It is now the evening of 9 August, 2017. I had just typed out a post and was considering whether I had anything more to add when the cat came and stepped on something and it all disappeared. Therefore I have shut the cat out of the room, I hope. I didn't actually see her go out the door so I can't be 100% certain she isn't hiding under the bed.
      I said that I have gotten discouraged because I have tried to hire people who said they would do it, but then never showed up. I have over $4700 in the account that I have been saving up particularly for this labyrinth.  Most of it is the proceeds of the sales of items I have made of lilac wood. Getting the land cleared is probably going to be the biggest expense. I would like to spread some lime on the area and something for fertilizer.  Lilacs do not require high fertility or a great deal of lime but the ground where I'm trying to do this is unusually poor and acid soil, so I'd like to improve it somewhat.
    And I have gotten a little more disabled in the last year or two, quite a bit more disabled since I started this project.  If I had known precisely where I needed to clear when I started out I might have been able to do some of that myself, but I can't do it now.  Wages are so much more now than anything I ever got paid in my life, that it gets hard to hire somebody.
     When I started this project, when I got the idea for it, I was a member of I dream study group that had a forum on the Internet. It was in existence for years, but last fall more people started to say they were taking time off until finally there was no one left but me. I posted the last dream on it. No one made any comments on it. Every week or two I would check in there to see whether there had been any other activity. But there never was.  Two nights ago I tried to look at it again but I just found a page that said "The domain has expired."  So that is completely gone.  I hope the same thing doesn't happen to this one before I can report that the labyrinth is done.

It has been even longer since the last post.  There was a message from the Mabou farmers market about a mulcher machine that could be seen in action at a certain man's place. It was not practical for me to go see it in person but I saw a video, and I could see it could clear my half-acre in a short time.  I e-mailed the contact person and found, oh, certainly they could do it.  In fact, I asked both that man and the driver of the machine, when I finally did talk to him on the phone, and they both said, yes, they could.
But they didn't call me, til I sent another message after a couple weeks.  He asked me to find a trucker to haul the machine to my place.  And he said my place might be too small to do economically.  I did find a trucker, but I haven't heard back yet whether they will do my lilac labyrinth place or not. This machine chips up the trees and rototills the chips into the ground.  But maybe, maybe, maybe . . .

It has been a long time without any progress.  Garvin did mark the edge with surveyors tape, but Wayne said the trees were too big and would take too long to chip to be reasonable.  I had a neighbor who has been working in the pulp woods come look at it, but his employer is not interested in such a small piece.  Neither is anyone else.  They all want at least 15 acres, not 1/2 acre.  Garvin moved away.
     I had an expression of interest from a wwoofer who is experienced with a chainsaw, but he went to PEI instead. I have had the son of an old friend come and do some work for me for pay and he expressed willingness to work on that job, but his car gave out on him a week or two ago, so he won't be able to come til he gets some transportation.  He also suggested his cousin, said he'd call him about it, but I haven't heard from this cousin yet. So I have hopes, but nothing is happening so far.
   I added up and with what I sold today at the market I have about $1100 more to go in the fund from the lilac spoons I've sold.
    I sure hope for more progress to report soon.

         Terron

I called Garvin this morning and left a message on the answering machine, which he returned a couple hours later.  I asked him to cut down the tree he located at the centre of the area, drive a nail in the stump and measure 150 feet in every direction.  If that put him in the woods, he should tie a piece of surveyors ribbon.
   So he came over and worked at that til the time his uncle said he should come back.  He worked 3 1/4 hours and got mostly done.  So he will come again and then I'll call Wayne to come look at what has to be done.  So, some progress, anyhow.

Yesterday I went down into the labyrinth clearing on my 4-wheeler with Garvin, my neighbor's nephew with  a 200-foot measuring tape and an axe.  We measured and found that the clearing is not nearly large enough.  So we located where the center would have to be, which is in the woods, and I had Garvin peel that tree with the axe to mark it plainly.  Today I got some surveyor's ribbon or tape or whatever they call it, that bright plastic ribbon they use to mark locations and boundaries.  I will have Garvin cut off the tree about 3 feet high, and drive a nail in the top of the stump.  Then the tape can be hooked on that and he can measure out in every direction and tie ribbon on a tree to mark the limits.  Half or so of the circle will be in the woods, and that will all have to be cleared. I will call Wayne again and have him come look at it.  It seems to me that there will be enough wood that is big enough for pulpwood that I might possibly get someone to do it for free if I give them the wood.  But it is disappointing to have to do more clearing at this point.  I hoped I could just plant.

I have not had much free time to write, but I have a few things to report:
     I got sick and spent 2 nights and the day between in the hospital, where they said I was dehydrated and low on sodium, which they corrected by IV.  When I got home I started to cough and blow my nose again.  I didn't feel up to going down there myself, as I had planned, so I sent Vincent (a wwoofer who was here with his mother, Evelyn) to the labyrinth spot on my 4-wheeler, and he used that to drag all the logs off the area.  But then he measured to find the centre and found it wasn't as big as it is supposed to be.  He found it was 130 feet across instead of 300. I had better measure again, to be sure, but it is hard to see how a smart boy could be very wrong about it, when he had a 200-foot tape to use.
    When I had Wayne in to do the clearing, I offered to get a tape, but he said he could measure it; I don't remember how.  I told him 300 feet in diameter.  I have been looking at my original diagram and figures and what it comes to is 238 feet in diameter if the pathway is 6 feet wide and 218 feet if it is 4 ft.  But it doesn't have to be much wider than that, or at least doesn't have to be well-cleared outside that.  There could be stumps, &c out there  On one side it goes downhill fairly steeply, so that side doesn't have to be cleared far.  But the other side there are larger trees and humpy ground.
      I will have to measure and then talk to Wayne.

I have had repeated trouble with my 4-wheeler, which I need for going  to the place I have had cleared for the labyrinth, but it seems to be working now.  I have gotten 11 tons of lime delivered here, so I have plenty to put on the labyrinth place.  But I need to drag the wood off the ground there and measure to find the middle so we can mark the circles.  Once I hav gotten that done, I will call Wayne again to come with a machine to clear out the stumps that are in the way an level out the rough places.  Then well mark the circles over gain and will be ready to plant.   Lilacs are usually planted in the spring, here, but I have read the words of people who are familiar with planting lilacs and they have said you can plant them almost any time.  One said his favorite time for doing that is in the fall, and I hope we can do it this fall. 
   We had a couple of wwoofers here, and I wished I could go down and measure it while they were here.  But the garden urgently needed weeding, so we concentrated on that.
     I had a hard time figuring out how to get to this page to write another post, but I finally took a guess and found my way.  So many things I run into where they expect everybody to have a cell phone, but I don't.  Both yahoo and google have put in a page from time to time requiring a cell phone number "to call with your pass word if you forget it."  They don't provide for any way to answer that you don't have one.  I don't want one and if I did have one it wouldn't do me any good.  There is no reception up here. That's ll I can think of for now.

          Terron