Our old dog Snookie slogging up the logging road the day our mountain burned

I was pushing up brush piles with the tractor when this timber rattler crawled out from under a downed oak. She crawled right by the tractor, and I knew it was a she because her belly was yellow. From there, she slithered over to the camp site and I figured maybe I'd wait a few days before I pitched the tent there.

My new passion is beelining, where you catch wild bees in a small box called a bee box, feed them sugar water, and follow them to their nests. Here, a yellow jacket joins three bees for a sip of sugar water in front of the bee box I built in my shed. I'm hoping the bees don't lead me to a wasp nest (or "wasper" nest, as Cooter, the guy who used to live on our property, called them).

Never use harsh abrasives on your cast iron skillets. Here, our border collies Diggity and Lucky show how it's done at our cabin.

An oak leaf I found on a recent walk out behind our cabin. The leaves surrounding it are maple leaves.

I made you a leaf arrangement I think you'll enjoy. The big yellow leaf is a tulip poplar, the reddish leaves are sassafras and the orange one is sour wood. I found these leaves while walking through the forest last week.

While looking for locust logs, I pried a piece of bark off an old locust tree and found this bat hunkered down underneath. I felt bad and hope it finds cozy home before winter weather sets in.

I recently came across a letter I wrote many years ago (2009) to my friends Thies Matzen and Kicki Ericson. At the time, they were sailing through the Southern Ocean on their sailboat Laurent Giles-designed sailboat Wanderer III. What a fun throwback to the era of pen and paper letters. Thies and Kicki are currently living on Westpoint Island in the Falkland Islands. I visited them a few years ago. Click here to read about what life on a sheep… Continue reading →

Julia hangs with Lucky and Diggity, our rescue border collies. This has been a rare quiet week for the two of them. The week before, Diggity got bit in the face by copperhead and it swelled up big as pit bull's.

Our neighbor had this sign nailed up on her old barn and I wondered if the horse was still alive - that is, if Secret's Bad Bullet was a horse.