Outside In

The great outdoors? You cain't go no better! 

It's the author's intention to spend even more time outdoors this year than I spent out doors last year. That won't be easy considering I was "in the woods" most of last year.

 Once it became evident that covid wasn't going away any time soon, I decided to work our County Barry (Barry County if you don't speak Irish) property like it was my full-time job! Turned out I got a lot accomplished and had an enjoyable time doing it. 

I suppose about 10 or 12 of our 87 acres is open and I spent at least a few weeks brush-hogging, mulching, mowing, hacking, hauling and dumping weeds and brush in an effort to get it all to a point that it could be maintained with a mower. Got that done. I also spent significant time and energy "de-rocking" around the cabin and barn. In the process of that I discovered that the Armadillo is a prolific uprooter of rocks. About the time I'd get an area mostly rock-free I'd wake up the next day to discover that over night these diplopods (I keyed "dillopods" which was a made-up word and it autocorrected to diplopods, which is apparently an actual class of critter...I like the sounds of it even though I suspect it's not the correct term from a taxonomy standpoint) had uprooted about as many rocks as I'd picked up the previous day. Dang: that's frustrating but I suppose they're just doing their job. 

The barn/shop also got substantially rearranged and organized, although that's more of an inside job than outside. I cleared a lot of brush, cut down a few dead trees, processed a fair amount of firewood and so on and so forth. 

One thing I've become better at as I move ever closer to the golden years era is taking time to enjoy my surroundings. As a result I've seen some cool sites and sounds that are easy to overlook unless you're intentional about it. If you spend most of your life in front of a screen you miss alot of stuff. Had I been face-first in a device this past late summer I wouldn't have seen my first Missouri black bear wondering around in back of the cabin (I have probably already shared that in a previous post). Now that was completely unexpected but very awesome!

Maybe I'll report more on this subject as time moves along. Since this isn't set up for comments and likes or dislikes, I'm not really sure how many folks are reading my postings. That's OK though since my goal isn't followers, rather, sharing everyday life experiences with the few who might be interested. If that's you, thanks for taking time to read this stuff and I'll keep you posted:)