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I am listening to the screech owl outside this morning. My fan is off and out of the window, so I can hear him and all the cows mooing on the neighboring farm. The owl must be trying to scope out something to eat because his position has changed a couple of times so far. It’s gone half six in the morning, so the sun is not yet up. Once it is, I plan to be keeping an eye out for a photo, if I can get a good position in relation to the owl. He has tended to stay about after sunrise, so it might play out in my favor. I’d like that.

With the kids back in school and the season beginning to cool, the time of change has started to peek in on us. Working eight-to-ten-hour days, inserting school runs in addition, and having to cut animal feed and deliver that to them, my days are currently too full to get the time to do the things I need to for winter preparations. I have a chimney to clean, and a yard to clear of some debris still, and I would like to get that roof together on the firewood seller. I’d also love to get my woodshed put together, but I am not at all confident in the start I have got to that. It’s something I probably should not worry about as it is boards where there should be beams down along the sill, but they are inch and a half thick and are basically working as a sill on bricks that make up for the remainder of what would be a beam. So, I should just carry one and get the thing put together. You know me. Nothing is ever perfect, so I get hung up. I need the woodshed too dearly to put it off, though! So, I should avail myself of the need and get it done.

The owl has gone quiet. Perhaps that is the end of him for the moment, and I will have to try again tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps I should be working by this time tomorrow or the next day.

Our oldest came by and picked up a load of wood yesterday, by himself, and brought it back to the house. He split the previous load and some of the one from yesterday, and he took a load in his truck bed back up to his place. He is working very hard this year on the scheme, and he is leaving some for us, as well. He is getting more done on the task than I am! I need to get some done, too, even if it is just sorting out what logs out back I am going to saw, and which I will cut into firewood as a sort of emergency contribution. Better still would be to get the truck gassed up and get down there and get a few more logs of my own. He has said it is hard work, and he is sure right! If I could just get the tires fixed on the trailer and haul the tractor down, we could make it a great deal easier to get the wood home, and then deal with it here, where there is water and a break place, and the safety of people around if something should go wrong, and the ability to lift a lot more with a lot less effort. There are lots of tools here, too. It is a far cry from doing such heavy work exposed to the sun where we get the wood. But fixing those two tires will be so expensive! So will not fixing them. I dare not fix one and use the spare, because it would be just my luck, I’d need the spare the moment I did that.

It looks like the hydrangea bush behind my shop is about to bloom for the second time. I have the electric running on the fence now, so it has filled in on the backside where the neighbor’s horses have kept attacking it for food. We may see the healthiest bloom on it yet in the next few days!

I think in the next couple of weeks the girls and I need to take a short expedition on our bikes to go see the progress on the bridge, and if there is any hope that we will be going back to their regular bus stop this winter. I don’t know who the county contracted to build the replacement, but they sure are not in a hurry to get it done. From what I could see in the dark that one night, by the time they were supposed to be finished, then had not yet put in any new concrete. I could see a pile of long rebar laying along the road, long enough to erect new pilings with. But there was certainly no sign of a deck. So, in addition to being unimpressed, I am still stuck taking the kids seven miles away to the next nearest bus stop. It could shorten my day and get me working a little longer if I could just do the one a mile and a half or two away.

By hook or by crook I need to get out in a short bit and cut some grass for these goats and llamas this side of the street, for their health! Is this a chore I want to do? Hell no! I don’t know what a big bale of hay costs, but even if it is only $80, I cannot afford that right now. Our animals have tended to go through about a bale a day on the two-string sized ones. Those are the small ones you see the Amish throwing onto their horsedrawn hay wagons in the videos you watch online. I am on about the really big bales you seldom see a tractor carrying more than two or three of at a time because they are so huge. Specifically, I mean six-string. My tractor can barely lift one! But it can lift it!

The screeching is still quiet. You know that if I go across the street and cut hay without my camera in tow, the owl will come back and fly right over my head again, like it did last week. If nothing else positive, I have learned that life can be a little predictable. Well, I can at least anticipate the kind of stupidity that carries on!

It has been good to sit and write a little. I have been missing this lately! Too bad I cannot get paid for this! Ta for now!