The night after we first saw this place [in February], I had a dream that it was a valley full of trees with white flowers. We moved here in March and that first spring, we realized that we did indeed have a lot of trees with white flowers in the hollow. They were honey locust trees. They have deliciously fragrant white flowers and terrifying thorns - the guardians of the hollow. However, we didn't have any dogwoods.
In Indiana, that was an anomaly. Indiana wants to be forest. The first trees to start forest in Indiana are the dogwoods and redbuds - the understory trees. We didn't have any dogwoods or any redbuds. 150 years of cows on a place will do that, I guess.
Well, we didn't have cows and though we did have sheep, the sheep didn't have the run of every inch of the place, so in time, we started getting dogwoods and redbuds.
I mowed around every single one I could find. They were all allowed to stay.
It was a pain, but it was worth it.
Now our hollow is full of trees with white flowers.