Fall Burning

One of the things I used to love doing in the fall was burning. Maybe it was the latent pyro in me from all my years as a firefighter I guess or the primal effect fire has on people, who knows, but one of the good things about living in Greenville is doing yard work by fire. Yesterday it was drizzling and it was a permissive burn day so outside with a pocket full of matches I go. I got 2 of my piles burned and I have 2 more really big ones so I will wait till it's raining again before I light those. It's great being able to burn the residue instead of having to haul it off somewhere and since we have so many trees here on our property I have lots of needles and branches to dispose of. I'm burning some of the larger branches in the wood stove but being able to do open burning really helps get rid of the rest of it.

Karen's property up on the hill has quite a few piles that she and Ken made before he died so we need to get up there and light those too but that will certainly have to wait for wetter weather. Anyway, ya gotta love it!

Lovely fall weather

Sadly we had to say goodbye to our friends Brad and Ione last Sunday morning. I had such a nice time with them and we seem to have the same interests in the beautiful natural surroundings in this area. It was great getting to know them better and the time went by much too fast which is always an indication of how good a time you are having.

We went up to Crystal Lake on Saturday and took a picture at the cross that somebody carved into a stump. It was another wonderfully clear day and we went up to the lookout to see the view. Brad is a very accomplished photographer and he took hundreds of pictures on his trip here and there were certainly some nice photo opportunities up on Mount Hough.

Today Bill is here and we are going down to Greenville Y to do a little metal detecting in the bedrock for gold and maybe a little panning. We will see how that goes.

Stanger visit

Our friends from Idaho are here visiting and we have been showing them around the area. The first day we went up in the woods to the place we like to find petrified wood. It was rainy and cold but everyone was dressed for it except me. Needless to say it was still nice to be out and of course we found lots of petrified wood and took lots of pictures.

Yesterday I took Brad and Wes up to Antelope Lake to try fishing but the fish weren't cooperating. Still, Brad took lots of pictures and as you can see it was a beautiful day so whether or not the fish were biting didn't really matter. Of course that's what you usually say when the fish aren't biting, isn't it?

Today we are heading up to Crystal Lake for some more sight seeing and photo opportunities and the weather looks pretty good so it should be another glorious day with our friends.

Levitation

Cutting firewood is hard work but when you can float the wood over to the truck it becomes much easier. We went up into Moonlight Valley today to get a load. As you can see there are a lot of cut trees laying on the ground right next to the road but unfortunately most of it is white fir and not a desirable species for firewood. If you look closely though, there are some pieces of douglas fir and also some yellow pine, both of which I will take when I am looking for softwood. Today was a softwood day so we got a pretty good load again. Tomorrow it will be back to oak and a lot closer to home. It took us a little over an hour to drive down from Moonlight Valley and I really don't like traveling that far to get wood. Hey, we live in the woods so I'm getting spoiled... ok? Oh, and levitation is just one of my many wood cutting skills.

Wood cutting

Well, we went out yesterday and got our first load of wood. On this side of the Plumas we can cut oak so we got a full load of it since there is so much up in the moonlight fire area that was killed by the fire. Most of it is buck skinned so it's not black and sooty and some of it still has some bark on it like the stuff I'm cutting here. We ended up with a pretty good load, I'm guessing about ½ a chord or a little more but it was a hot day and we didn't bring enough water so I was pretty dry when we called it quits for the day.

The place we are going is not too far from our house, maybe a 20 minute drive, and it used to be a pretty place before the fire but now the under growth is coming back and it's pretty brushy and there are a lot of burned trees still standing so it's not very picturesque or shady. Moonlight Creek runs right next to the road we are on though and when I went over to it I could see some trout in there and it's a pretty creek in a big burned area. Still, there are lots of dead oaks so we will go back in there again today and get another load.

A married man

Well, when we were in Idaho we decided to go ahead and get married since we had 2 pastor friends there and we never seemed to be able to find the time to do it. We were supposed to be there to get the house ready to put on the market and getting married slowed down the process a little but in the end we got it all done. Our friends gave us a "country" wedding, and we all had a great time in the process. Sonny, on the left in that picture was the gracious host and we had it at his house out in potato country. He was one of our pastors. Eric, on the right side was the other pastor and all 4 of those guys had some part in the ceremony. Brad next to Eric played guitar and had a song for us that the lord led him to play and John, next to Sonny led us in communion. You couldn't ask for a better group of people to give us a wonderful memory that will always be with us.

So now we are back in Greenville, married FINALLY, and thinking about getting ready for winter. We still have 5 chords of wood to get in and other things that need to be done before the cold weather starts. Or maybe I should say colder weather starts.

Early winter

It rained pretty good last night and this morning it looks like a beautiful fall scene. Makes me want to go out and burn some piles like I used to do when I was working for the Forest Service. But it's still August according to the calendar and we still have almost a month left until fall officially arrives. This type of weather makes me also think of fishing at Eagle lake which I'll get to do this year, but when the weather changes so fast like it has done the last few days, you have to wonder. Climate change? You bet. Global warming, I think not. Ice age? Maybe. Still.... ya gotta love it!