Visuals

As promised, here are a few snaps of what's going on around here. First there's the turtle I had to move out of my driveway so that I could use my car. It's a box turtle about the size of a roll of toilet paper. It hissed at me very fiercely when I picked it up, but it wouldn't retract its head all the way because it wasn't willing to let go of the grasshopper it was eating.



I was really glad to see this turtle. It was the first I'd seen on the property since the Great Turtle Holocaust of 2002, when we had all the kudzu (and, unfortunately, some of the slower wildlife) front-loadered off the open part of the property. There was no avoiding it; the kudzu had taken over so badly that it was either that or a multi-year program of some of the nastiest herbicides known to man. But when the s.o. found a crushed turtle, I thought I was going to be sick, or scream, or both. I had nightmares.

So a big hats-off to my shelled friend. I hope that when I moved it out of the driveway and back beyond the pecan trees, I thereby encouraged it to travel in a direction that wasn't across the highway! We want our property to be a safe haven for creatures.

And here a couple of shots of the newly painted dining room. One of them reveals the ghastly mess that is our kitchen entryway. Stacks of cookbooks, coats...urgh.





I went to Home Depot the other night and got all the paint I'll need to finish the upstairs and foyer. They'll be a lot of work, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, finally...