News From Up and Down the Gravel

Last night I heard an owl hoot from the backwoods. Our
wood furnace had the house temperature at 80 or so degrees
and we had the bedroom window open. I was reading A Tale
of Two Cities by Dickens, and was thrilled to hear my
friend hoot.

Several times over the past week one of my children has
come into the house to report that geese are flying overhead.
That will give anybody a thrill!

The thaw last Friday, after the ice storm, was one of the
most incredible happenings I've ever seen. That morning we
woke to a frozen world, but by the early afternoon it was no
longer so. The ice was thawing and dripping so quickly it
sounded as though we were in a hard rain. When the wind
would blow, a thousand pieces of ice would crash down to
the ground. It reminded me of the thaw in Narnia after Aslan
has returned and the White Witch's power is beginning to
fade.

G'ma Opal survived the freeze, but she has had to go to the
Doctor several times for her heart. She is supposed to see
a cardiologist at the Cape in the middle of March. We could
not help but be tickled when she told us that during her stay
in the hospital a week and a half ago her heart was beating
so hard the whole bed was shaking. The 97 year old general
only weighs about 95 pounds. SHE may have been shaking, but
the whole bed? We are all agreed that we highly doubt it.

Joel has to start over with incubating eggs since his died when
we lost electricity. This time he is getting both chicken and
goose eggs. That'll be interesting.

















We had company from The Big City over the weekend. My sister
and her girls came. We ate and played cards. And we played
cards and ate. And we built a fire. Of Course. It was just
a little fire, but it WAS a fire. We cooked hot dogs and we
made cherry and apple pies in the pie irons. They are fun to
cook with. We've had ours since we were little girls. You
just butter the inside of the irons and use two pieces of bread
and put whatever you want to inside, then bake it well in the
fire, open, and eat.