How the day begins. Larry, in from his workout in our “gym” aka “garage”, is grumbling angrily, cell phone in hand. “Can’t turn the god damn thing off.” He listens to OPB while stretching, etc.

“Okay, give it to me,” I say. “Um, where are my glasses? Stupid things. I know I just . . .”

And so it goes, the blind leading the halt. Fortunately our little ship has righted itself, the phone has been turned off, I have my glasses atop my head and we go on.

A nice day, so we get to work. We intend to spray the road side fence, but slight winds forestall that chore, and we head out to the pasture and the tree we’re clearing.

I’ve said that I want to consider keeping the massive windfall as a sculpture, and it does have an artistic quality about it. I’ve already played the “let’s keep it as habitat” card, twice, actually, so not sure if the art card will trump anything. (Side note: when will that perfectly nice word fall back into the language with it’s un-charged meaning? Going to use it anyway and maybe . . .?) Okay, what do you think?:

Could argue that it looks like some hulking reptilian figure emerging from the waters, but it’s better when seen against the mother tree, and I don’t have such a photo. Anyway, at least you can see how nice and clean it now looks. All else aside, when Larry made an injudicious cut with the saw, the thing moved a little. Probably not safe if our grandkids ever come to visit and want to go climb a tree.

But uh, oh, what’s this? Poison hemlock? Sure looks like it!

It’s actually lovely, lying under the tree and limb, mixed in with miner’s lettuce, but poison hemlock is deadly — to philosophers and cows equally. In fact you should probably wash your hands after viewing the photo. Just kidding. But Google tells me that there was actually a death recorded of someone who ate a game bird which had feasted on hemlock berries. We’ll take the photo to the nearest garden shop for positive ID before attacking it with glyphosate (Roundup). Don’t want to wake up and see deceased cows under our sculptural feature.

Okay, that was Wednesday. Now we’re up to Friday morning. This day has to be devoted to planting the 3 dogwood trees we acquired mid-week (Wednesday is Seniors Day at the nursery). Still have to do that spraying, but of course, the trees come first. This seems to be a one-man job, so I’m excused from blue-collar work for the moment.

I put this photo in just to show you how gorgeous Oregon can be sometimes!

What else? Oh yeah, chickens. Larry has done some due-diligence, phoning a friend. Who, by the way, tried to pass off an unwanted rooster on us. But it’s not looking good for the chicks, with which you have to start, apparently. They’re not as autonomous as we’d supposed, and need round-the-clock care, at least at first. Could maybe buy pullets (that’s chicken talk for teen-age birds) but. But. If we score some already grown-up chickens from someone wanting to cull their flock, I can just imagine what a sweet set-up that could be for some experienced poultryman. So, better keep the lines open to the supermarket eggs for now. Not out of the question, but fading . . .

Lunch time here at the Wood. Tuna sandwiches today. Come on over!