Other Bugs!

I have pictures of a couple of other bugs I found on our land. I don't know what they are.













This is a water bug in our creek:

The Creek!

Looking across the creek.

You can see the "hump" of the pipe in the water. The pipe actually did hold, through all four storms.



Looking up stream.


Looking downstream.

Trenching to the Creek! Success!

Note the big rock in the foreground. That is what we were running into the closer we got to the creek.


There is water flowing through it!


Here the water is flowing down the bank toward the creek!

Melting Snow!

Well...the snow is slowly melting! It started melting pretty quickly the day after it stopped snowing. The weather is warming up. Yesterday was cool, but nice. Today it is supposed to get all the way up into the lower 60's. Woohoo!

We are so grateful that it is not raining. The melting snow feeds the creek, but we can still drive and walk across it. If it were raining, too, it would cause the creek to get too high to cross.

Today we get the laundry room hooked back up. Our son can do that. How nice to not have to do laundry in the bathtub! **laughing**

We also "get" to dump the black water tank again. We did it right at the beginning of the major snow fall and have managed to make it to now. But it is full and needs to be drained and flushed today.

We have new neighbors moving in. They have a couple of boys close to our son's age. They typically live with their father who is just around the corner and up a ways (rural "corner"). I do not know how much time they will spend at their mom's, but it is possible that our son will have some playmates.

Well, it is very early here and I am going to sign off for now from our little RV on the hillside! I hope everyone is healthy and having a good day.

Abba, please touch each and every one who reads here. Bless them and touch them in every way that they need to be touched. Bring Your Shalom to them. Amen and amen!

A Spider, Snow & Black Water!

Oh, what a beautiful sight it is! Starting early this morning the snow began coming down. Our son is ecstatic. We have not had a decent snowfall all winter. He will finally be able to use his toboggan! In fact, he is bringing his toboggan down right now to Dave.

Dave was out getting a new tire put on at Walmart on his way in to work. His boss saw the snowfall and with the coming storm, decided Dave should go back home. In all likelihood, if Dave had gone into work, he might not have been able to come home by the time he got off. We are very grateful for that!!

So now Dave is parked across the creek and has some groceries to bring up.

+++

Well...this is live action, folks! I just got interrupted to help carry in the first batch that came up on the toboggan! **smile**

Poor Dave, what he does not know is that he has to dump the black water tank after he comes in and warms up. We especially want to dump it before we get even more snow. I cannot dump it without getting my feet wet. No, it is not from the black water. It is from the snow. I got a spider bite on one foot and cannot wear anything but an open back clog type shoe on that foot.

Speaking of spiders, I don't know what kind it is, but there is a spider here to which I am apparently more allergic than others. I get this hard bump that turns into a blister that I end up lancing. This is the first one of the year. I think it was in my mudder. I did shake them out and bang them...but I suspect that one was left in there.

So, there you have it. A spider, snow and black water!

Lord Willing & the Creek Don't Rise!

Phew! I don't know that I ever thought that phrase would become so real to me. However, since moving onto our land, there are several times when "the creek don't rise" portion has been very real.

I think it was only 3 times last winter that we could not get across the creek. I remember one time Dave could not get home, so he went back to work and spent the night there. Another time I tried, unsuccessfully, to throw his mudders across the creek to him. The first one went downstream and I held onto the second one!

What we did get across the creek was a stick with a rope attached. Dave tied it on one side and I tied it on the other. Then he pulled himself across the creek, getting soaked in icy water in the process. Wet shoes and socks! Wet pants! In fact, the mudders would not have kept him dry...they would have simply allowed him to take off his shoes and keep them dry by carrying them. The force of the water went way up his legs.

At some point, Dave decided to look for a creekside tree to fell so that it would lay across the creek. Admittedly, it is not the best way to get over the creek, but we figured, "hey...in a pinch!" So, off he went with a friend to find one. After felling it, they tied a rope above it so that we had something to hold onto while we crossed. It is not a very wide tree, but it is plenty strong enough. We tried crossing on it. One has to be VERY careful using it to cross, even with the rope.

If the creek is high enough to need to use it, there is still all the water flowing into our meadow from the neighbor's property and the hillside gully to get across, too. It is a bit tricky, but we figured we could do if we really had to. It beats trying to walk through swiftly flowing water that might contain a branch that could slam into us.

This winter, we have been pretty blessed. In spite of the rains, we have been able to get across the creek...until last week. My son and I are going to a home school co-op one day a week. Last week it was raining hard so Dave parked across the creek, just in case it got too high to drive across.

We have cement blocks and pile of rocks to use to walk across onwhen the creek. When it rains really hard, though, the blocks and rocks get buried enough to make it so that we cannot walk across, even when we can still drive across. Well, last week there was no way we could walk it and it is good thing he parked on the other side because he could not have driven it, either.

So, we slogged on over to the new neighbors property. Someone bought the property next to ours and is in the process of putting in a double wide. Part of that package was to build a crossing over the creek. So, we carefully picked our way across the wet meadow over to their property to walk across to the road and back over to the van. That was not too bad, other than the water running into our meadow.

This week, however, it was really bad again. We had our mudders on this time, though. We were prepared! And it is a good thing. We noticed that the water in our meadow was more than usual. As we approached the neighbors property we could see why. His creek crossing was dammed up. You could see the tree limbs sticking up above the road. The water was level with the driveway on one side and barely coming through on the other.

Usually, creek crossings are made a little bit lower than the driveway height so that any overflow just flows evenly across. This was built even with the driveway. So, instead of flowing smoothly over, it was being diverted onto his property at one end of the crossing and flooding it. As it went down the other side it was eating away at the crossing and causing a whole torrent of water to flow along the creek and over to the meadow with some of it going back into the creek on the other side of the crossing. If we had not had our mudders on, we would not have made it through the flooding water to get to the crossing and the road.

So, two weeks in a row, we had our exercise before we even got into the van! But we made it! Thankfully, in spite of some continued heavy rains later in the day, the water was able to do down at our driveway which allowed us to actually drive across. Typically, when the water runs that heavily through the creek, we have some undercutting on one side of our crossing and there is some repair that needs to be done before Dave can drive across. But, thank Yahweh, we were able to drive right across!

We truly believe this is an answer to prayer. We had faithful friends praying with us that we would be able to get home. Not only did we get home...we were able to drive right across! Woohoo!

The Van's Across the Creek!

Well...Dave could not get enough ice broken up in the driveway before running out of steam. As sick as he has been, I hope he did not over do it. He actually had to back the van across the creek. It barely made it up the other bank, but he got it up there and then turned around. Tomorrow...if he is well enough to go in...he will have to walk down the icy driveway and across the creek. Hooboy! That country livin'!

Well, off to watch a movie together as a family...if we don't all fall asleep first from being so worn out. :)

The Storms of Winter

We have been experiencing a LOT of rain. It has raised the creek to the degree that it makes it difficult to get across at times. Dave had difficulty getting the trash across the creek this morning for pickup today. Poor guy went to work with his feet wet. :(

I love to look out across our meadow. From our little RV on the hillside I can see over our meadow and across the creek to the road. Come spring, when the leaves are on the trees, you won't even know there IS a road! But what a difference the starkness of winter brings!