Chickens are not worth the bother, Red - but I keep them anyway, out of habit I suppose. Life does seem awfully petty now days, garden, fish, cook, do handy-man jobs. I get up, read 3 newspapers with coffee, check in here and there, mill-about all day, go to bed at midnight, read two to four hours, sleep 5 -6 hours and do it again.
Life is a march to death and I feel I should be doing more on the way. Till about a year ago, during my whole life, I spent so much time wondering 'what it is all about', reading and drifting around and thinking of existence - which is normally a phase young people go through and then get over, but I seem to have carried it on in some sort of intellectual neotney - and now I am even letting that go. I think I am in a bit of an intellectual and interest slump, and at my age I do not think I can afford one.
Red, boatman, what is it all about? The cemeteries are full of the great and the useless - achievers and sliders. But the great - the ones who did things - seem to have been more worthy, I think. They are all lumped in there together though. Is wasting ones later years puttering around acceptable? It seems it would be not, given that it is all we have. Theophrastus, the successor to Aristotly used to say "Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend." He could be called the father of botany, the philosopher on natural studies, would be sort of bushcraft's ideal man in that way - I need to read on him more and see if he can tell me what I should be doing with my days to better spend this most valuable thing.
And today I am thawing a pie shell as we speak. I am thinking of working on some half and half pie. Make a peach filling in half quantity - and a blackberry filling in half quantity, then carefully put each in the pie shell for a kind of fruit yin and yang thing. Not to worry about the look that much - but just half and half. I do like my dessert seconds and this way I can have two different slices off one pie. (if you ever saw my cooking thread you would know I make pies every couple days - Toddy, raspberry pie, I think that when ever you mention how many you pick)