mud and water

For those of you who think I exaggerate, I thought I’d share a proof of my mud….. This is the trek I walk to open the pasture gate twice a day.

And imagine what your dogs look like at the end of the day after romping in this…. not to mention my kids…

a panaramic view of the barn from the street (backside). We are clearing trees and burning brush, which opens the view. More mess of course…. but I can ride through the woods now come spring… The mud inside the gate where the animals hang out is even worse! I won’t take a picture of it because currently, there is a dead chicken out there. Long story.


I was waiting to reveal the lake until spring, but why wait. You might appreciate it more with a before and after shot……
This hillside has been sprayed with wildflowers so we will have a billizion flowers everywhere come spring. Special surprise for the bees. We also planted 100 dafodiles along the banks of the lake, which will multiply each year until we turn our Kansas into OZ. Cute deck, nice place to nurse a glass of wine and feed the ducks. I’d read there if I only had a chair . . .(she bursts into song to the tune of “if I only had a brain”) I have a chair request on Mark’s never ending wife’s wish list. I’ll drag one here from around our fire pit one of these days when he isn’t looking – he doesn’t like the bright red color of the adarondik chairs that worked so well in our Florida garden, but I’m thinking of visuals from my perspective looking over the water, not of people looking at the dock. (And that is the difference between us.) And besides which, I think the chairs are pretty. What do I know….

The water is controlled by a valve hidden under the dock so we can drain the lake if we ever need to. It constantly overflows in a system into the creek which begins at the base of this muddy hill. Best of both worlds if you like a water view. No fish yet, because we finished the lake the very month you must stock fish (fall) but you can’t put fish in a pond that hasn’t had time to develop algee and other food sources. So, if we are here next season, we’ll get fish. Sure would be nice for my ducks to have something real to dive for.  

The lake begins at the far tip in the trees, because that’s where the creak spills into this pond. My ducks like to stay nestled in that far cove most of the time, but they have taken to hanging out (and pooping) on the deck. Lovely. More evidence of brush burning on the bank…. not very pretty, but you can’t imagine the mess clearing a thousand trees makes….. This, like everything in our world, is a work in progress. Sigh. In the far distance that skinny white thing is my two seater kayak, which shows that this is a sizeable lake for a private backyard sort. It’s soothing (at least to me) to live sandwiched between water and trees.

In the distance, you can see my four ducks swimming towards me. I already fed them leftover angle food cake moments before, but they must be looking for something else.  Good thing for them I have a few corn muffins in my pockets . . . not like I was going to feed them my camera.
By the way, it’s a gloomy day and all this is going to look far prettier when the grass and flowers and trees bloom . . . might even have a few baby ducklings by May….
I’m cranky today because something ate one of my leghorn chickens. Some monsterous creature has been catching one every two weeks or so and eats only the head, leaving feathers and yuck behind. I found the hole it lives in…. I’m calculating a master plan to rid the beast (catch and release, of course, I can’t kill anything, but I sure get inspired to pour gasoline down that hole when I see one of my beloved chickens turned inside out.) This is war!