Friday, October 3, 2008

Adventure in the woodpile.


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Aren't the girls cute? They looked like the Bobsey Twins on this cooler morning as Michael and I took a trip down to the woodpile to see what we had to work with for building out back porch.

This home has been here for over four years and we've never been able to use the back door as it had no porch or stairs. So we are going to build a small deck off the back with scraps from our pile down by the barn and buy whatever we have need of with the money I am earning on a little side job of painting a dentist office for a friend of mine.

We are really excited about this project. In the winter the front porch gets no sun whatsoever as it faces directly north. We really miss sitting out there. Our hope is to get this porch done, as well as a side porch, before the end of the year so we can soak up sunshine as we do schoolwork outside. we just get so claustrophobic locked up in the house all the time.

Took our paper and pen down behind the tack/feed room to make a list, and look at what I found when I leaned down to count boards!



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Yup, a baby copperhead! Michael ran to get a bucket and we scooped him into it with a stick. It was hard to resist reaching in and touching him. I kept wanting to do it and then reminding myself that this one is poisonous. We don't see too many poisonous ones, mostly garden snakes, and they are very beneficial, so I don't like to dispatch them.

When I was a young girl, the 1970's my folks bought acreage from a sub-divided ranch in CA. It was the job of my little brother and I to hunt the rattlesnakes and do them in, as well as the ground squirrels. My dad didn't want the land massacred by ground squirrel holes and have the cattle breaking their legs in the holes. At least that was the story. I think my dad just hated them. LOL

But the snakes did have to go. There were many of them and to have them that close to where people lived now was dangerous, so we hunted many of them on our walks with our snake sticks. We either shot them or chopped their heads off.
my biggest regret is never having eaten one.

This little guy, however, was not under such a sentence. He regained his freedom in a field some distance away from humanity.

I am always in wonder at the gifts all around us; beauty and simple pleasures.

Faith