Sign of the Times?

Back in the late summer the Creekers met and decided to pave our access road. It had once been maintained by the County but about ten years ago they decided the last half mile or so was not theirs and abandoned it to it’s fate.  Several of us appealed the abandonment, pointing out that the road had been regularly plowed during the winter and the local school bus used it when there were schoolkids to be hauled. “Nope” they said “If we did that it was a mistake, it’s not ours and we don’t want it”.  The road had never really been paved it was made by spraying tar and rolling fine gravel into the surface repeatedly over the years  and twenty years of use had almost destroyed the top.
We got some estimates from several local paving outfits and decided on who would do the job. Not a cheap process building roads, they all proposed stripping the surface completely and relaying the lot in two three inch layers of  hot rolled tarmacadam.

I will never understand the female mind.

You may recall that in various posts in the past  I have mentioned the severity of our recent winters, cold and snow in abundance.

Well, a month or so ago, during a discussion at the dinner table concerning the upcoming winter and expectation of another doozy, the first mate made an offer to help in clearing the white stuff from about the property.  “I’d like to help” I heard her say quite clearly.  Being the considerate soul that I am my response was probably “The big tractor with the snow blower up front is a real handful especially on the hill”   but I did remember the conversation and, again showing great consideration quietly acted upon it at the appropriate time.

Pokes

Gene Weingarten writes for the Washington Post, his column last Sunday was the latest in a series labelled “Bad Poetry”initiates a new genre  “Pokes” a merger of poetry  and jokes.  This one is from there.

“The Camel”
in the style of an English heroic sonnet

An officer takes up his new command:
A desert outpost, lonely and austere.
He asks the sergeant how the men can stand
To be so long without a woman near.
The sergeant shyly shows his commandant
A tied-up female camel in a shed.
Whene’er the men are paralyzed by want,
They make good use of her, the sergeant said.
While horrified, the captain did not speak.
His feelings, though, were of extreme unease.
But after months he, too, was feeling weak
And very much in need of some release.
He found it in the way he’d so condemned;
But this the sergeant spied — the deed, unmasked!
Embarrassed now, the captain hawed and hemmed —
“That’s how the soldiers do it, then?” he asked.
“It’s not,” the sergeant said with measured frown —
“The soldiers ride the camel into town.”

A Happy Redneck Christmas Tree from the Creek

Redneck Christmas Tree in Moonlight

Speaking of Birds

Saw this one on my nearby stump yesterday.

A Yellow Shafted Flicker, a kind of Woodpecker, and a female I think.

Now I see some red and some black and some gray and some buff brown, but Yellow?

If you look real close to her port side wing tip, there is a peep of yellow showing where the feathers are not quite smooth.

Here’s where the yellow hides

Not my picture, and almost impossible to get with the camera, these birds have the swooping flight, typical of Woodpeckers, that is hard to follow.