country life
3.10.2007
What's better than an over-priced hour of pilates? how about a morning of picking up hundreds of sticks and hauling them out to the fire pit? how about when the wind is a bit more forceful than you thought and your girl scout teepee structure goes up in flames and gets BIG and HOT very quicky.
Then comes the aerobic part of the workout...the part where you frantically run around putting the little fires out with the "stomppy wardance of terror". bonus move: running to fill milk jugs with water to stop the march of grass fires hopping outside of the fire ring.
not to mention the adrenalin melt down.
talk about working the "core"!
surely abject mortal fear is a few hundred mac and cheese calories gone...and, burning off my eyebrows, i may have lost a gram or two of weight there as well.
looks like i get to lay around on the porch this afternoon.
Ah, the cool waterfall. Uploaded especially for the Red Mantissa, the little doe of Vancouver. Its on the far side of my property line. I really wanted to win the lotto so i could buy the other side. That way, no one could ever build on it. Right now i cannot see or hear any other human being. and i want to keep it that way. selfish, i know.
there's a little fish trap at the end of these falls, which doubles as a swimming hole where even full grown adults can go underwater and dogs get to paddle. one must be careful not to anger the little crayfish or disturb the mudpuppies. Oh. you don't know mudpuppies? Well, they are rather large, thick and heavy dirt-gray water lizards with red lungs on the outside of their bodies. very primitive looking. once i was in the "hole" and something "significant" slimed up against my arm. i turned just in time to see two mudpuppies engaged in combat, biting each other as they flowed past. my shrieks echoed throughout the cohuttas, and someone might have noticed and investigated, 'cept there seems to be a lot of screaming out here.
for tomorrow's sunday brunch there will be fresh eggs thanks to Red and Dovey. here they are in their chicken church. you cant hardly see Red, she's laying. I gave them an old blueberry box filled with shredded newspaper to nest in. the chicks are small, so to see the size of their eggs is impressive. and, it explains the racket they make before and during the laying.
by day, the chicks eat grubs, earthworms, termites and a scratch mix of corn, millet and sunflower. i like to take them out to a new area and turn over rotting logs to expose other kinds of insects and small larvae. they make the coolest sounds when they are excited about what they find. in the evening i give the hens peanut butter and salmon. sometimes vermicelli. peaches. soft cheese. rice. whatever.
now that the trees are filling the satellite is getting sketchy. so i was productive and made a non objective painting in photoshop. reproduced as a real large canvas, it would be a showstopper.
tomorrow: 3rd sunday of Lent. intention: hiking the trail to the swinging bridge over the Toccoa river.