February, the month of L💓ve, and my birthday! I actually can't stand when this comes around, for a couple of reasons. Number one, I'm grown now. Sigh. It's not the age or the number or the aging process itself that bothers me, it's the lack of.....celebration. You know, the kind of celebration that we had as a kid. I am a firm believer that there a lot of things, joyous things, that should not stop just because we become adults! It's my goal to start surrounding myself with people and things that "get it". Number two, my grandmothers birthday is a day before mine, and we always celebrated together. Now that she's gone, it's missing another part of the joy in that way. Number three, February birthdays can be tough as far as weather goes, and since we've already crammed 365 days of shit, bullshit, and piles of shit into the first two months of 2026, I am ready to blow right past this and get to Spring--TRUE Spring--already.
My creative brother sent me a most wonderful birthday package filled with things that truly represent me, me as the Pisces, and my birthstone color of purple. He made the moth suncatcher, and I am obviously having issues with my picture program because it didn't load all of the way. It's a lovely lilac color!
There is also this beautiful rose box that has pixie lights in it and a drawer that had a crystal heart necklace (that picture didn't load for some reason.)
While he goes to work on the bathroom for an hour or two every night after work, we do have to try and get to the land once a week right now. We noticed the neighbor to the North of us put up this property barrier, and we thought that was odd because we already had the yellow chain up. We wondered if maybe they found someone trespassing?
And then we noticed that they moved our chain and wrapped this poor tree to within an inch of its life. Look, I can understand that properties were divided in a wonky way (story of my life for the past 26 years!), but we've owned this land for 5 years (they bought the house property to the North of us in 2024 or 2025, I can't remember now), and WE have issues with people coming on to our property and touching our stuff. Did this person think that WE were doing that to THEM? And I know we aren't living out there yet, but why not try and reach us by phone before moving lines, touching our stuff and....
He put a row of t-bars down the center of the path that is the property line. We thought it was supposed to be more to the right, closer to their trees. if not, this royally screws us because this is the main path for us to get in and out of the back forest on this side, and is the path that the white pines keep growing on that we have to take out. The previous neighbor was really nice about understanding that kind of stuff. Things are starting to get complicated with neighbors/property lines and that is absolutely what we didn't want to buy into here since we've had nothing but issues with our current location the past 26 years. We really want good relationships with all of our new neighbors, open communications, and common courtesy (which seems to be a dying thing everywhere anymore).
This is why I leave dead wood sometimes....all creatures need to be able to live their lives in their most natural way, but honestly? I feel like this picture represents my life well right now, lol. Decaying, rough, full of holes, and ready to topple over.
For the week of my birthday, I made some quick and yummy pecan chocolate chip cookies. I was hoping they'd last to my birthday, but the recipe made a very small batch for a house with three adults--one of which is a growing young man. 😂
I have been working through my brain fog and menopause brain-scatter to start getting projects finished up again. This was the Valentine gnome from the library program and I finally wrapped up the loose ends of trimming the top tassels, gluing beads to the tip of each one, and then trimming the beard. It is tucked away now in the Valentine decor tote, and it's hard to believe that the next time it comes out, we will be in the new house.
I broke out the annual birthday leggings that a friend got me as kind of a joke, but I wear them every year now for my birthday.
I am posting these next photos out of order since I'm having so many issues with my photos program right now. Our most recent trip to the land, while Woodchuck was really sick with upper respiratory issues/flu, flooding is even more prevalent. With several straight days of rain ahead, we know it will only get worse and all we can do right now is let nature take its course. At some point, this will all get figured out, and yet, some of it just needs to be left alone so nature can do what nature does. This area was where the phragmite was, that also led into a plethora of vegetation that included a lot of red twig dogwood. With the watershed pond overflowing its edges (it really doesn't have banks), and with no vegetation in this area now, the flooding is much more noticeable.
To think that I was able to walk far beyond that pallet at one point to treat the phragmite! The water is now also all the way up to the entry of this area. And here we thought we had moved the pallet farther away from the water than was necessary, lol.
We are losing sunlight, and Woodchuck is losing steam.
We are very close to the next full moon, and with Mercury in Retrograde, the ride has been rough.
We came back to the land this day to get measurements for septic laterals that the guy said we could run in the forest, that way we never have to worry about machinery driving over the exposed area that was the original proposed spot for them.
I had questioned if we would have enough room? Honestly, I don't know. These guys keep changing what they are saying, throwing out changing numbers, and I have no idea if things are possible, not possible, going to cost extra because we have to do some special something or other, or if we will, actually, be able to make this dream come true of building a home AND being able to afford to live in it once it's built. Silly me and all of my "what if's"!
I don't know what these little things are, so we will call them potatoes for the wee folk. Honestly, I think they are cocoons, but once again my post in a bug group has gone unanswered. The indifferent SOB's. I need to know what these little potatoes hold!!! (shaking my fist). I found them on branches, bark, and this post. I am sure there are hundreds more that I didn't see.
But here's a palette cleaner from my rage for you. I was finally able to hobble over to the newest trail cam that we have by the pond and is one of the lowest set ones. The wildlife have been using that area a lot, a super highway, if you will. There was also images of the fox too, but they were too blurry. I don't want that coyote to leave the land, but I also don't want to come face to face with it!
One of the Valentine/Birthday gifts I bought myself was an all natural lip balm in a paper tube. I have VERY sensitive lips and everything makes them peel. This thing was expensive. I normally would not have paid the price, but I'm on a rose kick right now, and I needed something.....so $9 plus tax got shelled out and here I am writing a grumble about the Humble lip balm. Hmph. It is not moisturizing enough, I can't tell it is rose, I have to use a finger to push and continue to hold the balm up from the bottom and in order for to go back down, I either have to use my finger to push it back down (ew), or just put the lid back on and it falls back down. Not terrible, but different than what I am used to and overall, I just don't think this was worth the money. So the search continues!
Even though Woodchuck and I have the crud right now....the flu? upper respiratory infection? All of it? We are heading to the land to finish caging the front arborvitae against the forest dwellers a.k.a deer, and maybe finishing fixing the turn signal issue in the steering column of the truck. Maybe. We will see how we are feeling. But we have several days of rain coming, his next day off sees us at his pre-op appointment, and soon after, he has his surgery. Mercury is in Retrograde, a full moon is tomorrow, we have the crud, it's back to weird temps but will get GLORIOUS at the time of his surgery (because Murphy's Law), and my friends, I need a baseball bat and a rage room. All made worse by the fact that we finished watching Stranger Things and I didn't want it to end! So traumatized.
