Less than an acre of nature.....

Having been in the house still sick since this past Tuesday, I decided to go for a little nature walk outside. Our lot is almost an acre, however, it is cut like a piece of pizza pie with our little cottage right on the line on one side.

Since Irene had come through and cooled things off a little, I knew I wanted to get outside for a few minutes after listening to the meeting to get a few pictures while it was nice. I started on our little deck which has been sorely neglected the past few years. Hopefully BigD will have time to clean it real good and stain it. One of the rails need to be repaired/replaced too.

I wandered out back to our "natural" area (small patch where we let everything go) and was pleased to see quite a bit of new growth. Hopefully the little Mimosa trees will survive since I do love them so much. The yellow leaf speaks of autumn being right around the corner. When I woke up yesterday to see the trees blowing in the winds - it made me realize they are finally filling out a little and hopefully more will grow soon. I so miss the forest that used to be behind our house and that of our neighbor.

The left top picture shows what is left of the many trees we once had in our front yard, the one beside it is the little cactus garden across the ditch beside my neighbor's fence, the small on on the top right is a picture of what will hopefully one day be a magnolia tree, the bottom left shows the growth from the summer behind our neighbor's house, the middle bottom is in our other neighbor's yard and my Mom's favorite - Crepe Myrtle, and the one on the bottom right is some of the grass that has taken over the ditch dug down the side of our property by the Department of Transportation. Yep - that ditch if full of grass, little trees, mud and "stuff". The DOT is supposed to maintain that ditch but so far, we haven't seen anyone since they re-dug it.

This is the rough path that has been created by a young man who lives in the neighborhood right behind us (you can see the asphalt of the street) who asked permission to walk through our yard to get to the bus stop they put at an intersection close to the front of our house. We don't mind but our neighbor let me know he saw three young men walking quite close to our house early the other morning and wanted to know if we wanted help in putting up a fence. BigD said he isn't interested and that as long as they aren't bothering anything, he doesn't care. I don't know if he was still walking through here before Bri did all the yard work for us in getting rid of "most" of the poison ivy and underbrush back there but I did notice how nice it felt under the trees back there. Hmmm - Wonder what it would take for Bri to really clean it out back there and maybe put down something and make a little reading/meditating/sitting area for me during the Spring and Autumn? Right now there is nothing really growing (except for some determined poison ivy) and I'm not sure anything would - I like to picture thick moss for this area.  BigD is going to get Bri to come over in the next few weeks to clean out from under the house and I'm going to have him get rid of some more underbrush and fallen limbs from Irene.  I would like to keep it looking like there is some kind of plan to the "natural area". As so often happens when I'm blogging, I got hungry enough that I stopped long enough to throw together the pasta dish Rie taught me.

It gets better every time I make it and even BigD ate a little bit of it today. That just goes to show you how bare our cupboard is because he rarely eats pasta without meat in the sauce. I wish I could report that I'm feeling better but alas - that isn't so. Leah reminded me how long it took me to get over the cough I had awhile back. I guess the BigC is affecting my health in ways I never thought of. I am happy to report I am taking my Garlic regularly and really trying hard to remember my vitamins. I guess I'll call my GP tomorrow so he can refer me to that ENT he mentioned since I'm entering my third week. I enjoyed listening to the meeting today and what a wonderful provision but it really isn't the same as being with everyone. Nate did a great job on his talk and the WT was wonderful.  Gail and Wm. both called me to check on me after the meeting and that was nice.  I also got the following

picture from Shen showing me her new hair cut. I really, really like it. I miss her........I also got a text message from Eileen saying there wasn't any real damage at her place on the Island (EI) but lots of debris. There were several trees down on the street but none around her little cottage.