location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
There was no time for Spelling Bee this morning. Instead we had coffee and then a light breakfast of crepes and fruit out in the screened-in porch. And then we all went down to the dock for another several-hours of swimming, sunning, and navigating various watercraft. I took the paddleboard out for another paddle counterclockwise through the main body of the lake, thinking about how such a board might work as a mobile swimming platform in a place like Lake Edward. (As I discovered this morning, you can buy inflatable paddleboards for $150 on eBay.) Later I took the canoe out to a place in the lake with a lot of loose rock on the bottom and gathered some piece to further build out the "ice wall" (the structure to keep the winter ice from tugging the dock away from the shoreline). Then at some point I climbed up into a pair of mostly-dead hemlocks to get access to a red maple, one of whose branches truncates the sunny period on our dock by something like an hour. I was carrying a foldable saw I'd taken from my abandoned home back in Virginia and used it to cut away branches that were in the way of me as I climbed, but I couldn't quite get out to where I would need to be to cut away the problematic limb. But I think I could do it with a pole saw.
Back at the cabin, Gretchen served a lunch of two different kinds of salad, one built around barley and the other around shredded carrots and lentils. We ate it out on the picnic table in front, and the biting flies weren't even that bad. I'd had to use the weed-eater to make it so we could all get to the picnic table, though I left a few tall plants, such as some volunteer willows and an echinacea that Gretchen had seeded from one of the many flower seedpacks she'd strewn around the cabin grounds. I don't remember much of the conversation, though I think it was mostly Lisa telling us about her sister, who lives an affluent lifestyle somewhere on Long Island (that is, very different from my brother).
Lisa and Bill departed soon after lunch, and it wasn't long before Gretchen returned to the dock. I stayed behind at the cabin for awhile, running various experiments to see what effects plugging and unplugging the battery and our EV from the household electrical system had on various mysterious numbers in the packet of SolArk data I've been intensively studying now for over a month. Eventually, though, I took a beer with me down to the lake (stopping along the way to work on the steps of the Mossy Rock Trail) and then settling into one of the water hammocks to drink my beer as I leisurely paddled around near the dock.
Later, back at the cabin, I sat in the beanbag in the loft and drank a strong gin-containing beverage while watching last Sunday's episode of Season II of House of the Dragon. I could tell right away by the look of the actor that had been selected to play the knight who tried to tame the dragon Seasmoke that his attempt would be doomed, and so it was (in a characteristically gruesome Game of Thrones way). Meanwhile the dogs spent over an hour trying to extract a live chpimunk from a four foot length of cast iron pipe. They tried biting and scratching at the metal, but soon gave up on that and ended up excavating useless pits in the ground at either end of it.
We started our drive back to Hurley at about 8:00pm, meaning we didn't get home until after 10:00pm. Our car started the drive with a completely full battery.
Throckmorton the Loon today.
Throckmorton preening while Lisa swims past in the background.
Charlotte and Neville teaming up to extract a chipmunk from a cast iron pipe. The chipmunk kept hurling high-pitched obscenities at them. Eventually I had to carry Neville into the cabin and bar the pet door so the chipmunk could get away.
Click to enlarge.
