Morris Island Conservation Area

Om July 31st, we went to Morris Island Conservation area.

It is about 40 minutes from our house and is quiet and beautiful. And the dogs can swim there. We met four people and and saw four other people and four dogs.

The wind storm that blew through recently uprooted this tree. You can see that the root mass and the soil it was on was just sitting on top of this big rock.

Tawny really enjoyed her swimming.

It was a beautiful place to be on a hot Hot HOT summer day!

Playing with the neighbours

There was a dog in the neighbour's yard that was barking for hours. We took the dogs over to see why and saw that nobody was home and they had left the dog tied up to a tree. Although the dog was in the shade, it had got all tangled around the tree and it couldn't reach the water bowl. So we untangled the little dog so it could reach the water bowl, let Tawny and Taz play with it for a few minutes and then we continued on our walk.

Backyard panorama

This is a BEFORE panorama of our back yard taken with my iPhone using a free app called PhotoSynth from Microsoft. I expect that it uses the same photo stitching algorithm used in the ICE software (also from Microsoft) that I run on my PC.

Tawny was walking around, as you can tell because she's there and not there at the same time.

It looks like it was a hot day, but it was actually a perfect temperature with a nice light breeze. It was very hot in the sun, of course, so it was best to avoid the sun.

Too hot!

It have been very hot lately. Too hot, in my opinion, and the flowers don't like it either. This is a photo that I took back on July 7th. I am posting it now because it has been a while since I posted anything. Hope you like it.

Air conditioner installation

I had to prepare the location for the air conditioner by building up the pad where the a/c unit will sit. I calculated that I needed almost a cubic yard of gravel, so I got four containers of 2 cubic feet of gravel.

Here is the air conditioner after installation.

Tree removal

Tree removal

We had a big maple tree in the back yard that we had to take down because it was too close to the power line. This is the before picture, obviously.

Partly cut down.

Cutting down the main part of the trunk.

Taking off a piece of the trunk.

Another action shot.

Just a pile of logs. Some friends came a few weeks later and picked up all the logs - it took two trips.

Now there is clear air where the wire is.

This is the stump grinder. The operator is driving the machine over to grind down another stump. We had about five stumps ground down.

This is the stump grinder in action. The machine had a little diesel engine that drove a hydraulic pump that spun the grinding blade as well as driving the wheels.

Sorry to see you go, Mr. Maple.