Nov 6-7, '09

We had gone to Atlanta the previous weekend, so it had been two weeks since being out. I could immediately tell Larry Hodge had gotten the brush hogging done (apparently he had finished earlier that day -- more on that later). The second thing I noticed was the pond was real high. I knew we had probably gotten three inches of rain the week before last, but that it had been dry for over a week. Actually the weather was very nice -- warm and dry (in the upper 70s) both Friday and Saturday.

Pond

I knew I needed to mow down to the pond, so got right on the mower and headed down. I couldn't believe what I found. I could not drive across the dam because water was running over the top -- the beavers had both culverts 95% dammed up. I went back to the house for the camera, but couldn't talk Sally into coming down to see. More pictures are on my picasa web site. It was just unreal as I had never seen the pond this full. From the back looking across we had an 'endless pond'. And the water that poured through once I cleared all the limbs was impressive. It was espcially cool to look up the culverts and see the pond level near the top with water pouring in but only filling 25% of the volume of the culvert. It just could not enter fast enough.

Brush Hogging

Larry seemed to have three problems. Here he seemed to have some trouble turning and really cut up the road. He also snagged a part of the fence just to the right of this corner and drug it down the hill pulling up 3 for 4 steel posts and mangling a bunch of wire. Its a section I had partially taken down years ago in order to make the turn in my truck entering the pasture where the deer feeder is located. Its a mess and I will have spend some time cutting out and hauling off the wire. I'd like to take that section of fence down anyway.

The real disappointment was that he mowed behind the line of pine trees he had left three years before -- the same line he was not to mow behind then.
This is where Nicholas and I had planted 500 pines last January. He did a pretty good job going around the little volunteer walnuts I had flagged off the road to the pond, but we just had a another major miss communication here -- again. Oh, I would love to have my own tractor.

Miscellaneous
Deer had eaten the leaves of the new red maple I had just planted two weeks before. I hauled more limbs from the woods above the house and cut them up. Some of them splitting size. Brought the hammock stand in so water wouldn't freeze in the pipe and split it. Then just before leaving Sally wanted to spend some time laying in the hammock. We opted for the swing across the creek -- the one I had repaired the previous trip.