April showers are falling in June this year. Technically speaking, the rain is from the fallout of Tropical Storm Andrea. Mostly, it’s been a fairly gentle rain, and I haven’t seen anything more intense than a moderate rain. Without good spring rains Roundtop has been rather dry, and an inch or two of rain is much appreciated and much needed.
So this morning fog shrouded the mountain, and water dripped from every surface. As I am more than 3 inches below normal for rainfall, the ground should well be able to soak up an inch or two of rain. This storm likely won’t bring anything more dramatic than that to Roundtop.
Outside work around the cabin will have to wait until the weather clears, making the upcoming weekend a good time to cook a few dog biscuits, catch up on reading Richard Crossley’s new raptor guide and to try and decide what model of “lady’s” chainsaw I want to buy. I need a small one that’s light enough for me to handle to do some minor jobs around the cabin. Small branches, the odd dead sapling or monkey vines litter the area and so could use a clean-up.
Sometimes small saplings don’t die and threaten to turn into small trees in spots where I don’t need one. The American beech are especially prone to this. I have three large trees of that species around by cabin, and the “children” pop up all the time. Usually, they die on their own, succumbing to lack of light or water. Usually, I just wait for them to disappear on their own. But sometimes they don’t disappear and then spring rolls around and they are growing somewhere that overhangs the driveway or perhaps they got crushed beyond repair by the FedEx truck but somehow still didn’t die. So I have things to get cleaned up around the cabin. And for things above a certain size, I need a chainsaw.
I don’t plan to take down trees of any size, just things in the range where something more than loppers are needed but not things requiring a lumberjack. But first, I have to decide which chainsaws to look at and then I need to go heft a few of those to figure out which one I want. And then I have to save the money to buy one. So, the buying won’t happen this week or probably not even next week.
Maybe, if I get really bored or desperate, I’ll even do some much needed cabin cleaning. Or, maybe not. Chainsaw research is more important.
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4 comments:
Great post, wonderful photo:) Greetings
I don't know how your Friday afternoon and evening fared there, Carolyn, but we we got a deluge from about 3 p.m. until 7 p.m. Our chocolate-milk creek was roaring and I'm sure came out of its banks and did more damage in the preserve. I hope you just got some gentle, soaking rain.
Scott: I had rain on Friday--not a deluge. I hope you didn't have any damage.
Though the creek came out of its banks, it looks like it didn't cause any damage. However, the saturated soil may have belatedly claimed another victim of Hurricane Sandy: Sandy's winds started to tip-up a very, very large tuliptree along one of our trails, but the tree stayed upright. The only evidence of potential damage was a long, thin gap along one side of the edge of the root ball. I thought we were free and clear, but now I'm getting reports from walkers of a huge downed tree; I'll bet we lost it. (It's raining too hard right now to go check.)
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