The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads!

[HairOfTheDog]

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!

Journey to the Cross-roads
The Two Towers Edition

Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!)

Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts, but we are really slow to muster! Finally, the time has come. Tomorrow (at 12:01 am, to be precise!) The Two Towers comes out, and we start a new chapter.

[JenB]

But - but - "El Nino" is Spanish, right, so how could anything about El Nino show up in Iraq? I'm tired of Arabs claiming credit for things they didn't do!
/end lame attempt at humor

[300winmag]

I thought Algore was the expert in El Nino.

I thought Algore invented El Nino.

[Overtaxed]

He probably causes it....his hot air heating up the Pacific (or whatever.)

[Dawntreader]

I got an e-mail from my sister (Leroy is my 5 yr. old nephew..he loves The Fellowship of the Ring..he's seen it many many times)

"Leroy drew this picture of the Urukai yesterday. He calls them "the bad guys with sugar on their heads" (because of the White Hand). Notice the one being "born" out of the slime. The one standing in the middle on top of the hill is the leader--"the one with the arrows." I asked him where was Aragorn to fight them and he said that Aragorn wasn't there because this was where they lived and Aragorn didn't go to where they lived. He said he would draw another picture of Aragorn fighting them. I love how he drew their swords correctly. LOL!"

[Sam Cree]

Tolkien refers, in his letters, to Sam as a "peasant," which is pretty much what most hobbits seem to have been. So I am having trouble seeing him as the son of a prosperous farmer who really didn't have to get his own hands dirty. IMO, Jackson's characterization of Sam as a gardener is right on the money.

I believe the gaffer to be a retired, cantankerous working class guy, one of the neighborhood "characters," so to speak.

Frodo, Merry and Pippin, on the other hand, seem to me to pass for the closest thing that hobbits have for an upper class.

[g'nad]

Kewl Hair... good lookin' place yuh got...

well there ain't no "before pictures" of the land I've cleared, but here is what's gettin' cleared next... looks very similar...

This is after...

This is the North side of the road... alot more old growth... alot more big trees to take out...

This is looking' down our lane as yuh leave our property... that's next month... 4/10 of a mile to the the County road...

Remember the trash I mentioned?... here's a curious sight... these 5 foot panes have been here so long, the tree has grown around them... this'll be fun... but it's the last of the trash...

I'm tellin' yuh, a tractor, a tow bar with log chains, a brush hog and a chainsaw are a God send... can't imagine doin this without 'em...

[g'nad]

dude... I know where you can rent a bulldozer cheap... use a shotgun for the final cleanup...

[Sam Cree]

Nice to own your own land, g'nad. Something that city people never usually get to understand.

I'm happy for you.

[g'nad]

Sure is Sam...

BTW, my B-I-L from Opalaca is in Paris right now covering the French Open (he is a sports writer for AP)... my sister is flying to England to meet him for Wimbledon, then they are spending a month in Ireland... part of their yearly ritual...

[g'nad]

Gonna go watch the sunset from the porch... and smoke a good cigar...

[HairOfTheDog]

Cool! Thanks for sharing! I wish I had the tools you have! - My successes are measured in half-acres, not multi-acres! - Whatcha gonna do with all that cleared land?

I just went and bought some bird seed tossed just a little near the nest as a treat and backed off and sat down. The parents came back, YAY! - they are still tending their babe, so it looks like I won't have to figure out how to feed a baby sparrow. Good thing, because I imagine it involves eating and spitting up a lot of seeds and bugs.

[HairOfTheDog]

I love the swords, and I also love that the tops of their heads are white. Fascinating!

[Sam Cree]

I hear Ireland is pretty. I'd like someday to see it, see where some of my ancestors came from.

[Sam Cree]

Cool artwork!

[HairOfTheDog]

Those panes are interesting indeed! When I moved in here I had to surgically remove barbed wire from many trees. The prior people had just used trees as posts and nailed barbed wire to the trees. One had the barbed wire wrapped all the way around it, and the wire was buried deep inside so all you could see was the choke points where the wire was. It would kill the tree eventually, so I just cut vertically into it in about 5 places to relieve the pressure so that hopefully the tree could grow out of it, and left the wire inside. we'll see.

[osagebowman]

Hair; those old barb wire trees are quite a problem if you try running the logs thru a sawmill. It's a pretty common occurance in the Ozarks, land has been fenced and cross fenced and cross fenced again, only to be abandoned later on and cycle starts over.

G'nad, I'm curious too, what you planning for the place? Setting up a clear field of fire :-), just leave enough trees for range markers.

It's hard to believe that much of the Ozarks was pine forest in the 1900 period. The hardwood forest is the recent addition, within the last 100 years. Chip mills are now where much of the harvest heads instead of sawmills.

[HairOfTheDog]

Here, if trees have been in a residential area, the sawmills won't even buy them. They may buy the trees on the 3 acres furthest from the house here, but not the ones near the house or barn.... they know from experience that they all have nails in them.

[Wneighbor]

Hola amigos.

NICE place g'nad!

and DT I didn't know I'd moved into fine art appreciation but that is certainly a fine orc work there. You are right, he does have quite an eye for detail.

I have determined that I am getting in on OT's experiment with the citrus and mosquitos. I already have the evidence for without mosquitos after the last couple of hours sitting outside. Tomorrow, I purchase citrus.

[HairOfTheDog]

Watching FoTR still.... Rivendell. Bed hair....

[JenB]

Rivendell... nice...I've been writing.

Writing fanfic, anyway. That's not real writing. Now I'm gonna turn someone into a newt cuz I feel like it.