Our Little Corner of the World

Five-O-One Road runs south off Hwy 54, just east of town. To get to our home you turn south on to 501 Road at the Powder Horn restaurant. Locals still call it Joses' Cafe--and I've been here long enough to have eaten at Joses' before it became the Powder Horn. Powder Horn has two entrances--one for smokers and the other for non-smokers--and both sides are usually full.

Turn south on 501 Road, drive exactly a half-mile and turn east at the second mailbox on the left. A narrow graveled lane goes directly into our new pole barn/two-car garage/storage unit. (We got this wonderful addition last year when a straight wind lifted, twisted, and relocated our car port into the edge of our woods, broke the power lines, and scattered debris hither and yon.)

Our house is nestled into the earth with its back to 501 Road. When you drive up you see our roof, the top of a berm house. Our living room windows and front yard face the woods and our "back yard" is between our house and the road. We mow about 3 acres, front and back. The rest of our property, roughly 6 or 7 acres (The realtor and the tax accessor disagree as to exactly how many acres we have!), but except for about 3 acres it is all wooded--and out of those woods come our turkeys, squirrels, deer, possums, turtles, etc. Last night, walking from the garage to the house, we heard the tree toads again for the first time this year.

A norther blew in last night and the temperature dropped about 20+ degrees! So we woke up this morning to a multitude of very busy birds in our front yard. Three rather large Tom Turkeys pecked in the edge of the woods, never venturing any closer to the house. On the ground and at the feeders nearer our house we saw a variety of birds in colors and sizes, both male and female: red cardinals, blue jays, American goldfinches (not yet bright yellow, but gradually changing), robin red-breasts, a red-winged blackbird, a larger pair of iridescent blackbirds, dark-eyed juncos, and one red-breasted woodpecker. Of course we had several doves, a sparrow or two, and a titmouse (I always wonder what the correct plural for that bird is. That's why I try to create sentences so that I speak of them in the singular.) Oh, I almost forgot to mention, a killdeer has returned for the second year to build a nest in the middle of our graveled lane! In the last week or so she has begun to stand guard and runs when a car approaches.

This morning Thomas is out cleaning up one of our shared fence rows and I sit in the warmth of our home, watching our president speak at Camp Lejeune, doing what I love--writing. I hope your day is as blessed.