4/20-22/04 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:40 and was gratified to find that the peanuts were still on the floor. I think I will declare victory over the rodents and stop recording the peanut presence in this journal unless and until they begin to disappear again. I'll keep them on the floor all the time just to be sure.

After moving in and having lunch, I unloaded quite a bit of yard waste and put it on the compost pile. Then I went to work and sanded the logs that are due for another coat of varnish. I dismantled the second tier of the scaffolds because I can reach everything remaining from the first tier.

The weather was perfect to do some work in the woods, so I got the big one-man crosscut saw and went to work cutting two logs that had fallen over the trails. One of them looked good enough for use in the stoop, so I cut two sections to length and skidded them to the building.

On Wednesday my shoulder was pretty sore from using that crosscut saw but I didn't overdo it and I'm sure there will be no damage. But it shows that I can't work as hard as I used to, doing something that I am not used to doing. I spent the day planing, scraping, gouging, and sanding one more log at Grid E, three logs between D3 and E3, and about six feet of the Grid D PSL.

On Thursday morning, I varnished the logs that were prepared. Then I went up and checked on the spring. The screen was still fine and water was flowing through fine, but I took off the overflow pipe and found maybe a dozen little insect larvae. They were very skinny and about 3/4 of an inch long. I don't know if they are juvenile versions of the big caddisfly larvae or if they are a different species. At any rate, they point up the need to replace the inside screen and maybe even I should put a filter in my water line. I dumped and washed all the critters out of the overflow pipe and decided that I better check and clean out that pipe more often.

I went up and checked on the little tree and found that it is doing great and the chicken wire is still in place. Then I scouted the woods for more useable timber. There were quite a few newly fallen trees and I was looking in particular for skinny ones that would work as porch railings. I found three good possibilities. They had died on the stump and then fallen over after the bark was pretty loose. I knocked the bark off of them so that they would not deteriorate any further. It was very peaceful and pleasant working in the woods. There were no bugs to speak of, no wind, and no leaves out yet so I could see everywhere. A pair of pine squirrels were chasing one another all around me as I worked. And, I stopped and watched an eagle slowly soaring circles above my head. He started out at tree-top level but just kept climbing higher with each turn until he was just a dot. I hated to leave but I left anyway at 1:00.