Terry's been in Virginia for one of her Smocking Arts Guild gatherings this week. And I've just been sorta loafing around. Sorta.
Besides doing the house cleaning, fixing the garden gate, harvesting tomatoes and peppers, cutting up some longer logs that I had sitting behind the house, and moving firewood from the trail nearest the house using the tractor, I decided to split the wood I had stacked from last year and the stuff I had just moved.
But first, I had to get the wood splitter started. I was a little apprehensive about that. See, I hadn't used it since the fall of 2014 and it had been sitting idle behind the garage all that time. I wasn't sure it would want to start. Or if all the hoses, etc. were still intact. Mice have a bad habit of gnawing on that rubber, you know.
I didn't feel any more confident when I pulled it around the corner of the garage and put some gasoline in the tank--only to watch it leak like a sieve from the area of the carburetor. I shoved a plastic cup under the stream of gasoline to capture as much as I could and took the cover off the air filter so I could get to the problem area. Then the flow of fuel suddenly stopped. I hadn't even gotten to the carburetor and the gas tank still had fuel in it. What the heck?
So I did what anyone else would have done: switched the engine on, moved the lever to "choke" and gave the cord a pull. On the second pull, the engine sparked to live and went running merrily along. Gotta love hose Briggs & Stratton engines! I put the cover for the air filter back in place and started splitting wood.
About five hours later--with only a short break to have lunch--I called it quits. I managed to stack all the stuff I split today while I was working. I still have some wood to split but my back and knees were shouting, "No mas!" The 85 degree temperature didn't help either. I finish the rest manana.
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Terry reports that she's having a grand old time. Before the bulk of the members showed up, the leadership got to go to Williamsburg for lunch one day and had a private tour of some stitching and quilt work at the museum. She's enjoying her classes and meeting with all her lady friends. She's to come home late Sunday night.
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Monday we take our problem cat, Shadow, to the vets again. She had some serious scratches right in front of her ears. She got some oral antibiotics for that as well as a cream that gets applied daily. This in addition to her pill for stomach issues every other day. Oh, and she's wearing a collar of shame, which she detests something fierce.
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They've been working on Every. Single. Road. around here lately. Mostly in preparation for the increased truck traffic expected to come rolling, rolling, rolling Any. Day. Now. See, Shell Appalachia will be drilling a gas well on top of the hill about 3/4 mile (as the crow flies) from the Aerie. Between construction of the pad, workers, water pre-fracking and waste water post-fracking, there will be some hustling and bustling going on. They've almost finished the road work--we've got a lovely asphalt paved section from the bottom of the slope to the top of the hill now--so I expect the tree crew will be showing up to clear the pad site as soon as the weather cools. Then the trucks with their rock and concrete and what not will be moving along on a regular basis for a couple months.
I can deal with it. Especially if they manage to hit lots of gas and pay out lots of royalties.
Well, that's about all for now.
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