Our neighbors, Ed and Betty, are having their trees harvested by a local logging company. It has been amazing to see how much wood was cut down and hauled away over the past three weeks.
Truck load after truck load of pine and ash logs, some of them impressively large, went off to the mill. 
The hillside is mostly bare now except for crushed branches and some small trees. It would make a decent ski slope.
We are thinking of asking the loggers if they might take trees on our side but we don’t want a clear-cut. 
Ed’s land will grow back quickly with saplings and blackberry bushes, good for whitetail deer.
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Monday we encountered a minor disaster. Just as Jeanne and I were leaving the house to go shopping in Burlington our phone rang with news from the marina that the plastic tarps covering our sailboat had blown apart. The marina is about sixty-five miles away and was right on our way. We got there at noon, in blowing snow with the temperature just above zero to find Walkabout half uncovered with the shredded tarps flapping in the wind. I tied up what I could of the flailing ends and figured that I could order new tarps and properly cover the boat up a few days later.
Then I turned to leave.
“Bob”, my wife cried, “there’s something terribly wrong with the car!”
Out from under our Ford poured a hot stream of red fluid. I could see it was coming from the transmission and so much was on the ground that there couldn’t be much left in it. Knowing there was little chance of success I put the car in gear.
Nope, no go. We were stranded.
But we know the folks in the marina very well and they were helpful and sympathetic. In the warmth of the marina’s shop we checked around on their computer for a towing company and within two hours a flatbed truck came from Rutland and hauled us home.
Home safe and sound. It was then that I discovered a big puddle of red ATF on the garage floor and a thin trail down the driveway. It had been leaking for sixty-five miles! If I had only spotted it our misadventure could have been avoided.
Since then we (sold) that car and are looking for another. It was old and the cost of repair was more than the car was worth – but losing it still stings.
Lucky for us our boat needed attention or we could have been lost in the middle of nowhere!
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The temperature, as I mentioned, dropped below zero and we tried this little trick for fun.
If you throw a cupful of hot water into the air it will freeze before hitting the ground. Why the water has to be hot I don’t know but it does.
rpk
