The Trees I Wanted

These are the trees I tried to picture the other day, but managed to leave the SD card out of the camera.

First up, we have my clump of white pines that I planted about 30 years ago. For a while, they looked like the letter B lying on its back. You can see its evolution at It's b-b-b-Back

This is pretty interesting to me. The jack pine that caught fire from sparks thrown from a train in 2017 has finally fallen down. The fire didn't immediately kill it, but I guess it never really recovered either.

You can now see the "mystery tree" clearly through the open space. This turned out to be almost certainly some kind of hybrid cherry that went wild. It always has a beautiful shape.

There is no longer even the faintest sign of the walnut trees I planted in about 1974. I think the tallest one got to about 15 inches. All gone now.

The sky gave me a nice pastel purple show through the aspens at dusk.

I seem to be in a low motivational phase. I managed to do some editing and a load of laundry. I snowshoed out back. It wasn't quite unbroken, except my tracks had blown in along quite a few sections. I was thinking about going farther, but didn't. My victory of the day was that I did not stop to catch my breath even once. I just kept walking.

Tomorrow, I have to get myself in gear. There are things I must do before Saturday!

Miles hiked in 2025: 463.1

See Not the Trees I Wanted

Color in My Kingdom

I still have some really nice autumn photos from the past few days, but I think today I'll just show you what's going on in my corner of the universe.

Here's the female mulberry tree. The male one didn't look too healthy this year. I'm hoping it's not going to die. These two trees have given me several fantastic photos- see link at end for two of them

This is the paper birch I planted about 30 years ago. It's probably too close to the house, but oh, well. It almost died, and then came back, so part of the trunk is ugly. I have to keep trimming it away from the roof. It sheds leaves all over my front flower bed. That creates a big mess to clean up in the spring, but I think it has also improved the soil there tremendously. It's always golden in the fall.

The Sedum elecombeanum that I like so much in the rock garden with its yellow-green leaves all summer and bright yellow flowers in June- turns red-orange in the fall!

There is a big patch of Winged Sumac just out into the field a little ways. I missed the peak of its color, but here is proof that maybe a week ago it was bright.

Here is a picture from last year that shows how beautiful that clump can be.



And my parting shot is one of those "huh?" moments. I posted last year that the maple tree I planted as a sapling about 6 inches tall in 1991 got autumn color for the first time ever. It's the darker orange tree behind the yellow mulberry. That was taken October 31, so almost exactly a year ago.



Here's what it looks like this year. It has very little interest in changing color for me. You can see a few hints of orange/salmon on the edges of some leaves. But it's a nice tree, and I planted it, and it lived. So I like it.

I slept in this morning because I did not sleep well last night. Still got a fair amount done and took my 3-mile road walk.

Miles hiked in 2025: 416.2

See Pink, Blue, and Red

Glimpses of My Kingdom

 Today, I needed to walk over to the Co-op to get a herbicide product they sell that is actually supposed to kill the Dreaded Autumn Olive. We shall see!

Walked home through the fields. For those of you who have been following this blog for years, most of this will look familiar although "my kindgom" is much smaller now.

We never actually owned much of what I loosely called mine. We have 5 acres. There are 20 between me and the cemetery. There are 10 on the other side, then the Lutheran Church property, and the Co-op propety beside that.

I was free to walk on all 6 of those properties, and I mowed a path on 4 of them (not the cemetery or the Co-op)

The Co-op is what I jokingly refer to as the "space station."

I used to be able to walk all the way over there without intruding on their operations. But they bought the back half of the church property and bulldozed a "wall" around it (probably for noise containment), and so I don't walk there any more.

But the grain elevator is very active. This is still an agricultural area.

Coming back across my own property, some of you may remember the "nature alphabets." Here is the letter B- turn it to the right to make it stand up. The trees are very much larger, but you can still "get" the shape of it. As a reminder, I personally planted those trees about 35 years ago.

Now, looking west toward the hill that is a little higher than our house, we do NOT own this. It's for sale again, and I'm concerned. This is the acreage that I was not allowed to even walk on for the past 10 years, but I don't want a business that close. I THINK we are safe because there is a big contaminated area in the back from an oil tank. No one wants to clean it up. But if someone does buy it and cuts down those pines I'll be very sad. We also don't own that little copse in the foreground. Sigh.

Well, there is lots more Big Bluestem grass than there used to be. I guess I'd rather see the field revert to native grasses than more autumn olive, but it makes such dense clumps I really can't walk through it either!

If I could keep a trail mowed again, it would be great. But the current mower is pretty wimpy. And it's not fixed yet, and may be expensive. I think I'll have to get one that is heavier duty.

Of course, I also can't help but think about how many more years we can keep up with this house and property. Well, we've never actually been able to "keep up" with it by many people's standards. But I may be slipping even behind my own lax expectations.

