Fishing and splitting wood

It was nice to be off today. I spent much of the morning and early afternoon hauling and splitting wood for this winter. I only have a fireplace, but burned over a cord in it last year and ended up having to ration wood toward the end of the burning season. There’s nothing better than reading by a fire. I’ll try to remember that tomorrow when my muscles are sore from splitting wood the old fashion way (with a maul and a wedge). I think I got enough wood for the winter, almost two cords. And splitting wood beats going to the gym any day. This evening I took my canoe out on a lake for a little fishing, but didn’t catch anything. The wind was just a bit too strong for a fly rod and I could get nothing to strike an artificial worm or a variety of lures. Regardless, I got to see a family of swans I’ve been watching since the spring. They are now nearly grown. I also enjoyed watching the sky turn pink and not paddling back to the truck until I saw the first star on the evening horizon (I think it was Venus). The weather is cooler and the mosquitoes are so few that I didn’t even put on insect repellant.