Hello Everyone!
A weird dream, The broken news habit, Writing as a hobby, A southern slope, Brush clearing & A double hooked pine!
This morning I first awoke at four o'clock but did not have it in me to get up and start writing just yet, so I went back to sleep for another three hours. My espresso has just now finally finished brewing so I am still halfway asleep and brooding over what I was dreaming of a little while ago. Maybe brooding is not the right word because I am more exploring the feelings that remain since the contents of the dream are quite elusive and the more I try to recall them the further away from my mind's eye the memories get! Ha! A sliver of memory from the dream finally emerged and of course that was all it took to recall more of it so I guess my little brooding/mulling exercise worked once again.
As far as dreams go it was nothing all that awesome but alas it was thankfully not all that stressful either. Most of it involved shopping in some store where the store's employees would only let in small groups of people at a time to do their shopping. Most of the shelves were bare except for 'junk' items that were not all that helpful and there was a lot of fuss between the shoppers as they jockeyed for the few good items. Of course the 'setting' of the dream was that some cataclysm was about to occur and folks were trying to prepare for it so none of the above was all that odd given the circumstances.
Anyway, these morning writing sessions have been doing me quite a bit of good but I do want to start curbing some of the 'internal dialogue' in an effort to not muck things up with too much of that stuff. Aside from the editing part being annoying for clarity's sake... I am beginning to dislike the feeling that I am 'boxing myself in' with words to the point where I find myself trudging through one well rutted line of thought/expression after another. Repetition is one thing and I am largely fine with it but feeling like I am repeating myself (or even saying the same thing in a different way) gets old fast.
Lately, I find myself entertaining the idea of treating all this writing stuff more like a job and while that would be kind of interesting I also totally balk at the notion because of how interwoven the process is with my personal growth and mental well-being. Nonetheless it is a reoccurring thought and while sure I already treat it to some extent as a job I think that by and large the 'its a hobby' approach is more my style so I doubt the 'treat it as a job' idea will hold up very well.
Honestly, I think that doing otherwise would deplete all too much of the joy that I find in doing it and sort of set me up for some lame disconnected non-relationship with others where everything is simply... on the surface... or merely a gratuitous exchange with nothing actually authentic involved. It just seems like an unfulfilling approach and one that would snuff out my little flame of passion for doing it all in the first place.
On a different note. I have not mentioned my progress with breaking the news habit the last few days but it has been going rather well and for the most part I can make it until noon before even thinking too much about it. That has been a really nice advancement because it has helped me focus more on the writing as well as with reading posts and occasionally commenting on Hive. It has been pretty nice to have my mind clear especially while reading stuff because I feel like that extra bit of attention helps me more fully grasp whatever I am reading. Whereas before I would feel this mild distraction as a part of my mind kept asking: What the heck is going on in the world now?
I have still been 'on again off again' with my engagement of folks online but overall I am currently doing it more. Eventually I know that I will slack off on doing it and that is fine and all but the communication has by and large been nice. The social aspect of my life being rather non-existent I know that such engagement is good for me but at the same time responding to folks on a public forum is not exactly the kind of 'being social' that fits the bill of 'healthy human relationships' but it is alas better than nothing.
Anyway, ever since I have been working on clearing that brush below the shelter site I keep seeing tufts of grass growing along the edges of the dog yard near the bottom of the fence. The stuff is by no means growing in thick or anything but it is sporadically growing not just along the downhill portion of the fence but also along the south and east fence-lines. So, at least some of my seeding efforts apparently paid off and if I am incredibly lucky it will grow in thick once I fell all those trees below the shelter site and get that garden bed established.
The more time that I have spent working in that area the more that I feel that my conviction that the hillside was once used to grow stuff agriculturally is accurate. Aside from the obvious terracing (that could of course be from logging) there are just so many of those fruit trees that I have to wonder if that was what was grown there and furthermore could they be grown there again if I cut back many of the trees shading it.
A really neat thing about that hillside is that it mainly faces south and east and getting water to it is no problem whether that be by pumping or by a gravity-fed system. As far as the irrigation possibilities go it is awesomely positioned for any number of sources whether that be rainwater, well water or even surface water given that I capture it at the top of the hillside in places that it already tends to flow.
Of course, some combination of all those water sources would be handy but at least for the garden plot directly below the shelter site I am thinking to just harvest the water off the cabin and the solar shack for irrigating it. The position of both those structures are rather ideal for that purpose and it would only take a couple of gutters, a few downspouts and some corrugated irrigation tubing to 'pipe' the water downhill into a holding tank. I could also put containers directly below the gutter downspouts but I do not really want to clutter the dog yard with them.
In other news, the weather is looking pretty epic over the coming days even though there is apparently a chance for severe storms. I will have to keep a close eye on alerts for that because its apparently going to be some windy tornado weather. Just given how dry everything is I also need to be on fire alert and of course wait on having any fires until the conditions change which should not be a big deal since I did all my burning last week.
With the warmer weather I can hopefully get outdoors a wee bit earlier in the day even if it is just to go hiking. I have grown to like working in the afternoon and generally making a late start to the outdoor portion of my day but I know that will soon change once it gets hot. More than likely I will settle back into the routine of waking at four, writing until the sunrise, promptly heading outdoors to work and of course then napping a large portion of the afternoon away before waking again and putting in a few more hours of work. That routine seems to fit me the best so I am going to continue working towards re-establishing it.
Alright, it is now a little before sunset and I just woke up from a nap and got all the critters fed. The day was nowhere near as productive as it could have been but I did get more of the vines cut back and removed from that area below the shelter site. That area is starting to clean up nicely and I even cut back a bunch of the larger vines so that I could finally get a good look up the trunk of that big pine tree that needs felled.
As far as that pine goes it has a rather pronounced double hook... meaning it has two curved portions on opposite sides of its trunk. At least the downhill (eastern) side of the tree has most of the growth and the heavier branches so it will probably fall where I want it to without too much of a hassle. I have my doubts on how well the cordless chainsaw will cut it given the sap has hardened over the winter so I will probably have my corded saw and an axe on standby just in case it is needed. Do not get me wrong because the cordless saw cuts like a champ but the batteries do tend to overheat when cutting large trees.
One way or another I can hopefully get the rest of that area cleared of brush (and the smaller trees) by the end of the week and get the larger trees felled by the weekend. I really dislike letting that big pine go to waste but I do not have any way to get it out of the woods once it is felled let alone a way to get it milled into lumber. What I have been thinking to do with it is sectioning up the majority of it as firewood and the rest of it I am thinking that I might use as either water-breaks on the hill or as the borders for some raised garden beds on one of the terraces.
Okay, that is all for now. I am going to get on with the editing before it grows late and the fatigue sets in. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night or something like that!
Thanks for reading!
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