2024 Recap

 In a few more hours it will be 2025.  In three more months it will be 5 years since I lost Bob.  There's something significant in that.  I remember in April 2020, shortly after I came home, sitting outside, sobbing, wondering how long I could live here by myself, be able to take care of things.  It just seemed so overwhelming.  I figured maybe 5 years before I would have to give up and move into town.

5 years late.  Physically, I'm healthier and stronger than I was.  The land is as good as it ever was, the house is actually tidier.  A lot of stuff that accumulated over 30 years is gone.  Basically, until something goes badly wrong, I get to keep my home.

The best Christmas gift I could have given myself is my stream.  I love having it back, and I love feeling empowered - I didn't have to sit there being sorry that I couldn't see my stream again; I could do something about it.

Empowered is a good word.  I've felt it more this year.  I saw a tree that was going to be a problem, so I cut it down.  I replaced a faulty light switch.  I crawled under the car to remove the damaged skirting, and got everything zip-tied together enough to keep driving until I could get it fixed.  I cleared out the area out front that had gotten completely overgrown and made space for wildflowers.  I pulled down the rotting fencing out front, and rebuilt the swing.  I repaired the chicken coop,  the mailbox, and built and installed new ceiling panels. I did storm prep (for storms that thankfully missed us)  I've gotten a lot of the stream path cleared.  

I've pretty much stopped the whining of "this shouldn't be my job."  Because this is my home, and it *is* my job.

I've been a little slack in the making.  I knit a shawl, made the skeleton bird that perches on my shoulder and moves his head, sewed a  skirt (which I don't like and have to remake), made a new swing, and knit a pair of mitts.  I started another Mari Lwyd but didn't finish it yet.  I cleaned up the kalesa lamps but I haven't done anything with them yet.

I think the big thing for 2024 was to embrace my introversion.  After I lost Bob, I thought I would have to "replace" him with a bunch of new friends.  But I've never been particularly social, and trying to rebrand myself just didn't work.  I've stopped pushing myself - I'm fine being alone, and doing stuff by myself.  That's where my life is now - in the future, who knows?

Sum total of "doing things with other people" (in addition to my 8 days a month at the museum)

Jeff came into town 4 times (most recently with Rob)

I went to two events at the museum.

The FSU circus with museum friends (one of our volunteers was performing)

Lunch with Suzie and Ashlyn after working on chicken coop

Lunch with Judy when I went to get new chicks

A trip to a yarn store in Thomasville with Adrienne

Rob and Amanda came into town

One weaver's guild meeting

An SCA event

The trip with Michael

Thanksgiving with Rik and Christy

Dinner with Suzie, Shelby, Mike Jones, and a couple of other people

A book discussion at the library

So doing something with other people at least 1-2 times a month.  Plus my work at the museum 2 days a week, and I usually go see Gill after my monthly chiropractic appointment.

Honestly, not bad.  Throw in that my nephew Rob calls me every week or two, and I talk to Mike and Margo every couple of weeks.  So I haven't become a recluse or a hermit.

On my own, I went to the Highland Games, a theatre production, another circus, a Broadway songs presentation by school students, and the ComicCon at the library.

From time to time, I've started a blog post with an epigram or quote that I've seen somewhere.  The one that really gave me pause was:

"If you do not admit kindness from others, you cannot be too surprised when they fail to offer any."

 The hardest thing for me to do is to admit that I might need help.  But I'm learning to accept it.  When one of my outlets in the cottage stopped working, and putting in a new one didn't fix the problem, I was going to hire an electrician, but instead Rik and his friend Steve came over, checked out all the wiring, and decided that I just needed a new circuit breaker (which Rik picked up for me so I would have the right one).   After my chickens were killed by raccoons, and I thought I had rebuild the chicken coop sufficiently, Suzie offered to come over to check it out, and Ashlyn joined her.  Not only did they go over it, they fixed the problems that they found (and we all went out to lunch afterwards).  This last week, I needed some more chicken feed, which comes in 50 pound bags.  I usually take it home and then offload it into my feed buckets.  But my left arm is still healing, and I'm trying not to strain it.  I probably could have managed it, but instead I tossed a couple of feed buckets into the car and asked Rik and Christy to offload the feed into them for me.

There is another quote that I saw somewhere to the effect that it is a kindness to let someone help you.  I had to let that sink in - but it's true.  It feels good to help someone.  It's just easier to be the one doing the helping.  I have to realize that being helped isn't a sign of weakness.

