Mud Season

The good news is that I might be able to drive in on Monday, which would mean another extra trip to town, but small price to pay. I've carried in good sized packs all week and I'm not really desperate for anything, but the pantry is skimpy. I want to build up reserves so that I have a year of subsistence food, and get a year ahead on firewood; and now that the child support is done, I can finish a few things on the house which should make my life a bit easier and a bit warmer. Another sunny day, temps in the mid-forties, and on the way to work, the slanted light, I could see that the poplar buds were swollen. Spring is around several corners yet, but still. Poplar buds. They are invasive, fast growing, and take chances. Black Walnut trees, by comparison, are slow, conservative, the last to bud and leaf, and consequently have by far a shorter growing season, everything else falls in the middle. Whatever the dominant oak, in a given area, will the mid-point on a bell-curve. I picked up some nice dead oak today, on Mackletree, where someone with a chainsaw in the back of their truck had sawn a tree that had fallen across the road. There's quite a pile of Ash, at the wood dump, and I might start hauling that, piling it at the bottom of the driveway. When I find a free pre-cut, I always hum a little mantra, and figure how many hours or days a certain round of wood might burn, under what conditions; sing them out loud, as lyrics to my humming. Officially muddy. A Class One Mud Emergency today, which states just be careful and leave your boots at the door; a Class Two Emergency involves galoshes and a bench outside the door. I seem to have picked a spot at the exact latitude of the greatest possible number of mud days. More's the pity of a broken toe. I've had to revise my mud removal system. DO NOT STAMP THE LEFT FOOT. A painful moment when I learned this, and a testament to my stupidity. Something odd in my driveway ponds. I've blocked off the driveway with stumps and a sign that says 'FROGS'; and the puddles cleared beautifully, clay silt is a wonderful clearing agent. There was a single small chain of frog eggs in one, very odd, way too early. And they were odd eggs, just 13 of them, abnormally large, a huge egg-case, ping-pong ball size; and I know now that there's a natural sugar anti-freeze. I realize I'm looking at natural selection, the scout frogs did the dirty and laid some eggs, with a slightly different edge, and let's wait and see, maybe one or two of these frogs might survive. First thing you know you have frogs all winter, wearing little fleece vests and pestering you with their base line. Set up for a live music / food event at the museum and I'm going in tomorrow to clean up after. Absolutely must go to the laundromat. Must carry in a back-up whiskey because I just broke into my current back-up. Priorities. Live like I do, the weather mandates.