Give a Man a Chainsaw...

Thursday morning we arrived in Washington State. I imagined four days of quiet knitting and spinning. It got off to a good start.

When we pulled into the driveway, this little doe was grazing in the front yard. We also saw a Bald Eagle flying overhead but it was too far away to get a good picture.

I went to the Allyn Knit Shop and found new sock yarn.

Can you tell that I like the color blue?

But when I returned home from the knit shop, I immediately heard the buzz of a chainsaw. There, out in the overgrowth, was my husband. I had given him a chainsaw for his birthday last June (it was on his wish list!) and he had decided that this weekend was the perfect time to attack 30 years of dead fall and forest litter on the far third of our property.

The area in which we live in Washington was logged about 30 years ago. The logging company left the stumps and dead fall that was not worth their time, then sold the acreage. It was later subdivided and parcels were sold. The original owners of our property cleared the area closest to the home, but left the remaining forest alone. As you can see from this "before" picture, the growth was substantial. In fact, it was nearly impossible to walk more than 15 feet in the jumble of stumps, branches, ferns and huckleberry bushes.
Dan cut and I hauled out. It was a long, hard job and certainly not the weekend of knitting and spinning I had envisioned.

Slowly, the ground began to emerge.And I discovered some of the forest creatures that inhabit the undergrowth. This is an Olympic Torrent Salamander

This is one of the famous Washington State Banana Slugs. I put a knitter's gauge next to it so you can see it really is 6 inches long! Sometimes they are bright yellow, sometimes dark olive colored and sometime they come spotted like a pinto pony!

By late Saturday afternoon the rains had moved into our area and it was time to pack up and close up the house. But, as you can see from the above "after" picture, there is a substantial dent made. Dan says we will work on it some more this summer.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to knitting on the plane home.