Talking with Mom on Skype on Monday morning

November 20, 2012 – Tuesday

38 degrees

Pentoga Road

I kept waking up last night thinking that it surely must be time to get up. The first time was shortly after midnight… and I’d just gone to bed two hours previous. Thinking back, I believe I was too tired to sleep. Monday was a full one.

I helped Mom get her computer project completed. I’ve worked on her desktop and laptop, both, from a distance for years. The first time, it was from Hilltop in the Arctic via wind/solar, powering a satellite dish. I sat in my cabin, temperature well below zero on the outside, working on her computer in Florida, temperature in the nineties. That was the first time I realized how small the world had become.

After getting the work and any problems solved on Monday, Mom and I gabbed via video conference for a while getting caught up on the latest news in our lives. Both of us have been extraordinarily busy, Mom with her Veteran’s Day projects in her senior complex, me with the every day piddling-around here on Pentoga Road. We both agree, we like it that way. Its called living life.

The popple project was next. Elmo the Ermine followed me everywhere I went and contented himself by jumping around in the fallen limbs and brush surrounding an old spruce tree. Each time I’d approach to take a picture, he’d duck into the brush. The last I saw of the little guy, he was bounding across the back yard and playing in the piles of chips/mulch in the orchard and garden area. He’ll be sitting on my shoulder by year’s end.

Elmo started his game of Hide and Go Seek by jumping up onto the axle of the Blazer while I was loading tools into the Man Truck

Then he followed me across the back yard and played for most the morning in the limbs and brush

The last I saw of him (the white streak on the right) was Monday afternoon. Growing tired of waiting for me to play with him, he streaked across the yard to the piles of wood chips and played there.

The rest of the day was dedicated to cutting and chipping…. two truckloads full. With any luck, the heavy-duty chainsaw work should be completed by tonight. With the temperatures dramatically falling and snow forecast to begin on Friday, I know my days for this type of activity are numbered. I’m hoping to do some tractor work on Wednesday and after that, put all the machinery away for the winter.

I managed to get in a quick four mile hike last night just before dark. In fact, I met the neighbor who lives up the road and after we talked for almost an hour, I walked back from his house in the pitch black. There are no streetlights or ambient lighting from a town or neighbor’s out here. It was just me, the critters, and the dark. I liked it. My ears, rather than my eyes, become my best friends. It put everything on even par.

There’s the second truckload of chips to unload first thing this morning. After that, I’ll be cutting and chipping the rest of the day. I’m far enough along now that I’ll be moving the chipper to the small meadow just beyond the popples. It should be one of the last times I have to relocate the machine during this project.

The sun’s not yet risen and there’s still time to look at a final project or two that have come in for my ALST 300 class. A man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…

The last of the popples. Just beyond this twenty foot section is the meadow.