Maybe tomorrow I can talk myself into weed-whacking some bits of trail out there. Meanwhile, I edited, I did a little autumn olive detail, had a zoom meeting, worked on pictures, and wrote Chapter 31 in Vacation from DMS, 1062 words. Yeah, me!

See My Trail Out Back

My Trail Out Back- Update

"My" trail has been seriously affected in the past few years. This is not a quality topic, but there are still some good parts, and one thing may be better again. Here's a general view of the property next door. This is twenty acres, and I'll get the unpleasant part out of the way first. This property has changed hands a few times in the 52 years we've lived here. However, none of the owners has ever done a thing with it, and I've always been able to walk there. Until about about eight years ago. The owner at that time threw me off the property. I was really miffed because, what the heck, right? I won't give you the entire saga, but anyway... it really curtailed my walking opportunities out my back door. It's not like I was hurting the property... sheesh.

But there is a new owner now. I guess I need to contact him to ask if I can walk there. I used to mow a path along the edge of the field, but the mower we have now is probably too wimpy for that. Nevertheless, if it's OK, I can at least clear brush and fallen limbs out of the way.

This was my access to get onto city property (the cemetery). I can still get there via the road, so I did that today and then walked the far side of the cemetery creek back to the railroad. The creek is down in the gully. The only places to cross the creek are at the road and back at the railroad tracks (unless the water is REALLY low). There used to be a little foot bridge, but it burned about 40 years ago!

I love this little creek. It's nothing much, but it has topography, and it feels like mine, because it's very rare to find anyone on the cemetery property in this area behind the gravesites.

When I got back onto my own property, I checked on the white pines I planted around 1990. They are big enough they've formed a needle-carpeted clearing. One could even camp in that grove.

There are still lots of apples and wild grapes. I could make juice and applesauce if I'd get my act together. But I probably have too many other things to do.

I have to show you the gazania one more time. One of the blossoms fully opened. It's interesting to me that the inner ring on this one is considerably darker than the previous blooms on this same plant.

I spent most of my time today doing overdue paperwork related to book sales. But I did manage to write over 1000 words. Total for Vacation from DMS is up to 10,612.

See My Kingdom

This and That

  I guess the biggest news is that the store across the road is open. It's an Amish store called West Shore Market. They have been open about a half mile away for a number of years, but this is a brand new building, clean, beautiful and with very nice goods. Lots of bulk items. Their deli looks like it has nice stuff. They've always had good cheese, and now they are adding meats.

They opened yesterday. The parking lot has had cars in and out steadily. I went over today to check it out. I will be able to do some shopping there, but even with their expanded space they aren't doing a real produce section. They have squash and potatoes and things that keep really well. But I buy a lot of fresh veggies and salad stuff, so I'm pretty disappointed about that. But I'll try to support them when I can.

The grand opening is Saturday. I'll probably go over and see what specials they have.

In other news: It's pretty much all other news. I worked at a lot of projects- some editing I'm doing for other people, some cleaning up of the messes I made yesterday. I got some of the cement work done in the well pit, but the critical hole is not covered yet, so it's not worth showing you. Best accomplishment is that I'm up to 6581 words in Dead Mule Swamp Singer and managed to rework a section I thought was boring. Tomorrow, I'll be out and about.

See Across the Road Update

Done, Done, Done and Done!

  Face #4 is done. Everything is cleaned up. This completes the re-shingling of the entire roof even if it did take me more years to do it than I had planned. This started 7 years ago when I discovered that the south face in the sun had turned into total crumbles- about all that was preventing leaks was the tarpaper, which the original roofer had not even installed properly (don't get me started on this topic).

So here's the view of the whole thing- as much as I can get into one picture.

Here' the face I finished today. A stiff breeze made the ridge challenging, but I got it done! Sorry about the shadow, but it was afternoon.

This was last spring. This was April 2014, before cleanup and before I put the last few pieces in on the right edge.

And October 2013

I'm really thinking I shouldn't have to do this again. Next time this needs a roof it's likely to be someone else's problem.

While I was up there, I felt obligated, as always, to take a picture of my kingdom. It was looking rather drab today, but there it is. It's actually shrunk quite a bit in recent years, but that's not a quality story. Maybe someday I'll share it.

Om put all the used shingles (carefully checked for nail removal) in the driveway to help with the ever-eroding sand surface.

Then, I tried to get everything put away, the hoses rolled up and stashed for winter, and the front porch cleaned off. I almost made it. It's not supposed to rain till afternoon tomorrow. We'll see if I can get myself in gear in the morning to finish.

In other news: I finished chapter 5 in Dead Mule Swamp Singer.

See Did She Do It?- 2020 See This Year's Roofing Project- 2014 See Looky Looky, I Played Hookey- 2013

Who Will Win the Race?

