today

AlwaysHopeful wrote:

It's working, it's working....

And that just made my day Michelle

BRIANNA! Wow, long time no see! I'm glad to see you back from the land of the taxed!
You were missed
hugz
john

I love these guys Michelle. Glad the steroids are helping you

Oh..me too...me too! I just wish I could get those dance steps down...

Practice makes perfect

Today was just gorgeous!!!! The sun was warm and the air clear with a slight sea breeze blowing. My daughter and I built a new birdhouse yesterday after discovering the barn swallows were checking out the stove-pipe (year before last one got stuck and I took apart the pipe, rescued my lil' friend... gave her a drink and released her... and the whole colony went nuts in the most joyous, noisy reunion). Today, they were moving in to the new house, much to everyone's delight. A humming bird was NOT happy with us as we were installing the house -- too close to his nest! He would ZOOM straight UP 50-70' and come buzzing straight DOWN at astounding speed!
Tomorrow, we will build a bird feeder/ bird bath with both a seed-feeder AND a humming bird feeder. I plan on starting a TON of wild currant bushes from seed I picked last year. The hummers just LOVE the blooms on those and they are the first food, so very important for 'em. A lot of what I am doing is restoring wild habbitat. I trudge into the woods, collect seeds or plants that are growing in the paths and nursery them. Eventually, I will have about eight ponds all linked by a stream that will have wetlands for bio-filters between. We will plant many, many wild plants in an effort to draw more wildlife. The ducks really like the one pond, but sorely need some good cattail wetlands for nesting. Too many people have panicked and drained or filled wetlands here as a nasty backlash to new state-wide land use laws (intended to preserve sensitive areas!). I figure a stream of water will be a HUGE enhancement to my property's value. I may tap into a seasonal creek for more year-round flow and it MAY even lead to a hydro-electric potential, as it would drain into a canyon that drops about 100'. I love the sound of flowing water and the creek down in my canyon can be heard... but just imagine a stream right through our yard! OH the landscape possibilities!!!

Again, John...you have painted a wonderful picture with your words...I can hear the spring and see the woods as I read. Thank you for sharing. It gives me something to dream about!

Yes John, what she said, help my depression a lot, thank you

Didn't get anything done today... wind kicked up big time today so i kept my head down. It was sunny but I HATE wind. Maybe tomorrow we will build our bird station. Tired, real tired... boy I been pushin' now for over a week. I borrowed a truck and went nutsos getting too much done... my meds are running real low and refill day it thursday (I HATE that day!!!). I'm just hoping and praying this insanity with the DEA's "manufacturing quotas" goes away real soon!! If they make me run all over creation to get my pills I'm gonna go cold-turkey. YIKES!
ah, well

mental picture for the day:
Mountains in a ice-clear sky with stark white fresh snow reflecting the sun... trees budding and daffodills blooming in the foreground... ducks hunting for a nesting site while red-tailed hawks circle and cry their shrill, wild call high above in lazy circles. A coyote, sulks across the meadow, suddenly stopping with ears attentive, she pounces, cat-like on her prey, a rodent that she carries proudly back to her den. She is thin, but full of milk, so somewhere there are kits. I wonder if we will see them later learning to hunt? Trees gaining strength from the wind's buffeting... blossoms from the cherry trees float like snowflakes, swirling madly in the spring wind. Sky-blue water sparkling like a sheet of diamonds as the wind stirs the surface. Frogs singing in the middle of the day and the grass so green you would not believe a few weeks ago it was brown and sparse -- oh, the sweet smell of fresh-mowed, spring grass! For a moment, I lay back on the cool-damp earth and swear I can feel it breathe, feeling the warmth of the sun and the coolness of the sea breeze...
be well Y'all. Tonight I just hurt and am TIRED!
tomorrow I get to do AWANA games with the Sparkies!!!

Heavenly, heavenly scenes, John. Rest well...we can't have you so tuckered out that you can't "paint" for us. How many acres do you have? It sounds just like paradise to me. I love the sound of the coyotes singing in the night...as long as my darling dogs don't start singing back. I actually like the DISTANT smell of a skunk. It reminds me of being a little girl..safely tucked into my warm bed at night, listening to the sounds of nature. I grew up in the country, so your stories bring back such wonderful memories. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Hope you get some rest and the pain eases's up some John

