Dateline: Saturday, 22 Oct 2022

It was earlier this year, in the spring, that my wife asked me to do something that I wasn’t excited about. On our wood lot, adjacent to our house lot on the uphill side, was a large brush pile. For years I took deadfall from the trees in our front yard and built that brush pile. We didn’t own the lot at the time, but the owner was nowhere to be found, and rather than haul the stuff way downhill behind our lot, I put them “next door.” By this spring, the pile was about 7 feet high.

For years it was nicely hidden from the street by the many saplings and weeds in the space between the street and the big trees line. Back in early 2020, the power company cleared out all the saplings so as to keep them from growing up to the powerline. They also took out a few of the bigger trees. Since then, I’ve worked on that area to keep it in grass but let the blackberry bushes grow up. As a result, the brush pile became quite visible from the street. Lynda asked me to move it way down the hill.

Being a dutiful husband, I resisted. Then I said okay, I’ll do it. I think it was April or May that I began. That was about the beginning of “snake season,” and I was sure that they would be living in the pile. So I started very carefully. Working from the downhill side, standing as far away from the pile as I could, I used a strong garden rake to pull the top branches off the pile. Once I got them to the ground, I threw them down the hill, saving my legs.

The first day, I spent maybe half an hour on that. I figured I had to take the pile down a little at a time. Week by week, I raked branches off the top and threw them down the hill. Slowly, I could see the pile height reducing. Slowly, if the snakes were in it, they must have moved because I never saw even a one. This summer, when the oldest grandson and his friend were here, I hired them to move the thrown branches to the downhill brush pile.

I’ll fast forward. Around three weeks ago, the brush pile was gone. All that remained was several little piles of smaller sticks. I raked these up into small piles. This week, I spent time almost every day taking wheelbarrow loads down the hill to the lower brush pile. This morning, I took the last three loads away. I had already raked and smoothed the area of the brush pile. This is near enough to the tree line that I hope some volunteer grass will sprout next year.

And why, you ask, am I telling you this? A few weeks back, I posted about special projects I was working on. Those were three things in the house—paperwork stuff—that were cutting into my writing time and sapping my energy. I forgot about this big project mainly because it was outdoor work. But it was also taking time and energy. Now it’s done. Also, my work on the Stars and Stripes is very, very close to being done. They are inventoried and boxed. All that is left is to take them by the UPS store, get their guidance on whether the packaging is suitable for transporting with them. Then, I’ll add padding to the boxes, seal and label them, and ship them. That will then be only two special project left.

I’m making good progress on digitizing my old letters. My wife and I are also making good progress on proofreading the Kuwait Letters book. I believe we have only five or six reading sessions left. I’ve been making corrections as we go, including moving a couple of un-dated letters that we decided I had in the wrong place. We are down to 45 pages in the original book, maybe 60 pages including items I found after I had the proof copy printed.

I feel so good about these projects, that this week I plan to back off the letter digitizing some and resume work on my latest novel. Just today, I wrote a letter to grandson Ezra, detailing more of the plot to him so that he can be thinking about it and help me if he can think of anything else.

This all feels good. I’m going to go now and finish that letter, or maybe read some and save that for tomorrow. Life awaits. I will awaken the dawn.