December 7, 2020 How beautiful is our corner of NH… This photo was taken about a half mile down Sheep Road, at the intersection of Stepping Stones Road. Sydney and I enjoy our morning walks, if I am lucky she allows me a half cup of coffee before she insists that we set off. Along Sheep Road there is a “vernal pool” which is a temporary body of water, actually a wetland, commonly found in the woods of this area. These fairly shallow depressions are dry and barren in the summer, but fill with water in the winter and spring, providing a breeding habitat for a variety of creatures, such as wood frogs, salamanders, turtles, fairy shrimp. and aquatic insects. Bob and I were completely surprised by this one – it filled with water seemingly overnight during one of the rainstorms and is now a small pond, where before there was just an unexplained deep dip in the forest floor. We have found quite a few smaller ones on our property back in the woods along the trails. You can read more about vernal pools here.


Nothing doing today with tower repairs, and no place really to go, so I finished the curtain rod project. Good to accomplish something!


I may have forgotten to mention that a few days ago, before the last storm, Randy the excavator stopped by with his machine to finally scrape up the crushed stone that had piled up in front of the stone wall. Over time, the snow plowing of the driveway had pushed up piles of loose crushed stone, which seriously needed cleaning up. Long story why this task has been hanging on for months, but now it was done. Randy distributed the stones in various places around the house for drainage and fill, and I got out there with a metal rake to help get it done. The very last thing that Randy did, in an attempt to tidy up and smooth out the grade of the back yard, was scrape some of the earth right across the very same septic line he had accidentally broken (and repaired) in the summer. You can’t make this stuff up!! It was getting dark and he didn’t notice at the time, but when I discovered it the next day, I couldn’t believe it. And then after it snowed, it was easy to see because it was MELTING the snow. How can we be so jinxed? When can I stop talking about this crap? Literally!



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