This is the way we started our work week. What the heck? Just all stretched out in front of the shed, pretty dead but not eaten. Another one curled by the side, not shown. Don’t hawks eat their prey? Don’t cats? Maybe we’d better get those seeds over to the Finley storage, we’re thinking, but no evidence of mouse damage to the seed bags was found.

Oh well. Country life, I guess. So long as they stay out of my kitchen! This is Mike and his Mighty Machine. A graple over a bucket. Note the size of the spoonful it’s about to address:

A close-up:

Larry and I spent the day watching, astonished, as great swaths of berry canes, fallen logs, scrap metal, were collected and piled in what Mike calls “burn piles.”

How are we going to burn these behemoths? Just us and the Philomath Fire Department? Mike advised Larry to drape the piles with tarps, secured against the wind, so that the material will dry enough to ignite and burn. Done. Now we’ll wait until some cold day in February and have ourselves a wienie roast. Grandkids want to apply?

Seems like about time to throw in a selfie. I know, I don’t take selfies, don’t much like to be photographed at all, but its only fair, after all the Larry shots. So here I am:

My God, she looks just like her mother! True. Don’t laugh, children, look at your moms and see the future. Or your dads. Either way.

Here’s what the land looks like A.M. (After Mike) Practically a park! Don’t worry, Ryan says. I’ll graze anything you don’t want to mow.

When I look at these photos and see the property through your eyes, I get why you question our sanity. So try to see it through my eyes, with green meadows, wild flowers, bright, clear streams, the 300 year-old oaks who themselves have seen these things in the time of the Kalapooia and maybe before. I have a favorite oak I pass under on my walks down the road. Has ferns growing on the limbs and up the trunk, has mistletoe in the highest branches, a carpet of fallen leaves below, and today I saw that one of its branches had fallen against the fence newly built in its domain. Not to get all kumbaya, but it’s good to have a 300-year-old friend!