pain is a bummer

We have 18 acres here... about seven in meadow, the rest is in forested canyon with a creek and a seasonal creek. We bought it in '86 from the insurance settlement from my accident. It had a rundown house that was dreadful, a tumble-down barn and some shacks and rusty junk. We fixed the house up and it is a cute house with many dear memories... we will ive in it when one of the kids lives in the big house with their family. The canyons are steep and deep, cool and green and you feel like you are miles from anything when you are down 'em. We border on state forest land that has miles of county park trails through it. Some of the trees are so huge, you would swear they are old-growth... but they are not. One tree that I can see from my easy chair took all my kids and I to reach around the trunk! My property used to be part of an oxen-rail logging operation, with a trestle bridge over the canyon. You can still see many stumps with "spring-board" holes in them, cut with double-bit axes waaay before chainsaws. Men would cut these notches into the trees, insert these steel-tipped boards so they could stand up off the ground, cut a huge "felling notch" with the axes, then they would use a "misery whip" -- a long, two-man saw, sometimes 12' long and longer. I have one that is 10' or so and have many of the old-time loggin stuff... but my prized posession is a HUGE 1920's hardware "desk catalog" that has EVERYTHING that was available from stoves to hinges... all the old-time hand tools and kitchen tools. I use it for reference when tryin ta figger some homesteading dillema. My middle daughter loves it, and I have given her my antique key collection, along with a solid-brass chest lock that we are gonna use when we build her hope chest. (she wears the key like a neacklace constantly) I have given a lot of stuff to the local museums and will prolly give 'em my 1940's newspapers cuz I can't preserve them and because people should be able to see that stuff

We have a place part-way down in the canyon that we have leveled off just enough to set up a large tent and it is one of my favorite spots. There is a HUGE maple -- a big leaf maple that towers over partly because of the steep terrain. It is an amazing place, very rainforest-like with mosses and lichens in the trees, even ferns in the trees... many ferns and shrubs... shady and cool... and GREEN!
I grew up running through these canyons, exploring the old rail lines, rock quarries and old homesteads. We used to LOVE playing "pioneer" and over the years, I have collected many old things -- some from around here on my farm, some from old homesteads or even garage sales. We used to find the old homesteads and dig in the dump sites to find bottles.
I have hand-blown, cork-top whiskey bottles all the way up to Pepsi bottles from 1947. I find a lot of stuff inside walls of houses I've rebuilt (and I ALWAYS leave some "modern momentos" for someone else to discover!)

Once, in the late seventies, we were at an old historic homestead mantained by the national park, when it rained all weekend. The old cabin had been vandalized and abused, so it was boarded up. However, someone had cut a hole through the boards on the doorway, so we got in and spent the whole rainy weekend in the cabin. We found and fixed the gravity-fed water system, found and set up the old cast-iron bedframe... cleaned up garbage, scrubbed off grafitti... found old bottles and put them on the kitchen shelves for display... even found and fixed the old woodstove! We had quite the surprize when a vollunteer park ranger poked his head in!!! We thought we were toast, but he was so impressed that he took pictures of the cabin (and us) and recommended to the park that they consider opening the cabin up. Of course they "had to" disable the water system and the woodstove, but the bedframe and some of the stuff we did is still there!

One memory I hold dear of that time is this -- (from waking in that meadow in the sweet, spring rain, when foggy clouds clung to the trees and hills... walking with a herd of Roosevelt Elk... being 17, alive, wild and free)

Misty mountain morning
woodthrush calling mysteriously
A lone note echoes high and clear
a second note smooth but flat
is answered by a third with a trill.
Fog, wild mint tea, an open fire
I hear that lonely call and remember
skipping over moss covered stones
shady glens green with vanilla leaf
vine maples arching over the trail
like nature's cathedral so alive
it is hallowed ground of memory dear
where surely angels alight
in the sweet sound of the river
dancing delicately in sunrays
casting angelic shadows beyond reach


ahh, good stuff indeed!
smile, my friends... for life is an adventure, eh?
in it w'ya john

I have tears running down my cheeks, John. Your poem is so tremendous..so descriptive. And your story...as always..I don't want to end. You should write...seriously. I can see that old cabin in my mind...I can see your place. You talk in pictures. I would LOVE to read a book about your childhood adventures in that wonderful land..the way you write..I would be right there. Again...thank you my friend.

today i picked 4 ticks of rocky, 3 after our last walk ewewewe, but ticks and me wells its no biggy, living in long island new york for 4 years it was a daily ritual ticks and all, but he is mostly white and i have an esp thing going i know wen my bab y has nasty ticks on him

Yikes Ed, maybe you should get a flea collar or something. I hate tics

i treated him with frontline flea and tick stuff, so if a tick deciedes to stay on him it will kill him n ways, i just dont want any ticks on him or me ewewew

There ain't no bugs on me..there ain't no bugs on me...there may be bugs on some of you mugs but there ain't no bugs on me!

hehehhehehe.........




today was better that yesterday, i was sooooooooo sick and at my worst of panick and sickness kira called and said hey im coming home for the week, i think i cried on her for a few hours hehehhe she walked rocky for me and wells i do feel some better today and am getting slowly back to my self...........then she got a job down the block!!!!!!!!!!! yayayayyayayayay

Hope you're feeling better today Ed

went to work today, im getting better, still have a cough, but wen kira came home and took care of me i started to feel better right away, and rocky was a good boy wen she walked him hehehe he likes to sleep on her stuff hehehhe

Glad you're feeling better, Ed. How icky to be sick..but nice to have someone there for ya.

How's that website going Ed? Don't forget to give us the link.

i will, havent done anything with it cause of being sick, but i will sooon