whew, i was starting to worry that maybe i wouldn’t write on here anymore. i have so many hopes of getting things done every day and then somehow the days continue to slip away…
i really wanted to start a journal at the start of the coronavirus but i haven’t even managed to do that. i mean, COME ON.
i now have such a huge backlog of photos and stories about may that i’ll be lucky to get them posted before the end of the year. i’ll have to be much more draconian about the choosing process.
but here’s what we did last weekend, saturday and sunday June 13th and 14th.
Last year we got riprap for the shoreline which has been eroding for a very long time. but the chief riprap guy at the power company came out and told us we needed to start with little stones, so we got two barges of that last year. it kind of filled spaces but also i think it was a little bit of a ripoff because a lot of it washed away.
of course, we were supposed to get bigger stones to put over the little ones but we ran out of summer last summer.
so this year kevin called and asked for a bargeful of big stones. instead of the regular size riprap that everybody else has around the lake (except for the places where people have insanely expensive seawalls), they delivered a barge of the hugest stones i’d ever seen. how did i not take a picture of the gigantic stones?
trust me, they were flinstones-sized. Glenn came over and helped kevin throw the boulders onto the shore and they had to break some of them in two because two people couldn’t budge them. kevin broke four sledgehammers in the process.
They had a week to finish the project but they wrapped it up very quickly, and kevin ordered another barge. This one arrived last Thursday and had regular-sized stones. Kevin started throwing them on friday, and i told him i’d help him saturday morning.
Luckily the weather had been pretty cool and delightful for the past few days, unlike the sweltering heat when kevin and glenn had to toss boulders.
Kevin started at about 7:30 on saturday morning and i joined him at nine. We took a break for about an hour because we had to play a very important group competition in this video game we play called june’s journey. very important break.
we got back to it, and in addition to throwing the rocks, we also sawed down some of the branches on the huge oak tree that’s leaning way down into the water and will fall in someday.
But maybe it won’t fall in while we’re living here, because we cut off so many branches. having the barge docked under the tree was great. I started off using the pole saw which is just what it sounds like, a saw on a long extendable pole. i managed to cut a couple of the branches but then the saw had to be extended so far that i couldn’t do any more.
kevin kept up the job and we soon had a big pile of branches to clear off the barge.
when we finished we then had to move the barge over to another spot. now that i think about it, why did we have to move it again? kevin is really good at moving the barge, anyway. i told him it reminded me of tom sawyer, or was it huckleberry finn who navigated down the mississippi? I had to push against the shore with a big pole and kevin pulled on one of the ropes.
at some point mom came over, pitching in an throwing rocks, and then she took our pictures as we moved the barge.
kevin on the little dock as i tied one of the big ropes.
me, hard at work.
after that we started dragging the big branches up through the yard to the circle in front where all the neighbors pile branches.
amy took this photo of mom as she dragged a branch. she’s a very energetic 84 year-old.
I was so worn out after all that work on saturday that i did little on sunday. kevin, however, wasn’t done and continued on.
more about that soon.
ok then,
grace looking at the rapidly-approaching end of june.