So that about sums up 2024.  In the next couple of days I'll decide what my intentions (rather than resolutions) are for 2025.

For now - Happy New Year.

Penultimate 2024 Post

 Penultimate because I want to do a "Recap 2024" post this evening.

2024 in general went well  for me physically until mid-November.  Since then, I got Covid, found that I needed two root canals, and had a fall that messed up my left arm (actually my whole left side is none too happy with me).  And then Sunday . . . I was at work, in the kitchen.  We were all chatting before getting started on diets, and having some leftover Christmas snacks.  I was eating chocolate covered popcorn.  I felt an unpopped kernel, discretely spit it into my hand, and tossed it in the trash.

Except that a moment later I realized that it wasn't a popcorn kernel.  I had tossed a crown into the garbage.

This wasn't just a little waste basket.  This is the big, outdoor sized trash can that was 3/4 full of meat and vegetable scraps (maybe some fish bits too), just plain dirt and random leftover food from all the animals dishes, and a gazillion paper towel.  Yes, I searched.  I spent a solid half-hour or more going through all that fistful by fistful, shaking out the paper towels, sifting through whatever the hell it was in my hand (honestly, by the time I got to the bottom, I might not have been willing to put it back in my mouth anyway.)

No luck.  It's weird that while the gap in my mouth feels like I could park a truck in it, the crown itself is maybe 1/4" across.  Fortunately, it was my temporary one.  Unfortunately, my dentist's office is closed this week.

And ending the year (actually starting the new one) with sadness.  One of the deer at the museum, Bella, has to be put down.  Deer in the wild can live 10-12 years, up to 16 years in captivity.  Bella is 17 1/2.  And I know at one point I took a selfie with her but I can't find it - and I don't want to take a picture of her now because she's pretty rough.  But she's important to me.  Flash back to April 2020 (and beyond).  I had just lost Bob, and at the point of a person's life when she desperately needs to have a shoulder to try on, an arm around her, the aching physical need to be held, and to hug - well, it was early 2020, and it's hard to hug from 6 feet away.  Thank God for the cats - but they're small.  I could hug pillows (I still do) but they lack warmth, breathing, and heartbeat.  But there was Bella.  She's a sweet deer, and didn't mind being handled.  So if no one was around, I would slide my arms around her, lay my head against her side, and just lean into that warmth, breathing, and heartbeat I needed so much.  I've always been grateful to her for that.

Otherwise, it's all good.  After some more serious hacking down the the woods, I came to a pretty good stretch that didn't need much, so I'm about 700 feet in now.  I'm starting to think that I won't be able to do the whole loop, because the area behind the house is where the big trees came down - there are root balls higher than I am tall.  But I still have hopes of finding my lamppost (unless a tree fell on it).  Problem is - I'm not quite sure where it was, because all the landmarks have changed.

But I'm just so happy to be wandering around down there.  If I wasn't so used to things like flush toilets, I'd be tempted to build a tiny hut and move in.

Hmmm.  That makes me think of the word "bothy."  It's a Celtic word - the closest English comes is a hut or shed, but that lacks the feeling.  A bothy is a place to take shelter - small, but safe.

In the meanwhile, I can lean against a tree and eat an orange.

We got in a new king snake at the museum.  He is very beautiful, in a very subtle way.  Most people would say "brownish."  But I found myself reaching for my phone to take a picture - old habit.  I get the impression that most people see things in the whole - as "blobs."  Bob saw details - and I learned to see details (see my earlier post about the details of an owl's feather).  We would look at (and often take pictures for him to have a reference in his painting) of say, the shading on a crab's shell, or the pattern that rust made around a bolt on a dumpster.  Looking at this snake, he had very subtle diagonal bands of slightly different shades of brown.  What was really striking, though, was that each individual scale was shaded.

Old habits die hard.  I had to give in to the urge to take a picture, even with no one else to marvel at it.

And that about wraps up 2024.  Recap coming.  Then it will be 2025.

Winding Down the Year

 I've always thought of the week between Christmas and New Year's as the quiet week.  A time to contemplate the year past, and the year coming up.  Look at last year's intentions, and think about future ones.

In the last two days, I've made two batches of orange marmalade (I'm still eating my daily orange, but there are a lot on the tree).  

