Forest Walk

Thursday was our annual staff Christmas luncheon at Just More BBQ. I took home the placemat to show Andrew - it has all the local 'mountain talk' expressions and their meanings. We really do hear people saying many of these, but one of my favorites is not listed: 'might could'. As in 'We might could add another brick path over there next year.' We woke up to a very cold and frosty yard this morning. Andrew had to get up early in order to proctor a final exam starting at 8:00am, and he is just off to another right now that starts at 6:30pm. So his Saturday was basically shot! Our temperatures over night of late have gone down into the teens - very hard freezes. It's amazing that the pansies and the italian parsley plants handle these temps without a problem. If anyone ever calls you a pansy take it as a compliment! This morning I finished knitting up Andrew's slippers and he needs them badly - his current ones are leaving little tuffs of wool on the floors which the cats are eating up. After that the outside temps had warmed up a bit so I went outside to install the benches in the greenhouse. I decided not to stain them and just left them natural and in time they will weather to a light grey. A little too lazy to stain I guess, but I also like the smell of the redwood and the grey will provide a bit of contrast to the stained wood. I took this picture using the self-timer on the camera - first time I had used that. Once the benches were finished the cats and I went on a very long forest walk while Andrew banged on his drums. Our poor dock is sitting on mostly dry land - if it wasn't for the beaver this whole area would be bone dry. I took the camera out to try to get some shots of the cats on the walk. I guess I treat the cats like dogs because I had never had a cat before, and thus the cats like to go on walks and stick right with me just like a dog would. They love to climb the trees and sometimes it seems they are deliberately showing off because they climb the tree right next to us as though to say 'Look how high I can go!'. Sometimes Sidney gets a little too high - when she was little Andrew had to bring her down once on a ladder. But for the most part we just walk along the deer paths and have a good look around at things. I love having the corps land right behind us. It feels like my own personal forest!