We have a few springs on our land which eventually form little streams. At some point they all meet up to form a small creek. Today Sidney and I took Max & Rocky along with my brother’s dog Ruby for a walk in the woods. We went down the old road until we got into a bottom area where a spring crosses the old road. Then we turned and walked a few yards to the larger stream. Here is the little spring that rushes down the hill:

 This little spring runs underground briefly past this fallen log and then emerges into a small pool before it goes back underground to meet up with the stream a few feet away. Here is the little pool it makes:

We climbed down the bank into the creek and walked for a little way. The water was icy cold but I couldn’t resist taking off my shoes and wading in it!

The dogs enjoyed cavorting in the shallow water. See those overhanging mossy areas above? Sometimes mink will have their burrows in there. When my dad was a kid growing up here, he said there were still bear dens along this stream and every once in awhile they would catch sight of one. Once when my dad and his friends were in high school and working on an old car in their shop building a bear actually wandered in to their open garage door. They all quickly jumped into the car they were working on and closed the doors. The only problem with that was the car was a complete project car and the floor and seats weren’t even installed back into the car. So their feet were standing right on the floor of the garage and if the bear had been enterprising and wanted to get them, all he would have to do was to crawl under the edge of the car. Luckily, the bear wandered away after a few tense minutes.

We’ve got the upstairs of my building cleaned out enough to assemble the basics for my office. Eventually we will need to repair the ceiling that is in poor shape due to years of water damage from roof leaks. But for right now, I have my desk and computer set up against the wall that borders the stairs. I elected to leave the old vintage wallpaper on the walls and simply hung a couple of prints from Ikea.

Note the lights hanging from the ceiling. My grandmother’s house had those same lights. There were no plug-ins in my grandmother’s house except on the light thing that hung from the ceiling. I believe that this upstairs room could have been used as living quarters a hundred years ago but not really used since then.

The wooden floors are just grand. I carefully oiled the floors with Danish oil. By hand. My arms ached for days! The front wall is made of brick with plaster over it.

My view out my office window of the main street here in Iuka:

The gazebo you see in the center of the photo is in a little park called Jaybird Park. During the spring and summer months there is a concert held in that gazebo each week. And farmer’s set up to sell their produce on Thursday mornings. At the far end of the street is City Hall, the police station, and fire station. The train tracks run alongside Jaybird park to the left.

The outside of my building currently looks like this:

The inside is a major mess although we have managed to get most of the heavy cleaning done on all three floors. The window you see in the photo above is the main floor. The four smaller windows above that is the upstairs where I will have my office. And on the lowest level, the basement opens out into the back alley behind this row of buildings in downtown.

The old Phillips Hardware sign is still visible on the building for now. My new sign will have to just sit on top of it. We didn’t want to paint over it because this is a historic building. It has been in the same family since it was built in the late 1800′s and has been a hardware store since it opened for business way back then. It only ceased to be a hardware store in March of 2011.

I would like to get something done to replace the aluminum awning that graces the front of the building but that may have to wait because we just discovered that the furnace/air-conditioning system for the main floor needs to be replaced. And it isn’t cheap! I still don’t know exactly how I am going to heat and cool my office area. There is currently no air-conditioner or heating of any kind on the upper floor.

I ended up taking all of the holidays off from blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking. I spent the time with my family. And working on my new business. And wow, is there a great deal of work to be done on the new business. Taking a building that is well over 100 years old and renovating it takes months of hard work.

I am a bit mad at myself for not meeting up with a couple of my friends who were in town here for the holidays. They were flat out busy the same as me. And it seemed that each time I was available, they weren’t and vice versa. We’ll just have to meet up another time!

About the picture above: friends of ours are boarding their horse on our property. We have the horse in the pasture with our two miniature donkeys. The horse and donkeys are now great friends with each other and never really leave each others’ sides. Notice how huge the horse looks next to the little donkey. Oh, and the horse will be having a foal in about March so stay tuned for photos of a wee baby horse.