The clearing of the path around the stream continues (a bit slowed down because of my messed up arm).  This is really doing something to/for me.  I realized at one point that my face felt funny  -  I was smiling.  I've been having an odd feeling - it's that I'm happy, and it's a feeling I haven't had for years.  I found Squeaky Frog Pond (so named because of the little squeak the frog would give as they leapt into it. ) I laughed when I found a little rivulet where another pond drains into the stream.  When we used to go for a walk in the woods with the goats and sheep (which felt pretty magical on its own), Vincent - who was quite a large sheep - would balk when we got there, then finally bunch himself up to make a great leap over it.  The funny part was that the gap was maybe 8 inches across.

I've spent a lot of time just looking.  It's all so beautiful that I can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that this is mine; it belongs to me.  It is part of my home.  And it feels magical; I expect to see Baba Yaga's hut on chicken legs through the trees.

I'll probably spend the next few days going over this past year's blog to see what I can learn from it . I know that it's been a decent year, and that I'm a lot calmer, and my grief has moved from acute to chronic.  Partly that's just circumstance - knock wood, but in 2024 no friends, cats, or chickens died.  The roof didn't leak, the AC works, the porch didn't rot.  This might be a record year for me. (Of course, I got rear ended, and then later pulled the front bumper off the car - there has to be something)

My main intent for 2024 was to not push myself so much.  I really put myself out there in 2023 because I thought I should.  This year I just admitted that I'm basically an introvert.  I'm more self-reliant, mostly because I have to be, but I seem to have stopped feeling sorry for myself about it.  Like after my fall last week.  Yes - it would have been *really* nice for someone to run over, ask if I was OK, then help me inside to rest and recover while he took care of things.  But that's not my option at the moment.  I got up, got the chickens put away for the night, got the squirrel and the cats and myself fed, and then rested.  And drove myself to get X-rays the next day.  But that's simply how things go now.

I've read a lot - 49 books.  My big pleasure is when the weather is decent enough that I can sit outside to read - either on my back deck, my front swing, by the fire while burning yard waste, or - new delight - leaning against a tree down in the woods.  The reading is all over the place; I leaned heavily into fantasy, but also a lot of classics, and some non-fiction.

I'm still doing my walking challenges.  I did the 180 virtual walk of the Shire, and I've currently walked 663 miles around Iceland (164 miles to go)

Of course, the big thing I did this year was empty tonnage out of the barn.  Then things sort of stalled - nothing much has been particularly organized.  But I know what's there, and where it is.  This year's "winter project" is the stream path.  I confused Mike when I mentioned having a winter project - living in Boston, his idea of winter projects are indoor ones.  For a Floridian, it's the time of year you can work outside without heat exhaustion or getting chewed up by insects.

I'm re-reading my blog posts of this year.  The early ones show a lot of pain.  Going through the anniversaries of the time between when Bob when to Shands, and when I came home alone.  I wonder how that will be this year. (I note that I referred to this period as the "memory rodeo.")

More reviews to come in the next few days - I've just realized that I'm getting sleepy.  Rob and Jeff will be in town tomorrow (they went to Pensacola to visit Rob's family for Christmas) so I'll get to visit with them.

(Just noticed a theme that I need to visit. It's that I can go really well on the parts of a project that I can see what to do - like taking the 40 or so bags of stuff from Bob's room, or the Great Barn Clean Out.  But after that - with things looking half done, I just sort of stall out because the obvious stuff is done, and what do I do now?)

Christmas

 It's been a busy week.  I got my appointment with the endodontist, which was interesting because as well as X-rays I had a Cat scan done, so 3 D image.  Joy oh joy - I get to have *two* root canals (side by side).  The only silver lining in that cloud is that the endodontist is really really cute.

Bob and I used to celebrate our private Christmas on the 21st (before plunging into the loud chaos that was the family Christmas).  We would watch the Hogfather movie and eat meat pies and sherry (which was what the children left out for the Hogfather).  Like making fruitcakes, this was a tradition that I have had to tiptoe around.  I had to take my emotional pulse to see if it would hurt more to continue the tradition without Bob, or to skip it.  I've opted to continue.

I can't quite wrap my brain about this being the fifth Christmas without him.  It still feels like I lost him yesterday.  

Bob and Zeke, Christmas 2019

Otherwise, this Christmas has been rather low key.  I went to the museum this morning (like any other holiday, the animals still need care), had lunch, rested a bit, and then took a coffee and went to sit by the stream to finish reading A Christmas Carol (another annual tradition).  In a few minutes I'm going to make a red pepper and prosciutto fougasse (a stuffed bread) for dinner. 

