Home, sweet home…

He suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said “Bother!” and “O Blow!” and also “hang spring-cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel…and scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged… until at last, pop! His snout came out into the sunlight and he found himself rolling around in the warm grass of a great meadow….”

And so Mole temporarily abandons his burrow and gets involved in an amazing adventure with Badger and Rat and Toad…

And so it was on the last day of 2011 with that I popped out of my cave of an office and into the sunlight and took a walk with the cat. Of course it is not Spring--that is most definitely some months away, and I am not doing cleaning -- but it is unusually warm today, almost 60 degrees (even if a it is a bit breezy), and I too could feel the call…

Squeaker and I  took a walk out to the pond. I fret a bit about the pond surviving from year-to-year, especially when we have had drought, and indeed, it was very low as Summer segued into Fall. But, the recent rains have filled it up, almost to the brim. That means it will likely survive the summer.

 

Our land slopes from the house up toward the wood, and forms sort of a ridge, creating a beautiful south-facing slope where the wet weather spring flows along the the edge of the flat pasture.

I have often daydreamed about clearing some of the trees and building a house into the side of the slope.

Instead of heading straight back the way we came to the pond, the cat and I took a left turn and headed toward the spring. It has a bit of water in it from rain earlier in the week, and so we hopped across and headed up the slope toward the upper pasture.

And look-it here..

Someone else also had the idea of building a home into the south slope.

Yes, the cat has to look too.

Hard to say whether this house is occupied or abandoned. In any event, if someone does live here now, they have has not swept the porch recently.

And feeling much refreshed and invigorated, we head back toward the house. The cat is feeling so invigorated she does a typical cat thing and goes nuts (which is why I suppose our ancestors in the Middle Ages thought cats were possessed), charging around tailed bristled out like a bottle brush, and clawing her way up a tree for a few feet.

Happy New Year to everyone.

See y’all next year.