One of the things that I love about my giant chunk of land is that every weekend when we go up there, nature has shaken the great Etch-a-sketch and drawn an entirely new picture for us. When we arrived Saturday morning and I unlocked the gate, the whole place was yellow with wild coreopsis.
I made mental note that I really need to sand the metal gate down and repaint it. Less as a preventative measure and more for the fact that every time I unlock the gate I want to ride it while it swings to its destination and yell “yahoo!” cowboy style.

We had made the questionable purchase of a GPS unit earlier in the week so we could trace the dozen or so logging roads that exist all tangled up with each other. Paul wanted to create an official map so we could start assigning names and so I would stop referring to the path that runs parallel to the West border as “Scary Tree Road.”
The GPS unit turned out to be invaluable as we kept coming across intersections that we would mark on the unit and be able to swing back around and go the other way when we came back through. There were quite a few that went absolutely nowhere and I think I will keep these little spurs that dead end into “projects.”
Somewhere around the center of the property we realized that there was a fairly deep drop off. We marveled at the mini view for a moment and then decided we really needed to head home so we could make it in time to let the dogs out. So we did a hairpin turnaround if what appeared to be a small clearing, the truck ran up into some scrub trees and stopped.
It wouldn’t go forward, it wouldn’t go back, and the wheels were not spinning.
After a lot of wedging of things under the tires, yanking of aforementioned tree and LOTS of swearing we grabbed our bottles of water started walking towards the road.
We knocked on the door of the house across the street and introduced ourselves to Cyndi. She invited us in and listened to our tale of woe. She tapped her chin and looked straight at Paul and said, “You know how to drive a tractor?”
Paul shook his head.
“No problem!” she smiled and got on the phone to the next door neighbor Troy to see if any of his sons were around, Troy said they weren’t but he would be glad to come help us out. He drove right over and while we explaining to Troy I saw an animal come bounding out of the woods, I honestly thought for several moments it was a bear.
It was Troy’s Akita. I have never in my life seen an Akita that large and when he came galloping up I took a few steps back. He circled me three times, licked my kneecap and then urinated on Cyndi’s car with a mighty yellow flood cascading down the fender.
Cyndi shooed him away, “That dog just LOVES to pee on my car!”
We all got into the truck and forayed into our property; we located our vehicle thanks to the GPS and hooked up a big fat chain. After a couple of hard yanks Paul was able to throw our truck into the low gear and back it out.
We all rode back up to the front of our driveway. Troy’s wife had heard the new neighbors were in town so she drove over to meet us. It was like a weird little party in the middle of nowhere.
We gained quite a bit of knowledge, Cyndi’s husband drives a semi and they have 13 year old twins in Junior high. Cathy works over at the school and Troy likes to hunt, fish, drink micro brewery beer and play WOW. A kid named Alex went speeding by on ATV and I got informed that “Alex was the one who cut crop circles over in Ben’s cornfield last month but his momma didn’t believe it cause, you could show Alex’s momma video of Alex doing wrong and she would say you doctored it.”
Cathy blurted out that as soon as we moved in she could finally have a block party she has been wanting to have, even though our street has no blocks… or asphalt. It began to dawn on me that us moving in was a big deal and in a town with a population of 181 I guess it would be.
Everybody was as generous with us as I could have hoped for and I even though there is a lone bamboo pole with a red handkerchief tied to it marking where the house is going – it feels just like home already.
When I got home I sent everybody a box of mailorder meat in thanks.

Here is the website.
http://www.gardenfantasma.com/
It is nowhere near finished and a lot of the project pages only have place holders there. If you want more info about a specific project just ask me. I LOVE talking about it.
Allow me to offer up my apologies, I did the website myself and since I am not a web developer it is clunky and weirdly designed – much like its author. Paul is generously fixing the site for me so if things suddenly disappear while you are digging through that is why.