I got about another 70 feet cleared on the stream path.  It just makes me so happy to be out in the woods again, and the memories are coming in.  One day we were down there, and suddenly, across the stream, a little pure white goat popped out from the woods, looked at us for a moment, then disappeared again.  We decided that we had seen the Questing Beast.

Alas, the stream project has been halted for a few days.  Saturday evening I was walking the path behind the chicken yard, heading over to put the chickens up for the night, as I have done every night for many many years.  I have walked that path thousands of times over the last 30 years.  But this time, I somehow caught my right food *under* a vine (or something).  If it had been a mere trip, I likely could have caught my balance, or at least had a somewhat more controlled fall.  But no - most of me was going forward except for the right foot - and I fell with my full weight on my left arm - and felt a sharp pain a few inches below my shoulder before the rest of me hit the ground.

I just rolled over onto my back and looked up at the trees for a few minutes, trying to do an inventory of any damage.  I was lucky - the only thinkg that really hurt was my arm (although my left hip isn't too happy with me).  I got up and was able to move it.  It wasn't bad enough to go spend the night in the emergency room (I've had enough experience with the ER and my mother to know that if you're not actively trying to die, you're going to be in the ER for 6-9 hours).  But the next day I did go get it checked out and X-rayed and nothing is broken (how the heck I didn't break my wrist I'll never know - but it's not even hurt).  Broken or not, it hurts like hell and I need to be easy with it for a bit (so I say, because I've worked two shifts at the museum since then, but light duty - no pushing of the heavy wheelbarrow).

Once again, though, I got lucky.  That could have been bad.

Dinner's ready - time to pour the wine.

Stream!

 Yesterday I continued cutting and hacking.  It's not like I'm trying to find the old path (although bits of it are there).  I clear a couple of feet, and then decide where to go from there.  Sometimes I can use my brush cutter, and a couple of times I needed the chainsaw, but 95% of this is being done with hand clippers and loppers because I don't use power tools if I can see clearly where I'm cutting.

The memories keep popping up.  I looked off to the side, and remembered the "Spud Bypass."  When Bob and I would head down to the picnic area, we'd follow the loop of the stream.  When Spud (one of the cats) would go with us, he'd just take a shortcut through the woods and meet us there.

Other memories are not so funny.  One time, when I was stressed out (I think it was when I was working on my Master's degree) I took a break to walk in the woods, and sat down by Squeaky Frog Pond.  As I relaxed, I just listened to the frogs, and admired the flashing red throat patches of the anoles showing off.  Eventually I lay back, hands behind my head, and looked at the trees overhead.  I glanced over to the side - and saw an equally relaxed water moccasin basking in the sun about 8 feet away from me.  I decided that study break was over and gently eased myself out of there.  (Now, years later and with a bit more snake knowledge, I wonder if it was a banded water snake.  I'll never know)

But as I was cutting away, I couldn't help but worry a little.  Was the stream still there?  Had it dried up, or been diverted, or would it be choked with trash and weeds?

But I finally found it.  It's still there, and it's still beautiful.

 I find it hard to describe my feelings.  It was like coming home after being gone for years.  It was like sitting with an old friend that I thought I would never see again.  Getting back something that I thought was lost  It was like getting a hug.

I felt happy.

That was about 6 hours of work to get there.  Even though it was spread over 3-4 days, I'm a little tired (I'm also working extra shifts at the museum) so I'm taking a couple of days off and then I'll tackle the next section.  The next goal is to make a path around to our old picnic area.  It's a lot further than I've been so far, so it might take, who knows?  10-20 hours?  It doesn't matter; I'll just work on it.

But I can also now take my book down to the stream, lean against a tree, and just enjoy being back.

Christmas Thoughts

 I got about another 30 feet of path cleared today.  So far I've mostly use clippers and loppers - things are getting dense enough now that I'll likely drag in my brush cutter.
I was very happy to find the little gargoyle that used to sit on the gatepost.  We had a gate between our pasture area and the path to the woods so that the goats wouldn't wander down there.  The gate used to be at the edge of the cleared area - now it's about 25 feet in but I found it.  I'll have to make another stand for this little guy.

