Clearing The Creek

Yesterday we ran a few errands in the morning, taking Bella to the vet for her annual shots then walking up from the vet’s office to Main Street in Waynesville to see what might have changed (quite a few things, it turns out) since we left back at the beginning of last November. We stopped in to The Dog Bakery and picked up some snacks for Bella, then we tried out the new Karma Cafe where we enjoyed some tasty breakfast croissant sandwiches and a delicious warm blueberry muffin. We sat at a table out front on the sidewalk and watched people walking on Main Street and a few cars as they passed while Bella sat quietly at our feet hoping we would drop something her way.

Then it was back to Wolf’s Haven to take care of a project we’ve needed to tackle since last year; clearing out the secondary creek. We have a beautiful creek flowing through our property and it was one of the major factors in our decision to buy this particular piece of land. But there is also an area just above our property where the creek splits, allowing a smaller, slowing moving creek to form closer to our cabin before it meets back up with the main creek at a point just about even with our front deck. Like the main creek that we cleared 2 years ago, this secondary creek has had blockages caused by falling tree branches and entire trees and the view has been obscured by massive rhododendron plants. It was time to clear and clean it out so we could enjoy the view and see a faster flow of water.

Here’s what it looked like BEFORE we spent almost 3 hours working to clear it:

The arrows show where the secondary creek flows and the vegetation obscuring it from view.

And after. Unfortunately, though the view was improved, the flow of water was not increased enough to get the “white water” effect that you can see on the the main creek.

The vegetation is gone, but it is still difficult to see the creek actually flowing, unlike the main creek.

Here are a couple of before and after close-ups as well.