Sunday 30 October 2016

Hallowe'en


Some of the most interesting pictures are accidents. After a long morning's work pushing over deadwood and hacking down deadfall, Joanne carved the pumpkins. I stuck in candles and took some pictures. This evil spirit appeared out of nowhere.

It makes this more conventionally wicked picture seem tame by comparison. No rolled eye, glowing nose, or tongue of fire. Just a Jack o'lantern.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Sunday 23 October 2016

Autumn Chores

Autumn seems to be a time of brake jobs. I finally changed out that seized cable in the Honda, completing a four-wheel brake job in the process. Here are the lovely new drums--it almost seems a shame to keep the other components (too shabby). Finally, we have two sets of shoes responding to the emergency brake.


 I also serviced our pellet stove--22 years old and still going strong, so far as I can recollect. The fans are oiled, cleaned, and, as a consequence, quite quiet.

Sunday 16 October 2016

Fall Clean-up


Here it is, mid-October, and the scaffolding is all tucked away in the tractor shed. For once, I finished shingling and painting before the snow flew!

Although I liked the look of the natural shingles against the white paint, in the end I painted everything. It is hard to maintain the look of cedar; it tends to blacken. I still have some touching up to do on the corner boards, but that can wait for next year. We still get the occasional warm day, but it is really too cold for further painting. Next year, we plan to replace five windows, including the two side windows on the lower bay, and the one in the front corner, second floor--this will be the main focus of the summer work. This time, we're going to rip off the vinyl and apply cedar clapboard! 



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Blow the Man Down

Last weekend a crew went by on the far side of the road pollarding trees that threatened the power lines. I thought I'd better get busy, and spent the Thanksgiving weekend dismembering the hophornbeam. Luckily, Boris was on hand.



The bole had forked into four main stems with minor branches adding to the mess. I wanted a clean, predicable felling path for each, so we started by clearing away anything that threatened to obstruct the line of descent.

We worked from the scaffolding, always dropping the limbs away from the platform--and the power line.


By the end of Thanksgiving, only one stem remained--tall, but relatively small in diameter. This weekend Jo and I tackled it. I brought the scaffolding around to make a felling notch on the driveway side and then dropped it with a cut on the opposite side. We put a rope on it to make sure it didn't back onto the power line, but it actually fell quite close to the intended direction. It diverged a little to the right (following the downslope of the driveway), clipping the maple to the right of it. This knocked off a co-dominant stem, saving me the trouble of climbing up and cutting it!
 It has a strange totemic appearance now. I thought I'd leave it up for a while, at least until Hallowe'en. From some angles it looks like a giant hand scrabbling at the sky with its stumps of fingers.

Now I'm engaged in chopping it up for firewood and hauling it away to the woodpile (I'm taking a break right now--that is HEAVY wood!).

I've been chipping down the smaller branches; the chipper complains a little but chops it up quite well. I'll save some pieces for Colin--he wanted to try using it for engraving blocks. That split up the main trunk looks quite black inside. I wonder if it was hit by lightning after all?