 
This is how far I got today. Pretty darn good. Is it enough? We shall see.



If we are talking about the race with the roof across the street, I already lost. They put on all the underlayment and all the red metal roofing today.



Interestingly enough, The Amish must be doing the roof themselves (this is going to be an Amish/Mennonite store). How do I know this? Take a look. There is one woman up there who was working right along with the guys. I don't know how they can do stuff like this in a dress. But GIRL POWER!



More to the point is- will I win the race with the weather? Forecast says I still have tomorrow. Do you think I'll make it? I was able to work a lot today because it wasn't as hot. I lost quite a bit of actual roof time because I was waiting around at Home Depot almost an hour for them to find the skid of 52 bundles of shingles that their inventory claimed they had. They finally found them.

No other news today! I worked my tail off.

See It Must be Roofday

It Must be Roofday

 
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Roofday. Right?

I was not sore at all from yesterday. I can hardly believe it myself. And I got over a quarter of the new shingles on. This is going well. That was my goal for the day. Don't worry- I trimmed back that tree. The shadow makes it look like it's still very close to the roof.



And, look what's happening across the street. They have closed in the section between the buildings, and today, with a whole crew of workers and a nailgun (or 2 or 3), they put the plywoood on that whole huge roof. I don't think they can see me through our pine trees, slogging away with a jar full of used nails and a hammer, but I bet they would be laughing at me if they could. I'll bet they'll only spend one day covering it all, too. I wonder if it's going to have red metal like the rest of it.



And this happened. It was getting too thin and ratty, and I just wanted to wash all the tar gunk out of my hair easily. I may grow it again in the fall.



In other news: Yes, there actually is some other news. I did a load of laundry and dehydrated two pieces of hike food.

See I Done Good

Remember the Roof?

 
I just looked up previous posts about this to get the link for the end. I CAN NOT BELIEVE I last worked on this project 6 years ago.

You can be assured that the shingles on the front of the house have not improved in that time. They really need to be replaced. It looks like I get a weather window this week, and the stimulus check is being put to good use buying shingles made in the USA. Fortunately, I could still get the same kind and color.

As a reminder, I still have to do the two faces on the front of the house. I'm hoping for the larger one this week. I have managed to recall some information about the original shingles. They were supposed to be a great product made partly with recycled fly ash. They had a 30-year guarantee. They did not last 20 years (and contractor is gone and all info about possible warranty). The back roof, in full sun, shredded beyond functionality in 19 years. While I was doing the insurance picture-taking job I came across 3 other houses with the same kind of shingles. They had all deteriorated just like ours.

The front section you see here is not nearly as bad as the back had gotten, even 6 years later, but it's not great.



Yesterday, when I hoped to start, it did not stop raining. Today, it was a little windier than would have been good, but I made things work. I just kept the edges of the tarpaper covered so the wind can't catch it.

I only got about a quarter of this section cleared. This needs to be happening faster. Hopefully, I can actually spend more time on the roof tomorrow. Today, I had to get several pieces of the puzzle assembled and ready to use.

One piece of good news is that the original roofer put the tarpaper on this side correctly, as opposed to how they did it on the back side.



While I was up there, of course I had to snap the view of my kingdom and beyond. And you can see that nice smooth brown roof that was the result of my efforts in 2013 and 2014.



I had to quit earlier than I wanted to because I had to get to the P.O. before 4, and to UPS between 3 and 6. Then I had to buy more shingles, and go to the grocery store. Of course, while I was gone it started to rain again! What? Called Om to put some things away that I had left out. And now the lawn tractor won't start. I'll have to try to figure out what's going on with that.

Still a lot of empty shelves at the grocery. Why would there be no wax paper? But Brussel sprouts were on sale, so I treated myself.

This is the news of the day. I'll try to get my rear in gear earlier tomorrow.

See 2014 Roofing Project

Across the Road Update

 
In early February, I showed you some construction that was happening across the road. Things began to move quickly. They put up a sign that verified what I thought it is going to be. This will be a larger version of the Amish store that is down the road from me, called West Shore Market.

Here it is on March 7.



March 11. I had to remember to take pictures because things were happening fast.



March 17



And then... well. Everything got shut down. And there it all sat until after the Governor's directive on April 24. Non-essential construction still isn't supposed to happen. But I'm thinking they needed that heavy equipment somewhere that was essential. At any rate, they spread those dirt piles and took away the machines.

Yesterday.



And there it will continue to sit until work is allowed once again. I'm sure the owners of the market will be happy when things can go forward.

In other news: I created another promotional video in the morning, and finished preparations for an on-line author event in a Facebook mystery group yet this evening. I was so good, I let myself start another puzzle.

See What's Happening?