Hello Everyone!

**Plenty of rain, Leaving some meadow straw, Felling pines, Rows of fruit trees & Clearing brush!**

I awoke with the sun today and although I tried to fall back asleep I could not so I got up, let the dogs out and set the espresso to brewing much like I do almost every morning. Of course shortly thereafter I opened the text editor and 'here I am' (so to speak) once again beginning a new entry, waking all the way up and letting whatever bits of the dreams that I was having flit through my head.

As far as last night's dreams go nothing will clearly emerge in my memory even though I do recall dreaming quite heavily and can still feel what the dream 'felt' like overall. That feeling makes a good starting point though and if I do not push for the recollection of it perhaps some small piece of it will float into my awareness and I can use it to unravel more of the dream's contents but for now it just eludes me.

On a different note, it is muggy outside and it looks like significantly more rain has fallen during the night and from the way the clouds are it may well start raining again at any moment. The day might turn out to be a total flop as far as working outdoors goes but at least it is warm out there and the wind is a steady breeze instead of gusting like it has been lately.

With all the rain I am sure that the meadow now has a good bit more water in it and I think that I will not be cutting anymore straw out of it for now. Previously I was thinking of mowing down (or swing-blading) the majority of the meadow but when I was over there raking up that last batch of straw I realized there really is not a whole lot of the stuff left that is not in the areas where the water pools. Basically the remaining straw in the meadow is all that there is providing cover and/or habitat for the wildlife so I am just going to leave it be. 

Like I have said before it would help things a lot to cut it all down and mulch it in place to help build the topsoil but given how prone the entire area is to flooding and the limited amount of existing concealing growth... it would all around be best to leave said growth alone especially since the bulk of it is shading those two large pools in the sunny area.

Okay, the day is dragging on and it is getting sunny so maybe things will dry up a bit. If the wind does not pick up it would be a nice day to have a fire and get rid of some of the burnable stuff that I have accumulated over the last few weeks. Since I just cut all that stuff down recently I may want to look at turning some of it into firewood that I can later convert to biochar and ashes for the compost.

Alright, it is well after sunset and I better get back to working on this entry before it gets too much later in the evening. For some reason I have been putting off sitting down and writing tonight but since I squeezed in a long nap earlier I am not super worried about growing too fatigued before I can get all this wrapped up to one extent or another.

Very early in the day I went outdoors and got my routine chores done in short order before moving on to felling some trees and clearing more brush from below the shelter site. Mainly I focused on cutting down some of the smaller pines so that they will not be in the way when I eventually fell the mid-sized ones. I also cut down a few scrub oaks that were covered in vines and did my best to pull all the vines free from the surrounding trees where it was possible to do so. Although I did not fully dive into addressing that one area where there is a tangle of vines, trees and brush piles... I at least got some of the stuff around the edges of it cut back. 

I once again just bucked everything in place and left all the brush laying there instead of hauling it to one of the various piles. Since I was mainly just cutting pines I even left the poles where they were and did not add them to the pole pile. I am unsure exactly what I am going to do with them but they might come in handy as water-breaks further downhill once I clear out some of the trees and brush down there.

One thing that I noticed now that the area is more free of brush and vines is that most of those 'mystery' fruit trees are growing in rows. Given how short most of them are I have to really wonder if they got stunted by the trees growing in around them or if they grew in after the trees were already there. The little fruit trees are probably the remnants of previous agricultural endeavors going back fifty years ago or more and the trees are what has grown back after it was last logged... so who knows.

Anyway, that area is coming along nicely and so far the trees have all fallen where I wanted them to and the little battery operated chainsaw has performed quite well. I am still skeptical about cutting into any of the larger trees with it but I still have a lot of smaller stuff to cut out of the way before that time arrives. Like I said a few days ago I plan on having the corded chainsaw and an axe on hand when it is time for felling the larger trees. 

Honestly, I should probably replace the carburetor on the gas-powered saw as well and have it on standby also... or just fell those big trees with it in the first place if I can get it running well enough that it is reliable. Having used those electric saws a lot the last few years it is hard to want to go back to the noisy, smoky, oily mess of a gas-powered saw but hey they sure can 'throw some chips' and make fast cuts!

Well, I am going to keep this one short and sweet and get to doing the editing before it grows much later. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

<center>![IMG_20220222_105438.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/jacobpeacock/EoAbE7zZd8FPqwPbPqAW2Lu2zyWFmoZJLs3LSiyUCVSs6hfpm3142t7srnDbPfk8U73.jpg)</center>
<center>*It is hard to tell that this was a ten meter tall pine!*</center>

<center>![IMG_20220222_182600.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/jacobpeacock/Ep3cPn4scsQgFGnMXZmba3erdfmKd6twUvV27cY1oWDgD6LHf52cZQRWrmEZHZdWE4U.jpg)</center>
<center>*As you can see the area is starting to really open up!*</center>

<center>**Thanks for reading!**</center>

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<center>**That Is All For Now!**</center>

<center>***Cheers! & Hive On!***</center>