As I get ready to publish this blog, I thought I would give an update on the status of Thicut. I feel that since Bob and I are keeping an eye on the place, you'd like to know what we're doing when you're not here.

So far this fall, we've done things like:

• mow the lawn
• water the plants
• feed the fish
• replaced the screens with the glass doors
• turned on the furnace and left it low
• used the sickle bar mower to mow the front field one more time
• sprayed Roundup on a few more barberry from the old well to the brook

To have a record of the place, I have taken pictures of all the rooms in the house and some outdoor pix as well.

Poppa Sandin, Bob, and I walked the property with Rob Rocks, the Nature Conservancy representative. There is work to be done on the property boundary near the main road: the neighbors are still encroaching and driving four wheel ATV's into the woods.

Bob and I cut and put Roundup on a grove of ailanthus (tree of heaven: they look something like sumac) , an invasive plant we discovered on our walk with Rob Rocks. It's growing in the SE part of the property near the spring that's in the stone wall on a hill. Bob and I, shall we say, wandered, a bit before we relocated the trees. But it was a BEAUTIFUL fall day so we didn't mind! We'll probably have to reapply it in the spring to get rid of it.