2 Engineers Retired

Ah those various tasks of fall – particularly those of fall when you live at the lake – such as taking in the boat and the dock.  Our boat is pretty basic.   Unbelievably basic.   So basic in fact that there are no seats except for whoever is driving, and even that is more of a box covered with carpeting.  For the rest of us it is lawn chairs on the aluminum checker plate deck.  Now this baby has served us well – but fancy it ain’t. This year we also had a bit of an oops (having a few of those this year apparently).  There was an amazing wind storm when I was here alone for a few days and after things settled down I didn’t think to check on the boat.  It is a pontoon boat, so what can go wrong?   Well apparently it can sink  … Turns out one of the mooring lines undid (somehow) and the boat twisted around with the result that one pontoon was rubbing on the sand bottom (it is very shallow where we keep th...

So – last we left things we had filled 2 ½ racks of a needed 5 racks for a years worth of wood fuel.  This was done with wood that we had already felled and all we had to do was cut it to length and split it.  Easy-Peasy. However  - 2 ½ racks of wood is not enough to keep us warm and cozy for a heating season.  We need about double that. So – we need to take down a tree (or a couple) There has been a tree kind of looming over the south east side of the house that truly we should have taken down before we built.  It sort of leans towards the building in one of those ways that seem a tad threatening.  So – we identified the first victim of our search for new fuel. (Mostly we don’t want to take trees from too close to our home.  I love the sight of these trees, and really don’t want to live in an open area here.  It just isn’t the point.) Now this beauty was close enough that we were kind of nervous taking it down....

Early autumn shot, complete with pooch Hi Everyone Well its that time of year again.  Finally the weather is cool-ish but not rainy.   And the bugs are gone  (Yay ! there are no more bugs !)   This was a terrible year for mosquitoes – I suspect that with all the rain the little XYZs just kept giving birth to a new crop.  But now they are gone !! So – what is the perfect cool bug free activity?  Cutting and stacking wood of course. We have a wood stove here for our heat.  And the heat it produces is lovely – keeping us very cozy.  Last year in the fall we insulated under the cottage and now our slate floor acts as a big heat sink and stays a nice warmish temperature, not quite like under floor heating but much better than it used to be.  In any case, to heat a cottage with a wood stove one needs – well, wood.  And a fair bit of it. We have quite a big property so access to wood ...