Getting Ready

 

Not all preparations for going out to Burbank for the winter involve decisions about what to pack in suitcases, cleaning and closing up the house, stuffing cardboard boxes very full and hoping that  lots of tape keep them safe, and more than one trip to UPS.

 

 

Nope, there's personal vanity too.  Here I am at Kristen's "station" in The Cut Off, denying my age and my grey hairs, getting a cut pert enough to feel stylish even in LA.

'Tis The Season

 

 

Last Saturday Toby and I had a delicious pre-Thanksgiving dinner at Remick's farm.  Lots of fun even if the turkey, one they'd raised (not a butterball!), was a bit tough.

 

 

 

Remick's is a great place -- we sat with two interesting women and saw several people we knew.  You can't get far in Chocorua and Tamworth without running into someone familiar.

 

 

 

Then the first snow--very light

 

 

 

but enough to bring out the old snow shovels. 

 The winter season is upon us.

Good Visits

 

Tom came over from Portland last weekend and immediately got to work on a project-

lucky us!

 

 

He and Toby spent hours mucking out the little streams that weave their sluggish way down to the lake.  After cleaning out the debris near the log at the entrance to the lake, the water started flowing fast and began to drain some of the wetlands below our house.

 

 

 

Then Tom saw a possible nifty picnic site for us all a little to the north of where we now swim.  We spent some time clearing the area and Tom lopped off some of the low limbs of a lovely, large white pine there.  This might possibly be a new place for our dock next summer!

 

 

 

Love this old, woodpecker-pecked tree standing there.

 

 

 

An old friend of Toby's, Susan Bombieri, came a day later for a visit. We had fun roaming through the Remick Museum in Tamworth.  Dr. Remick was Toby's childhood doctor and Susan, a Remick relative, spotted her mother's name in the family tree.

Eating Us Out of Trees!

 

Lately, since the leaves have fallen,we've seen  evidence

of beavers down by the lake.

 

 

Lots of small trees down, even some bigger ones.

 

 

 

In fact, the beaver(s) have made their own path from trees to lake.  Our path is on the right, theirs is on the left.

 

 

 

And they've made a mess of stripped branches in the water.

 

 

 

Mystery through--except for the chewed trunks we don't seen any evidence of beavers down there--not a dam, no scat, no footprints, certainly no sightings.  When do they come?  Where do they come from and go to? How do they get those big trees out of there?

 

 

 

Maybe we'll get a clear view of the lake, but we're not sure this is the way to do it.