|
|
|
crowbar stone extraction
Tuesday, August 20 2024
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
Temperatures were in the low 50s Fahrenheit when I went outside this morning to dump out yesterday's coffee grounds, and it wasn't especially early either (it was after 8:00). So when I eventually took the dogs for a walk, I put on a long-sleave shirt for comfort from the chill. This turned out to be overkill, since my walk took me to Lake Edward and back on the Lake Edward trail, and climbing those two steep grades on the way home (the one just east of Lake Edward and the one just west of our cabin) requires the kind of exertion where you're going to want to just be wearing a teeshirt unless the temperature is in the 40s or below. To the delight of both Charlotte and me, Neville decided to come on this walk.
Back at the cabin, I started worrying some about Gretchen, who hadn't posted any direct messages to me since she was at work yesterday afternoon. Had something bad happened to her? Facebook had her little activity light as green (that is, active), but hours had passed and she hadn't actually seen any of my messages (you can see that too). Perhaps she was just super busy with NYAFF stuff. But then it occurred to me that I had a perfect way to see if she was behaving otherwise normally: had she played today's New York Times Spelling Bee yet? She insists on playing the version hosted by the New York Times and not my version (even though it's the same game). So I went to the New York Times Spelling Bee page using her login (which we share) and sure enough, she'd played the game and even gotten to the level of genius, which means she made it home from work fine and was still alive and happy at 5:00am or so (when the day's game is typically published). So I stopped worrying about her. Eventually she replied to my messages, and all was well.
I made further improvements to the Mossy Rock Trail today. Most of these were on the end near the cabin, where I'm still building little stone causeways across sudden dips in an effort to make the overall grade and alignment of the trail conform as closely to a straight line as possible. To help with making the biggest causeway so far (one not more than four feet in length or more than six inches in height), I used a big crowbar to extract a round boulder from the trail and then, since it was far too large to carry, I used a handtruck to move it to the place where I would be building the causeway. When that went well, I did the same with another boulder, then added smaller supporting rocks and a bucket of sand removed from beneath the cabin's screened-in porch. I also used some of that same sand to fill in the craters left in the trail by the extraction of those big rocks. (I imagine trees that have never been able to send roots into the space occupied by those rocks will now quickly claim these rootless masses of sand, which will serve them as micro-aquifers if nothing else).
Early this evening, I kayaked across Woodworth Lake to the public dock to do some more work on the abutment I'd started yesterday. I did this mostly because I was a little embarrassed by how shoddy the work I'd done yesterday had been. I managed to get it looking respectable, though it's possible someone will take issue with the fact that now one of the pressure treated boards of the dock is now in contact with the ground. While I was over there, Throckmorton the Loon was not far offshore, seemingly watching me work (since it was the part of the day where he stops diving for fish and just hangs out on the surface without all that much to do).
One of the pair of Lake Edward loons (that is, not Throckmorton) swimming just off-shore from someone's nicely-mown suburban lot.
Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?240820 feedback
previous | next |
