I have to say, what a lot of work! On the plus side? I am currently sitting at 32, 266 Steps!!! At breakfast this morning Luke told me that he had cut a good amount of blow downs between here and the Boathouse; but I didn’t clear the cuts off the trail, he said. Oh, right. That’s MY job.  So once I had cleared up the breakfast dishes I got dressed to take the dogs for a lil walk down to the boathouse and would clear the trail as I went.

Well, turns out Sammy doesn’t like it when I go wandering off into the bush without Luke! I got about 500metres down the trail and no Sam! Man! I called him a few times; waited, walked a few more metres towards the boathouse; called the rat again, to no avail. Bah! I had to head back towards the house to see if he had gone home before checking down by the marsh. I got to within seeing distance of the lane and there was Sammy’s head bobbing along, Luke in tow! Luke said that the thought Sammy was pulling a Lassie – “Timmy fell down the hole” so he was coming to investigate. Since he was now part of the walking party we carried on, chucking debris left, right and centre…well, not centre because then we would just have to move it again! Once we got down to the lake I simply HAD to tidy up  the boathouse a lil bit, HAD to! Meanwhile Bear and Sam were helping themselves to a well deserved drink from the lake. Clever Sam drinks from the edge of the lake, one paw held up so it doesn’t get wet; Bear on the other hand marches straight in up to his belly! Thanks, Bear! You KNOW how much I love to towel you down!

We walked back up to the house; Luke got stuck into work, I got stuck into housework and then did a bit of knitting. The sun did come out today so the greenhouse was cooking-hot! The extreme heat was putting me to sleep so I took Bear and Sam for a walk down to the lake. When we got back Luke said that he was going to go and do some cutting. Great. When he takes time off during the day to do much needed chores I have to be the Grinch come the dark of early evening and crack the whip. “Luke, you have a few hours at the computer still. Can I make you some tea to help with that?”

Anyway, back to the boathouse trail, leaving Bear and Sam behind because they are not so smart when it comes to axes and chainsaws. Sammy is currently sporting a lil cut above his eye because he ran straight into the axe that Luke was carrying!!! Okay, so, back to the trail and allllllllll those blowdowns! So, so, so many! The standing dead ones….well, know blown over, are super light and easy to handle. The green ones that tipped over at the roots or were crashed into by a bigger, stronger tree are HEAVY! I have to keep reminding Luke to cut the green ones into smaller chunks so I can heave ’em off the trail! We were doing so well and then the chainsaw ran out of juice! Bah! we were so close we could tasted the victory! Luke likened it to a World of Warcraft dungeon: we had cleared all the trash and have only the last boss to take down. I have to tell you, that last tree, right by the boathouse? It’s a BIGGY! Toppled over right at the roots. And a tangle of branches to work through to get to the trunk. Oh, I just can’t wait!

So all that walking plus all the lifting and throwing of tree lengths garnered me a crap load of steps today! And if you know me at all, you know that I LOVE seeing big numbers on my Fitbit! Wahoo! But now I feel challenged to put in the same amount of Steps every day. While I would love to I just don’t think it is doable…at least not until Luke gives me a refresher on how to shoot a gun. Oh, and the fact that we need to get a few guns! You will recall that we often hear wolves and on Sunday we went for a lil walk just down at the end of the marsh and came across some rather large wolf prints.  I would have liked to have believed that they were off in the distance, but they are pretty much on our doorstep!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed our lil slideshow of our day at Brittany Lake. And sorry that the Lumberjack one of Luke is so short. I have learned NOT to wear my glasses when working in the bush but that renders me pretty much blind when it comes to photos and videos.