Turkeys of a Different Order

There have always been interesting stumps at the end of our road. When we first moved here it was a line of cut logs that had been placed in the dirt strip next to the road, presumably to keep people from parking there. We watched them literally rot away. This is a true stump, still in the ground,  after the tree fell in a recent storm and was cut. The turkey tail fungi have thrived on it, growing all they way around its circumference.

We stretched our morning walk to 2,700 steps today. John and Spike of course could have gone many times that distance, but John didn't seem so inclined and Spike had no choice. Blake and I were a good match for each other as we made our way down the steep driveway and on a fairly fruitless search for a non-hilly way to proceed. John suggested one street, I pointed out that it was quite a steep hill (going up isn't so bad, but coming down is not so good). He said we could take the first turning and then it wouldn't be much hill. Thinking for some reason of the Monty Python bit about Spam ("You could have spam, spam eggs, sausage and spam and spam...that's not got much spam in it") I trudged up the hill,  winced my way back down it and back home again along our disappearing road. I guess somebody decided that if they were going to call it Wildwood Trail, they might as well just let it revert to a dirt trail. 

They must be building a new house up on the mountain somewhere. For three days there were two or three dump trucks making round trips all day delivering dirt, as well as several big log trucks loaded with burned logs coming out. This is only the last of numerous construction vehicle trips over the last four years that, along with some heavy rains, have done their worst for what little remains of our road. We missed our chance to drive up Wildwood Mountain Road when the gate was open, but the thought of meeting up with one of those juggernauts on a narrow road or a failing bridge trumped our curiousity.

The cold weather and the lingering rain showers, have not only compelled me to take a day off, I have actually retreated under the duvet for a warm up. I practiced my sashiko stitching for awhile, decided I could figure it out better and with better results, without following the seventeen steps in my book for making several straight, parallel lines of stitching. I'm thinking of making a pillow, but John is already complaining that we have too many of them, and I'm inclined to agree with him.