I only cleared for about an hour today because my upper back was really starting to hurt.  Eventually it occurred to me that one of the chores I took care of today was emptying out the dozen buckets of water that I had on the front deck - flushing water in case of a sustained power outage if a hurricane hit.  But hurricane season is over (Hooray!).  I didn't think anything of it while I was doing it - grab a bucket, take it to the edge of the deck, and dump it.  But they held about 4 gallons each (so 32 pounds) and there was a dozen of them, so I lifted about 400 pounds doing that little chore.

But being back down in my woods again is making me happy.  Good memories.  Today I remembered our goose Godwin.  My parents had been visiting, and Mom came to tell me that a dog had run into the yard and our goose took off flying and disappeared.  We searched for her for several days - but how do you find a missing goose in a forest?  But one day we were out in the yard - and suddenly heard a familiar honking coming from the woods.  We made a mad dash down, just in time to see her happily bobbing down the stream, honking all the while.  In Bob's version of the story that he told people, I went diving in and swam out to rescue her.  The truth is that I slid down about 3 feet of bank and then waded in the calf-deep water to catch her as she swam by.  But you know the concept: never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

But this post is about Christmas.  I mentioned earlier that I just never got into Christmas.  It's not that I'm a Grinch or anti-Christmas; it's just not a favorite.  Halloween I love - it's about getting to play dress-up and eat candy (so what's not to like?)   Thanksgiving is about eating until you can't move, and hopefully expressing a little gratitude - that's OK too.  But Christmas?  It just seems stressful.

I realized that what bothers me about Christmas is the presents, and the focus being on that.  People going arse-deep in debt.  People feeling resentful because they spent too much time and money to get the Perfect Present for someone, only to get some small token gift in return.  What if someone you didn't expect to gives you a gift, and you didn't get anything for them?  The trying to decide what to get for someone.

That used to be a point of Christmas contention between Bob and I.  I would start fairly early in December with, for example, "what should we get your mother?" with the standard reply of "I have no idea."  This question would be repeated until about a week before Christmas, when I would start pushing, and often get "I can't think of anything - you take care of it" to which I would respond "She's *your* mother!"  

There are the common outs, which say "I had to get you a gift but couldn't think of anything" so you go generic:  a six pack of fancy beer, or fancy bath products, boxes of chocolates.  Or the really generic gift cards ("I couldn't be bothered to think of anything so go buy yourself something").  Gift cards + guilt ("Sorry that it's for Walmart, but I'm broke and that's the only place I have credit" - and yes that has happened to me.)  

And the great moment of opening gifts, when you try to plaster a big smile on your face to hide the thoughts of "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?"   And seeing that exact same look on someone's face when they open the present from you.  Of course, reactions weren't always hidden; Bob's family could be fairly outspoken, and sometimes a gift was received with a "what made you think I would want this?" and then things would get a little, uh, lively.  (One time at work a co-worker asked Bob what he was doing for Christmas, and his answer was "oh, the usual - go home and listen to my family argue.")

Poor Bob - every year he had to listen to the Flash Card story.  When I was in fourth grade, I wasn't doing very well in arithmetic.  Yeah for the Christmas break from school.  In those days, Mike and I would get to open one gift on Christmas eve, handed to us by one of our parents.  I opened mine - and it was a set of arithmetic flash cards.  Nothing like getting study cards for your worst subject for Christmas.  I was nine years old and not a good actor, so my disappointment was obvious.  Dad (I have to remember that he was a child of the depression) got angry, and said that if I didn't like my gift maybe I wouldn't get any others the next day.  Being a young wise ass, I probably responded that if they were like this one, I didn't want them anyway.  Things went downhill and I ended up crying myself to sleep.  And ever since then I always approached the Christmas gift opening with trepidation (and a smile firmly in place on my face).

There is much I like about Christmas.  The pagan concept of celebrating that the days which have been getting shorter for six months will start lengthening again.  I like a lot of the music (just not the pop stuff).  I like all the food, the fruitcakes and rum balls and shortbread and Christmas cakes.  I like the sound of bells.  I like people wishing each other well.  There's a lot to enjoy about this time of year.

Just not the damned presents.

December Ramblings

 Well, that two weeks sort of slipped by.  What's up?
Pretty much recovered from the Covid, except for the damned cough.  I've always done this - any time I get a cold, or the flu, or whatever, I cough for 4-6 weeks afterwards.  So annoying.

