Winter Woods and More!

Wow - it's 2020!!  I have not put a blog up in a couple of months, but I was inspired today when I took my daily woods walk.  Some people ask why we would want to live in the country, so far from town.  Well..... there is the quiet of the day, the starry sky at night, the ample space for gardening, the ability to keep animals (donkeys, chickens, bees, etc), the sheer beauty of the land, and, for me, the ability to walk beautiful trails every day with my pooch off leash.  Below is a little tour of our "back yard" (130 acres of hiking trails with two beautiful streams)!

Following the photos of our woods, I've included several photos from December activities!

Dick and Mary made a hanging bridge across one of the streams

There are many large rock formations in the streams, making for beautiful noise

Part of the S-Curve trail - huge boulders are beautiful

This stream is called Little Creek - it flows into the Flat River

A favorite spot on Little Creek 

Our woods have a lot of green all winter long, including various ferns, mosses and holly

The prettiest green in the winter woods is creeping cedar, which blankets whole areas in the woods

The trails are marked with dots on trees and home-make trail signs

The view from the end of Elderberry Lane 

Riley and Luna love the woods too!

We usually go Christmas caroling in the neighborhood around Elderberry.  It was raining too hard to go out walking, but that didn't stop us!  We drove to one neighbor's, where we sang inside and enjoyed fruitcake and eggnog (sadly, no rum!)

There was another neighbor down the road from Elderberry who loved our caroling each year.  This year he got cancer and moved away so we called and sang to him over speaker phone! 

Every year we have a huge solstice party, which is primarily a cooking party!  This year Joan planned the menu (Italian) and got the ingredients, and we all formed cooking teams and cranked out several delicious courses through the evening, including hand-made pasta.  All delicious!!