Anything but rest! We’ve had a full house all week with Roma (a dog) and Mark (a human) staying here. They hit it off and went exploring together.

Actually, everybody got to go on that adventure. We hiked up behind the house and found the most miniscule frog in the pond at the top of the ridge. We also noticed the helicopters for the first time. They have been conspicuously present this week, flying low over the St. Francis river.

Yesterday we went with Ian for a hike along a section of the Trail of Tears in Village Creek State Park. The part that we were on was a portion of the Memphis to Little Rock road, which was built to facilitate forced Indian relocation. Until yesterday, I had not appreciated the premeditated nature of the ethnic cleansing that took place here. The loop hike was only a little over two miles and the terrain was moderate. Mark and I are both a little sick, so the short hike was exactly enough. The trail along the ridge, where the road had been, resembles the cut that our own gravel road is now in, suggesting that our road was indeed created by wagons, maybe as a route for settlers on their way west, as our landlady has described.

We’ve accomplished a great deal around the house this week. The porch swing is now the same, dark blue as the door, and we built and painted a corner shelf for the kitchen today. The gents planted root veggies this morning while I drew up plans for our construction project. When Mark and I were roommates, we built a shelf together for our dorm room. It was a first attempt, and it looks it, though Sean and I still use it for tools. Last spring, Sean and I built a fairly nice kitchen shelf for our spices and cookbooks, and now the three of us have teamed up into a shelf-building dream team. The result is easily the nicest shelf I’ve ever had a hand in making.

The new shelf is the one on the left! It’s super exciting because we don’t have to keep our potatoes on the floor anymore!

Mark shot a gun for the first time today, and he’s already a far better shot than I am, though not as good as Sean. Sean has made three ice cream flavors so far, in addition to the perpetual flow of delicious gourmet meals.

We went out to bring in the laundry at about 9:30 and heard a rustling in the brush. Sean shined the super-powered flashlight into the woods and spotted an armadillo! We chased it through the woods to the mouth of its burrow, where it stood, twitching its cute little ears, long enough for us to get a good look.  Tomorrow, we intend to get set up for some new additions to the menagerie. With a  little luck, we’ll be bringing home three little pigs sometime before the end of this week.