Yeppers, off schedule for Mineral King on Fridays. Sometimes that just the way it all works out.

All I did was work over Labor Day. I labored, beginning with helping some neighbors make progress on painting their cabin. It was a very satisfying project, just a good productive mellow time of being with dear friends. It is so much easier to help other people with big projects than to do our own. It doesn’t require setting up or cleaning up, and we can quit any time we want.

Then, there was the labor of continuing to deal with the three enormous downed red fir trees in our back yard. “Fuels reduction” is the official name for this sort of work. This is how it looked shortly after the trees were dropped.

And this is how it looked after Labor Day.

Those photos would be more helpful if I stood in the same place. Couldn’t remember, besides, much has been removed.

There was time for a little bit of birthday happiness.

The sweater is too big, which is a relief, because it was too small and I had to take apart the entire body and begin again. I hope this lasts a year with this growing girl!

There was a meeting with my partner for an upcoming new wildflower book. (No photos for you.)

Finally, when I got home, I lightened the road on the barn do-over. Now I think I am finished!

There was a real sense of urgency in the labor over the weekend and a great deal of satisfaction. I’m not sure why, but I seem to have lost interest in hiking. Maybe it was a sense of waning opportunity to tackle some tasks, or the fact of uncomfortable feet, or the fact that the wildflowers are finished.

Doesn’t matter—it was a good Labor Day weekend. We had an excellent time with our neighbor-friends. It is the end of the season for some, but not for Trail Guy and I yet.