Opportunity Knocks

I don't know about most people, but I for one am disappointed in the weather because we have yet to get any snow. Talk about a bummer. I know people love the warm weather and many of them hate the snow, but it simply begs the question, why do you live here? If you hate cold and snow, you're definitely living in the wrong place. I for one love the snow, so you can understand my disappointment.

Now normally I could sit and whine about the warm weather, and believe me, it's been over 50 degrees this week, but in the spirit of making the most of things, I've actually found that I've been fairly productive doing outside work. Usually there's a base layer of snow on the ground that freezes and glues everything in contact with it into one large mass. This includes leaves, grass, and firewood. By late fall I've lost so much steam that I'm not disappointed in the least when this happens, and with each dusting of the white stuff, the less I'm aware of what's below it and wait until spring to deal with it. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes.

This year there's no where to hide, so I've just been dealing with it. As I mentioned I managed to get all the raking done, the garden is clean, and the lawnmower has been stowed for the winter. This year's wood had all summer to dry, and I figured if I had about 24% of next year's wood, that would be enough to cover us if we went through this year's pile. Finishing year 2 is the impossible dream, but this year we are getting close to pulling it off. With the warm weather we've been out there splitting and stacking, and I'd say we're about 2/3 done, if not more. Plus, the big stuff is split and it's just a question of chopping it down to size.

Finally, there was the issue of the burn pile. I had a bunch of rotting pallets and junk wood that was in a pile in the front yard, but never really found an ideal time (does such a thing exist?) to burn it. Somehow with burn piles I feel like I have to stick around to monitor it. As winter approached I figured it would snow and our plow man would just shove it further into the yard. Well, this past week N and I went to work on it and sure enough we burned it down. I was kind of stoked about that. It's all so optimistic of me to take advantage of the weather, but you have to seize the opportunity when it knocks, right? If we can get year 2 split and stacked, I will truly be amazed, but crazier things have happened to us.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to penelope fewster for the pic.