Book Fan Page:<\/p>\n

\u00a0https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/WrenHouseStudio<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks:\u00a0<\/span>LIKE<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Fan Page<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the art\/life trail! As promised, this edition is written by BD. This is the second excerpt on the monthly installment of our tree farm adventure. If you missed last month read it here.\u00a0 First Things First But What Are They?? Naming things has always been natural for Drozda and me. It makes it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[167,36,206,32,183],"tags":[37,246,10,16],"class_list":["post-3617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-act-iii","category-artlife","category-natural-energy-management","category-starting-over","category-voluntary-simplicity","tag-artlife","tag-bluebird","tag-natural-time","tag-slow-time"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6htPT-Wl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3617"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3653,"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions\/3653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donnaionadrozda.com\/lifecycle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}