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Sunday, October 08, 2023

Take a moment to appreciate the pauses

 "You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by, you take no heed.  You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while, that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

 Life is busy.  We are having guests for dinner again this evening.  Shit, I'm becoming a regular socialite!  Three different dinner guests in two months!  Socializing and having visitors is not really my thing.  Worse, the wife insists on her house being absolutely perfect before allowing guests - so the cleanup death-march is never fun beforehand, LOL

What I'm getting to is that there has not been time to work on the not-so-beloved F100.  No time to identify the engine, to visit a local farm for apples, or to start brewing a batch of cider.  None of that... it's all been about getting the house in order.  And brushing the crap out of the husky outdoors, so that she will leave fewer tufts of fur on the carpet for a day or two.

The grass got cut for the final time this year - because visitors are coming.  Otherwise I'd have let it go.  At this point, it's done growing for the season.  I'll blow the water out of the sprinklers shortly.  When we mow, the wife does the riding mower.  I empty the grass catcher for her, do all the edges with the string trimmer, and blow the grass clippings off the walkways afterwards.  

Usually I have a few minute's time to cool down as she finishes mowing - which is when I normally pull out my phone and ignore the world.  For some reason yesterday instead, I wandered around the property and found some beauty.  Appreciating the pause in a busy life, I guess.

The Tamaracks are changing to yellow color.  It would be nice to head into the mountains to get some vista photos of the yellow trees amidst the green, but it's probably not going to happen this year.  They'll be done soon.


Below:  A cute Tamarack sapling.  I need to take out and burn the insect-killed trees either side of it - here in my free time.

We are blessed to live on a plot of land that wasn't "developed" by a home builder.  The property was purchased by a family several decades after the property was logged, and so today the trees are reasonably wild and diverse.  We have Aspen, Lodgepole pine, Ponderosa pine, Red fir, tamarack, Douglas fir, and a couple of cedars.

Nowadays though, developers purchase huge parcels of land, log out and sell all the high-quality lumber, leaving behind a handful of spindly lodgepole pines.  Newbies who arrive here think they are living in the forest.

Below:  If you have five acres with a dozen identical copies of these junk trees remaining on your property, you don't live in the woods.  You live in the McWoods :(  Not a fan of this "business model" for property development - but it's what they do.

Edit:  A few nearby examples of Mchomes built in the McWoods.

 




 

My daughter and I cleaned church last week.  While we were there, a huge storm passed overhead, and on the way home we saw a very nice rainbow.  I took pictures while she drove.  The best one is below.

The deer have changed from their summer reddish color to gray now, so the cold is approaching. 

Lastly, I'd like to leave you with this very touching item:ttps://x.com/Dalbodog/status/1709579138707730814?s=20

https://x.com/Dalbodog/status/1709579138707730814?s=20


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