Lucy's Poem

I am speechless.

Outside

Not much news to share, but here are some pictures.

The chickens are growing quickly but they still let Lucy pick them up and hold them.

It rained a few days in the past few weeks -- check out this amazing full double rainbow!

The kids have been making full use of our new "beach" on the river! Brother Young cleared out all the brush in the lower pasture with his tractor, so now we have direct river access. This afternoon Austin decided to launch the canoe so we could paddle around.

Lucy hopped out and went for a swim.

What more could we wish for from spring?

Green-Up Day

The ravine up behind our house is Lucy and Gavin's favorite place to explore. It is also apparently somebody's favorite place to dump stuff they no longer want. So we called the community coordinator for Green-Up Day to see if we could get some help cleaning it out.

Here's what we found:

15 tires and two rims

dishwasher

big screen TV

2 console TVs

computer monitor

grocery cart

pair of hip waders

pair of cross-country skis

large carpet and rug pad

mustard-colored wing chair

2 side chairs and cushions

lawnmower

2 large buckets

several large pieces of rusted metal

set of wooden stairs

metal Snoopy fork (a treasure rescued by a scout)

a dozen fluorescent light tubes

coffee maker

electric fan

20 bags of misc. trash

We completely filled a 1-ton municipal truck!

But we had a lot of help. A troop of eight boy scouts with their leaders and parents, several Norwich students, and some people from the community scrambled through the river and up the sides of the ravine with lots of awkward, heavy, soaking wet items. We couldn' t have done it without them.

Kinda restores my faith in humanity.