third time lucky

Now my posts aren't publishing. And the baby is up again. She has such bad manners. At least I thought to copy the last post.

I fancy myself as a hunter gatherer after today. Not that I hunted anything apart from slugs, but I did gather and just being a gatherer sounds much too girly.

Despite the late hour, the dark and the rain, I took my favourite handyman outside to view my forest felling last night. He made appropriate noises and Fionn tried to swing on the jutting remains of the trees in the dark. I made tutting fussing mummy noises.

But amongst the appropriate noises was a comment on wood cutting easily while wet and becoming progressively harder to cut as it dries. So today I decided to ready ourselves for next winter by cutting wood to dry over summer. Usually how I do this is I ring one of the local wood merchants and arrange for them to deliver wood on a truck, pay them handsomely and then rather late in the piece I inform Mr Handyman. He needs to know because he is the chief wood stacker. But now I am looking at our section with entirely new eyes and I can see half of next year's firewood awaiting the chop on areas I had already earmarked for destruction. Don't worry carbon people, I'm keeping one tree, and have planted others.

I cut 18 pieces of wood into appropriate sizes for burning today. You may scoff but I bet I cut more than you. Eighteen looks a much more dignified reflection of my achievements than 18, but the anal English grammatist in me can't do it unless it is at the beginning of a sentence.