sign of the times

What a difference a day makes!

The snow is gone. Here's the house, abandoned for the weekend, snow now gone.

We went to the greenwood anyway, as Tom-builder reported that his men had come across deer entrails.

"Do you allow hunting on your property?"

"Ah. . . no. Not that we know of."

Turns out that someone has been hunting there.

I was pretty upset by this. Doubly upset that the hunter gutted the deer and left the guts there! But then I found out that apparently you have to 'field-dress' a deer almost right away, if the meat is going to be eaten, so at least it was someone who is not just slaughtering deer for "fun".

Still, we don't like the idea of someone we don't know wandering the greenwood with a rifle or bow and arrow, shooting at things that move. So today, we posted the property.

The first message at the greenwood should not be "No Trespassing" - but during construction and before we move there, that'll have to be the posted sign. I guess you can't exactly practice hospitality before you live there, now, can you? And even then, it's generally expected that one would knock at the door before entering - let alone shooting things!

Let's end on an up note though. Meantime, the deer are still bedding down in the old clearing, which you can see by the matted down grass this picture, below. I guess they're not terribly disturbed by the construction going on a stone's throw away.

And this old stump just glowed with rich colour in the midst of an otherwise drab forest. . . .