Sirocco

Only colder.

Maybe it will simplify my life.  This part of the world is dry. There's been virtually no rain since July. A burning ban was decreed in  September, just as the leaves began to fall. There are 70-some trees on the post itself, hundreds more in the surrounding tactical operations zone.  So they pile up to a troublesome degree.

It isn't  just the aesthetics. You lose things in them. Like the loppers I've been looking for for weeks. Like the wood from the  dead oak I took down and bucked Thursday. And I'd have sworn there was an old girl friend around here somewhere.

But the wind is off the lake today, blowing across this installation and toward the woods to the north. It's working it way up to something like 40 mph, meaning I think I can put the rejuvenated Toro to work stirring them up so Mother Nature can waft them away.

Then I can find and resume splitting the fuel.

Then maybe I'll have enough energy left to reduce the chaos in the guest cabin for the comfort of my well-armed kids and friends coming next week  to shoot at pheasants and fondle one another's bird dogs.

I'd rather finish Hoyt's novel about Custer  (The Last Stand), but I think I  already know how it's going to come out, so maybe not.  That leaves least at least one other slothful temptation. Again, though, I already know what makes a Winchester 88 go bang, so maybe I can leave the new one in the rack until after sundown.

Everything is this report is literally true. Except maybe I lied a little about an old girl  friend hiding in the leaves.