I don’t know you and you won’t see this. Even if you did, you wouldn’t change, or the behavior you exhibit wouldn’t happen. Remember this is a one lane gravel road with only 7 houses on it’s 8/10 mile length. It is a road that some of us like to walk for it’s hilly pastoral beauty.
However, you seem to think that someone magic is cleaning up your plastic cups, bottles, cigarette packs, and cans. It isn’t someone magic, it is your neighbors who do care what our rural road looks like.
You also seem to think this is a freeway and you have the right of way regardless when you speed up or down it at 45 mph around the bend in your sporty 2 wheel drive sedan, nearly hitting me as a pedestrian, almost causing a head on collision, or leaving those of us who have lived here for 20 or more years and proceed with caution, nowhere to get out of your way. Oh, and when the hilly road is covered with snow or ice and your 2 wheel drive sedan can’t get up it, abandoning it in front of a driveway for several days until it get’s towed by the State Police is more than inconsiderate.
Yes, I am a senior in the upper half of my 70’s, but I can still work when needed. We have a couple of days of thaw and temperatures in the mid 40’s and we have about 25 fireplace logs unsplit from dead Ash trees that our south neighbor took down when he was fencing along the south border between our farms. A lot of smaller branches were cut by him and stacked for us, but the logs were in 10 foot lengths. Our young hay guy, a great and helpful man, came to remove an oak blow down that was in one of the fields he hays. While he was here, he cut the Ash into fireplace lengths and stacked them where they had been laid. We have some brutal cold expected Monday through Wednesday or Thursday of next week with single digit daytime temperatures. To be prepared to assist the heat pump and hopefully just be a supplemental heat (as long as the power stays on), I tackled the stack today and managed to get about 6 of the logs split, hauled down to the house and stacked on the front porch. The rolling wood rack was filled with older wood from the wood stack and also moved to the porch. This was an additional workout as there is still snow and ice from the past couple weeks of nastiness which makes doing anything a bit of a hazard.
This pile is about twice as large as when the photo was taken and the rolling wood rack is on the other side of the doorway.
All of this effort was followed with a coop clean out. They spent about 10 days without ever even peeking outside. Every day has required carrying a 3 gallon bucket of water over to them and bringing the frozen one back to thaw. The coop is a few feet higher than the garage with a several foot dip between so it was trekking up the hill without slipping on the ice. As that is the east side of the house and the house blocks the hill in the afternoon, the ice lingered.
The driveway is finally thawing and more ground and gravel is seen every day. With today’s slightly warmer temperatures and sunshine, the ice is becoming mud. Tomorrow evening we have rain then a couple inches of snow, but hopefully warm enough to not turn to ice.
The cold icy weather has allowed a lot of crafting time. The December “Fibre Snack” scarf has been the primary knitting project and is now about 2/3 finished. The base color is running out, it is wheel spun and there is more unspun that I will have to tackle it soon to finish the scarf. It is going to be generous, warm, and colorful when finished as I have used the daily December snack in the order they were spun.
It has gotten too large to take to hubby’s appointments, so it is an at home only project. Spindles and fiber travel to entertain me while I wait. And it often entertains many others in the waiting rooms as well.
Tomorrow before the rain begins, more wood will be split and covered to keep it dry in case it is needed next week.
This week has been true winter. Night temperatures have been in the teens, day temperatures in the 20’s. We had a snow and ice event that turned our driveway into an ice slide. We had to get out one day during the first storm and drive to Roanoke, nearly an hour away, it took about twice that long. The cover was still snow at that point. Once down our mountain road, the roads were fairly clear, but there was heavy fog on the way there and snow on the way home. I attempted to walk up to the mailbox on Wednesday and ended up sitting in the snow and ice and eventually sliding down the hill seated to get back to the house without getting anywhere near the mailbox. Getting over to the chicken coop with water and scratch each day has been a challenge as it is an uphill walk with a 4 gallon bucket on ice. With effort, and driving half on the driveway, half in the grass, we were able to get out this morning for hubby’s PT and back home before today’s snowstorm began. It isn’t supposed to be quite as cold tonight and may actually get above freezing tomorrow and up to 40 on Sunday and Monday, so we may see some thawing. I hope. We won’t attempt to get out again until the sun comes out and the temperatures rises above freezing. Hopefully it will thaw before the next Arctic blast midweek.
During the first 25 days of December, the Jenkins Spindle group participated in a fiber sample exchange. In October, 59 of us mailed 4 ounces each of a fiber of our choice to one of two “Elves” who spent a couple of days together dividing the fiber into 5 gram samples, packaging, labeling, and wrapping each sample. The 25 samples were then mailed back to us to be opened one each day on the day of the sample’s number.
Each of the samples were spun on one of my Jenkin’s Turkish spindles then plyed on a spindle and skeined into a mini skein that I labeled with the sample label adding the day and yardage. After finishing the spin, I returned to the knitting of the Icelandic Nordic Star scarf that I was making with the yarn daughter and SIL brought me from their honeymoon in Iceland.
When it was finished, I started knitting the scarf that uses the spun samples and a skein of handspun Shetland wool that I had on hand. I am on Day 8 of the samples, knitting them in the order they were spun, alternated with the gray Shetland. This is a fun project, using up the little skeins about 1 each day.
We are looking forward to returning to more normal daily routines, getting back to my trainer for my health and flexibility, and hoping to see an end to the healing of hubby’s clavicle break. Spring outdoor walks are still a dream and wish.
