A restful Labor Day

I got that chicken-and-broth out of the freezer that had been there since July and made noodles.  Our daughter and son-in-law had wanted to visit but had been in contact with a relative who was exposed to Covid two weeks ago; they didn't want to take any chances with exposing us, but I told them we could hang out around the shop with windows and doors open and fans running, and that should be fine.  I don't think there was a huge chance of them carrying the virus anyway, under the circumstances.  All of us like our noodles on mashed potatoes, and that's what we had.  Don't tell me about the carbs, I'm very aware of that.  Just to make SURE we were over-carbed, I made some chocolate chip pan cookies.  The next-door grandson and Alex, his girlfriend, joined us; after all, it's his shop now that he owns this property.  It was a nice, relaxing day with wonderful weather.

After we all ate in the shop, we dispersed and continued with our own plans.  Since that three inches of rain the other day, the grass and weeds in the pasture had grown pretty tall; I asked Cliff to mow the path I take on my walks when he felt like it, when the dew was off the grass.  When he got done with that, he also mowed part of our yard.  The little John Deere is only 35 horsepower; even though it isn't an antique tractor, I think it's his favorite one.  It doesn't take a lot of fuel like the big, classic beasts do, and he uses it for everything.  

An old picture of the 35-horsepower workhorse.

When Cliff mows my path, he follows the same route Gabe and I walk.  I sure enjoyed not getting my ankles wet in the tall grass this morning.  My feet, of course, are always wet because I'm barefoot. 

He goes down every "finger" of the path, then turns around where I do and comes back.  The picture below shows the path splitting to go down the last two fingers, one downhill to the left and the other to the right.  When I've walked those two places, I am out of the woods and going back to the house.

For many years I walked along 224 highway, three miles altogether, many times before daylight.  One day I thought how much more interesting it would be to walk in our pasture; of course the back of the place was out of the picture because of the almost straight-up-and-down inclines. 

I took a watch with me and, at first, walked around the edges of our property, leaving out the back 1/3 or so of it where the canyons are.  That didn't amount to enough time spent.  Then I realized that if I walked on the high ground between the three or four canyons as far as I could get (the fingers), stopping and turning where the brush got too thick or the incline too steep, I could put a lot more time in.  Cliff had always mowed those fingers, even before I began walking there.  

The pathway wasn't very wide then, so spiders were a problem; they'd spin their webs from one side to the other.  I learned to carry a lightweight stick with me and wave it up and down in front of me when I was walking between the walls of trees, because who wants to walk into a cobweb?  However, my husband, who was able to walk with me back then, gradually kept mowing a wider path, and now the path is so wide I hardly ever hit a cobweb.

One morning a few days ago I looked up at the moon and the first thing I thought of was the Cheshire Cat's grin.  So I took a picture of it with my point-and-shoot camera.

Have a wonderful day, my friends.