Machete Needed

The forest around Roundtop is becoming so lush that even the cut for the lane up to the cabin doesn’t really provide much of a look at the sky. At the cabin, it’s pretty much a jungle right now. Rain on 16 days out of the last 17 tends to do that. And the rain, for the most part, hasn’t been that light, drizzly stuff either. As often as not it’s been full days of rain that dropped .5 to 1 inch. Soon I will need a machete.

I'm almost afraid to complain about the rain. Two years ago, this area was in a rather severe drought, and I'm still hoping all this rain now won't be the last rain I see until fall. This much rain is starting to feel just a bit like too much of a good thing, though. The old saying is April showers bring May flowers. I just hope April showers in May don't translate into something less poetic.

Baby Dog hates the rain and the constantly wet underbrush. She has taken to peeing in the middle of the driveway so she doesn’t have to brush against chest-high wet foliage. She is kind of an extreme case, though.

Activity at my bird feeders is starting to drop off, though the woodpeckers are as prevalent as ever. This morning a hairy woodpecker stared down the squirrel who was parked in the center of the feeder, hogging up all the good stuff. The woodpecker and the squirrel weren’t much different in length or general size. The woodpecker had a bigger beak, though, and that seemed to make the difference.