Monday, November 7, 2011

Dreaming during harvest


Living in the woods does not negate the necessity to deal responsibly with fallen leaves. Managing our harvest is my favorite fall chore. Weather permitting, some part of every other day I spend with my trusty steed, the iron horse, as we mulch the leaves into powder. It beats hell out of raking.

The trick is not to take the job too seriously. Whenever I get too full of myself and my progress, I look up. There are plenty of leaves still to fall. Most of the oaks don't lose their leaves till spring, and this season has seen a bumper crop of acorns which provide plenty of excitement as I lose traction approaching the lake. I scare a day off my life's allotment each time I climb on the mower.

Since driving a tractor around a yard is fairly mindless I have plenty of time for daydreaming. Reading about Simon Dale's hobbit house, I've been fantasizing about building a cottage near the lake. There is something fundamentally right about cozy spaces, be they homes, offices, cabins, writing nooks.

Simon, without prior experience, built his hobbit house in Wales with scrap lumber and 3 months hard labor for 3000GBP. It looks snug as bug.


Timber and stones, moss we've got. No experience, certainly. Time, plenty. Still somehow, I couldn't envision a harder sell.

Enjoy your day, scheduled afternoon rains are certain to wipe out my weekend efforts.

toad

2 comments:

Shelley said...

That Hobbit house does look amazing, and I'm totally with you about cozy spaces, but having lived here a while, the words 'planning permission' and 'rising damp' come to mind. Not sure how long that place might remain cozy. I hope it works for them.

Old Polo said...

Hey, I say that if you only scare one day off your life expectancy taking the mower to the lake, GO FOR IT! Who knows, maybe the adrenalin rush adds a couple more days to your life expectancy. At least that seems to have worked for me so far. Not so sure about the Hobbit House though, Toad. You make something nice and you might be displaced.