Back to Cottage Country

The chicadees finally found the new feeder just outside the back window. Perhaps the numbers of birds is a further sign that winter is losing her grip
and spring is not far away. Back in cottage country, our home away from home. Surrounded by trees and most important-the beautiful quiet,
even though sometimes at night and sometimes in the early morning hours, the quiet is puncuated by
the  sound of the pack of coyotes likely roaming just across the nearby field...

Merle Haggard is on the country radio station, and my wife is enjoying celebrating another birthday at
the cottage. I have been using a buck saw to shore up another supply of firewood, just to have it ready when needed. I rest a length of wood on my brothers old and wobbly, yet trusty sawhorse and the sound of the cutting echoes into the forest.
I sometimes think of the writing of Maurice Cohen
author of the Woodcutters Companion...and one particular sentence about the buck saw - "Be good to a buck saw and it will be good to you..." And should you find even a used edition of the Woodcutters Companion, it is the ideal reference book for anyone cutting wood. 

My wife has unpacked and plugged in our Carbon Monoxide Detector, so necessary after our last scare of experiencing some of the early stages of 
high levels of carbon dioxide when our previous wall furnace decided to quit. Now the new wall furnace (all the way from California) is
doing a fine job. We just hope the birds and bats are not again attracted to the outside vent....
and we also discovered the need to open windows
should we decide to have the wood burning fireplace on, because ironic, that can be a problem as well...

The gentle light from longer days is finding its way through the woods nearby and shadows play funny tricks...but once again, spring is not far away and each moment we inhale that precious country air,
we know we are blessed, here in cottage country.