Overdue update

Once again I have allowed more than a month to elapse since the last entry. We have been far from idle during that time.

The most visible effort has been the completion of the outside trim on the building. Here's the finished view of the west side.



You can see we got our first snow. Though it was only an inch or so, it did make for some pretty views.

Brandon and Matthew built the property's first snowman. Not a bad effort since the only help they got was finding the hat and scarf. The grape vine hair was their idea.



Also this week, with advice from a local soils scientist, we have abandoned the idea of adding a large pond due to the unlikelihood that it would hold water long enough to justify the investment. In addition to those I was already aware of, with all the annual vegetation dead for the season, we found dozens of significant holes in the area where the pond was hoped to go. Some of the holes were rather large. One accommodated two of us standing in it. With no way to determine where these might lead, it is highly unlikely we could build a keyway for the dam that would be both deep enough and wide enough to intercept all the underground channels that might exist. To find all of them, if that is even possible, would require excavating many times the area otherwise necessary, and to a greater depth.

Instead, in the spring, I'll begin to clean up the swale through which the main spring falls after it emerges from under a giant tree root to make a series of small ponds where water already stands. Each would overflow into the next, at least three of them, before the swale exits the wooded area.