Having the usual post-adventure doldrums.  One gets excited preparing for the trip, takes the trip (which I still don't believe I climbed down into that silo), comes home - and that's about it.  Back to answering the question of "what did you do today" with "not much."

I had a birthday.  Didn't make a big deal out of it (I rarely do; after all, it's also the anniversary of my mother's passing, and I do miss her).  I roasted some vegetables and a Cornish game hen for dinner, because I like being barbaric and ripping apart that little carcass with my fingers.

And of course Christmas is coming up.  It's a holiday that we never really got into.  We gave up the idea of a tree after we started collecting cats.  And somehow we never saw the point in putting up decorations for a couple of weeks and then taking them back down again.  But to show willing, I did put bows on the gargoyles and dragon and stuck a Santa Claus hat on my wendigo helm.

For some reason Bob never wanted to let me put the bows on the gargoyles - but now I can.

I've started work on making a Welsh Christmas Horse - more on that later.  And I tackled a job that I've been putting off for a month (although part of that procrastination was taking the trip and being sick).  One set of light switches in the cottage died - made some crackling sound, the overhead light flickered, and that was that.  I hoped that it was only that the light switches needed replacing - and I bought some.  And there they sat for awhile, because I've never done anything like that, and electricity scares me (as it should).  But the instructions seemed fairly straightforward, so I turned off the power and unscrewed the switches.  And then was stumped for a moment because all the instructions were about which colored wire would attach to which colored screw - and I was looking at just black wires.  I decided that it was the relative position of the wires that was important, so I tagged them with masking tape, got the old switches off, the new ones wired it, and everything put back together.  Finally came the moment of truth - I flipped the power back on, and nothing exploded.  Then I cautiously flipped on the switch, using a wooden ruler - and lo! I had light!

Yes, of course, I could have just hired an electrician to come do it - but where's the sense of satisfaction in that?

I even socialized.  A couple of people from the museum were going to have dinner with the former head keeper and former vet, and invited me.  I almost dodged - mainly because I really hate driving at night.  But I have also realized that I can't complain about never getting invited to anything if I never accept invitations.  So I'll give it a 50/50 - it was a pleasant dinner, but it was still about a 45 minute drive in the dark each way.  But I did it!

The second social was much closer - I found out that there was going to be a book discussion at the library - bring a book and talk about it.  The library is only about 5 minutes away.  About a half-dozen people showed up, and we chatted for an hour.  It turns out that it's a regular book club that meets once a month, so I'll probably start going now.

I had two choices for today for going out - Adrianne's medieval group was having their Yule festival, and the museum was having its Farm Days, and I thought about taking my spinning wheel and demonstrating.  But I did neither - because of this damned cough.  I can suppress it for about an hour, but I have to be careful not to talk much (both at dinner and at the book club I could mostly listen).  But more than an hour - or talking - and the uncontrolled hacking starts.  And I'm a little self-conscious about coughing a lot in public (and it hurts after awhile).

Instead, I tackled this winter's Big Project:  I want to go down to the stream.  There's a stream that loops around the lower 5 acres of the property, and it's been 6 years since I've been down there.  Hurricane Michael trashed our yard, and also Lord only knows how many dozens of trees fell in the woods.  By the time we got the yard picked up, the weather had turned hot and Bob had gotten diagnosed and, well, I've been dealing with other stuff since then.

But I want to see if the stream is still there (I assume so) and if I can clear a path around the loop again.  We used to enjoy wandering down there.  When we first moved here, there was an ornate (but non-working) wrought iron lamp post lying behind the barn.  We carried down and erected it in the woods (a nod to Narnia).  We used to let the goats and sheep follow us down for walks.  It was pleasant to go lean against a tree and read, or sling a hammock and take a nap.  Often we would light a little fire and roast hot dogs.  Sometimes we would spread out a blanket and get frisky al fresco.   We even named some of the areas, like Squeaky Frog Pond, and a rather twisty area we called Shelob's Lair.  I just want to go there again.

It's going to be a helluva lot of work, and I very likely won't get all the way around this year.  But I should at least get down to the stream.  And the only way to do it is to start.  I headed out to where the path used to be.

After a couple of hours, I was about 40 feet in - rather impressed with myself!  And then, of course, I had to drag all the cuttings over to the burn pile.  This is going to take awhile.

So I've been a little busy (and will continue - I'm working extra shifts over the break, and at some point soon I'm going to have a root canal done - oh joy).  More to come.