Relaxing at the creek

Relaxing at the creek

We worked so hard getting the water lines to the orchard installed and planting trees, shrubs, and grass seed last week, that we almost forgot to have fun!   Well, we had fun working around the farm, as usual, and hubby really had fun on the backhoe, but we got to Saturday and realized we'd only been down the creek once and that was down by the bridge.   It's pretty there, and the dog was able to cool off and wash off, but the creek area at the back of the property is so much prettier.  Plus, we needed to check on a couple of trees that we'd planted along the trail that way on our last trip.

Once we got down the the creek, we didn't want to leave.  Just like when we were children, we became enthralled with watching the eddies as they swirled around the rock.  We laughed when Maggie stuck her head under the water and blew bubbles out of her nose as she tried (and succeeded) to get a rock.  We watched bees and butterflies land in the sandy bank to get water and minerals.   We sat and dreamed about the future and the live we will life in this beautiful place we own.

Cooling our feet in the creek

We cooled our tired old feet in the cold water and just sat still for a while.  It's so very easy to walk five miles a day just going about our daily business.  Since we've been back, my fitness tracker has been fussing at me because my average steps per day are so much lower and I wish I could just tell it that I'm doing a different kind of work now and walking is less fun in dress shoes!

We returned home to find healthy, humming, hives with lots of nectar.   The hive with the second swarm we caught this spring had two queens in it, so we had an extra to put into one of the new splits that had an open queen cell, but no queen.  The other split has a queen, but we didn't see any larva on Monday.  It's supposed to storm this afternoon, so we'll probably check again tomorrow after work.  

Jumping the creek

Maggie clearly still wishes she had 22 acres and a creek to play in.   There's only so much energy she can burn off in the fenced in portion of our 1/3 acre lot and our resident mockingbird appears to be making her life a misery, much like it has done for all our pets for the past 15 years.  I know it is probably not the same bird, but the mockingbirds and bluejays love to dive-bomb the dogs, cats, and occasionally us.

So now Maggie gets to sit on the couch and watch me grade another batch of essays.   IB and AP exams start in just over a week, so this is my second-to-last batch of the year other than optional revisions that students will turn in over the next couple of weeks.  I see both daylight at the end of the tunnel and the fruits of my labors as some of my weakest students are now writing good, analytical essays.   Just like raking clay back into a 600 foot long trench becomes tedious after the first hour or so, it, and these final essays, leave me feeling that every bit of effort I put in is well worth it.     

Floating Away

When we arrived at my brother-in-laws (BIL) on Sunday, we drove over to our land and the creek was the lowest we have ever seen it.    By yesterday afternoon, the sandbars that reached half way across were completely covered.  We drove out to the road that runs to the north of our property and the water there was moving at about the speed of the Nantahala River down by the outdoor center.

It continued to rain heavily all night and we've been intermittantly under tornado watches.  As we reach every time point that the forecast claimed the rain would end, the forecast changes.  

By lunch time today, the creek was higher and moving really quickly.  We were going to walk over to the spring that runs between where we plan to build the house and where we plan to have the garden, but the rain started coming down by the bucket-full again and our phones reported lightning strikes .3 miles away.  We really want to see what the spring looks like with this kind of rain, and we want to see what the creek looks like at the back of the property, but not enough to walk in a downpour and risk being struck by lightening.

The other things that the rain has delayed are getting BILs  hot water heater installed and working on our RV.  We got a great deal on an RV that had been used as a hunting cabin, but it does have some leaks.   That's one good thing about this rain -- we think we know where ALL the leaks are now.  At some point, someone adding paneling over the original wall and put in new flooring, but that person didn't actually fix the leak or tear out any of the damaged wood.  Right now, the entire RV is covered with a tarp (Tractor Supply has a great selection of huge tarps) and we have most of the bedroom gutted.  We're confident that we can get a waterproof and mold-free room fairly quickly -- so long as this rain actually stops at some point.