Saturday, Sept. 6th… A rainy few days will be nice & needed!!

I got up this morning to a rainy delight. We need the rain in the Pupskill Lake, for the water was again getting dangerously low for the fish. Although it is sixteen feet deep in the center…. That doesn’t help the low oxygen content due to the standing water not turning over. Last year it lingered so long in drought like conditions, that we had to install a pump in the pond to shoot a fountain that would aerate the water so the fish wouldn’t turn pale as they do when they are exposed to a low oxygen condition in the water. If it gets too low, the fish can die or be susceptible to disease. It is much more pleasing to see a robust color and have them jumping and chasing insects this time of the year.

We have a gentleman coming this morning to remove a dead tree that stands right next to the rear deck. It is a quaking aspen tree which are extremely brittle and usually die within a few years after maturity. Once they die, they can fall down without notice and this tree has been the target of woodpeckers and obvious bugs. There has been a fungus like toad stool growth on the side of this tree for the two years we have been her, but there was a lower section of the tree that had leaves and looked healthy, which led us to believe we had plenty of time to deal with it and after all, it had our squirrel feeder on it. Shortly after everything was in full bloom this year, all the leaves turned black and shriveled up within a week, so we are now suspicious of it and don’t care to take the chance of it snapping off during a storm and crushing or breaking the deck or house, so we made arrangements to have it systematically cut down. (They will cut it down in chunks so it can’t destroy anything when it falls) He will leave the wood and limbs lay and we will cut and stack it as the first wood supply for the Hospice House next year.

Unlike it looks.....it's only 15 feet from the deck.

This toad stool like fungus has been there 2 years.

Gone is the shade...cause it's dead! Gone will be the squirrel feeder now too.

I suppose we will try to build the rear doors for the barn today, as long as it doesn’t rain when we are ready to install the from the outside on a ladder. If the rain misses us as it is right now, later today…… we will go to the wood pile out by Fort Apache and pull out the 2x6 or 2x8 planks and move them to the barn area and start building the feed room. We will need to go for two pieces of ¾” flooring (which we forgot) before we can really get to moving with the feed room, but we need some electrical and plumbing stuff anyway, so if it rains today, we can run for that stuff too. We also want to enlarge the chicken run at the old hen house and install a full screened door, so we don’t have to stoop to enter the wired in yard any longer. We’ll see what today holds.