The designer introduced me to the work of Terah Kathryn Collins. She wrote the book The Western Guide to Feng Shui. I will get a copy of her book and last night I was able to read a number of her articles here.

The system itself is a bit more complicated than I originally thought. As you can see from the chart below, it is no easy task to balance design. Our designer had some terrific ideas and I am looking forward to working with her. We start the process on Friday.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then the sky became less clear. And a certain smell became apparent. Smoke!

We live on a rural property with about 7 acres of heavily wooded land. At 11pm at night, willows of smoke drifting up to the house was not a good sign. Where was the fire? Was it somewhere on the property?

We grabbed a cell phone, flashlights and began walking through the property. It was actually a bit scary. The smoke created a thinly visible fog — everything seemed strange and unfamiliar. After about twenty minutes of hiking through the land, we could find no fire. Lots of smoke. But no fire.

Could it be coming from another property? Lorraine and I headed out to the street and began walking east. Sure enough, there was a fire. Adjacent to a neighbour’s house. I held the beam of a very powerful flashlight on the fire until someone stood up and walked toward the light. Granted, the firepit was about 300 feet or so in from the road. As soon as I saw a person attending the fire, I turned off the flashlight and we headed back home.

Odd that a small campfire would generate so much smoke. Not so odd was the feeling of anxiety over seeing and smelling all of that smoke late at night.

Of course, it is the long week-end. Everything is so quiet here that even when someone nearby has an outdoor event, there is no noise. At least not coming from humans. The noise from the wildlife was almost deafening. A forest is rarely quiet at night. When there is smoke, the forest changes. Not for the better.

It was 6am. And a sound similar to a loud gunshot reverberated in the air. It turns out that the sound originated from an impact collision. A ruffled grouse flew at a high rate of speed directly into one of the front windows of the house. The impact killed the bird.

He was prone on the front entrance of our home. A beautiful bird and I felt very badly that it was dead.

Bird-window crashes are unfortunately quite common. I have read estimates that suggest up to one billion birds are killed each year in the United States. Yes. One billion.

The bird strike at our home is not the first one. There were several last year. Always on the same window. I suspect that the reflection of the trees gets painted on this particular window and it fools the bird into thinking that there is open space. If there are continued bird strikes on the window, I may need to consider putting some form of covering to reduce the reflection.

A new phrase for me as I did not follow the French Decadent poets of the late 19th century. Decadent writers used elaborate, stylized language to discuss taboo and often unsavory topics, such as death, depression, and deviant sexualities.