Current mood:	impressed
Current music:	Blondie - The Tide is High

Stonehenge of the South
We are getting into that part of the year here in South Mississippi that I consider to be as useless as the dead of winter was in Massachusetts. The time of the year where the weather is so unbearable out that you are better off staying in the house unless you absolutely have to go outside.

As of this writing, it is just shy of 3:30 in the morning and with dawn less than two hours away it is still 84 degrees out there, with intense humidity and little hope for cooler temperatures today. I remember two summers ago we had the north end torn off the house when the heat came, so it is better than it could be, but not fit for many beasts and certainly not for humans.

The dining room project is now entering its second year, with progress delayed for several months by The Storm. petalbreeze finished the french doors and they were mounted last week. Most of the "mud" is on the walls now, and I have begun sanding the joints and screw holes. This phase of the work should go relatively fast. The worst part of doing the walls has been mudding the ceiling joints, of which there are about 70 linear feet.

Other domestic maintenance has included replacing and repainting the fascia boards, and repainting the exterior window trim, a project which is now about 40% complete. The house is now closed back up and all of the damage from Katrina has been rectified. This is on hold now, but work will pick back up in the fall when the weather is a little more bearable.

Shifting gears, I saw the most incredible collection of petrified wood the other night. I was with a friend of mine and we were visiting another friend who lives in the outbacks of Stone County. I had never been to the house before and, when we arrived, I noticed that there was a large array of what appeared to be gray wood lined up about a portion of the yard, standing up like ragged gravestones. We talked for a while and when the subject turned to petrified wood, I asked for a tour. Apparently, there are huge deposits of the stuff in the ground all over the area and the rock garden I had seen on arrival was constructed entirely of the stuff. Words fail me to describe it. What I saw was a garden path, with 2 and 3 foot hunks of petrified wood forming the walls of the path. We stepped down and walked along it and came to the biggest piece of petrified wood I have ever seen. I was stunned.

"Holy mother of fuck!," I exclaimed. There, before me in the dim illumination of a flashlight, was what had to be the preserved corpse of Treebeard. It was about 4 feet in length and propped across two other chunks of petrified wood about a foot or so in length. The Treebeard part had rotted partially in the middle, and was only half of the original stump, causing it to be cupped to make a perfectly formed seat. I am in awe of this collection of million year old tree fossils arranged in such an attractive way, but people there all seemed to think there was nothing special about any of it. I thought is was better than some state parks I have been to. An impressive display of antiquity. It's a pity very few have ever gotten to see it. I hope to return in the daytime with a camera and, if I do, I will post some pictures of this impressive collection here.