An interesting rock

Two tired doggies.

An interesting rock I saw when walking the dog this morning. Looks like pink granite with these large black streaks and sections in it. The rock around here is limestone so this was carried here by glaciers in the ice age.

Sept 29 - Pano

September 29, 2008

Brilliantly coloured maple tree in our side yard. It just glows when the sun hits it.


Some wild turkeys crossing over the end lot. The people who own this lot are planning to start to build their house next spring.


Panorama of our house. Can you make out the pretty maple down the road (one the left side)?


Panorama of the lake, near the lookout.

Repairing eavestrough overflow damage

This is the AFTER photo which shows the repaired steps and the downspout that caused all the problem. The elbow that caused all the trouble was at the top bend where the downspout first attaches to the wall.


When we had heavy rain (which was several times last year and a lot this year), we would get water cascading over the gutters. Of course, this caused damage to our front steps.


I called the eavestroughing company numerous times and they didn't call, or else someone would call and I would say where our house is and then he would answer, "Oh, that's Frank's area - I'll have him call you right back". Of course he never did call back.

Frank finally did call back when I asked this other salesman for the owner's name and phone number. Frank came out and said he thought the problem was caused by a blockage due to leaves. I didn't think so (because the leaves blow all over and don't even really get on our porch) but he said there would be a service charge if it was blocked. So I hauled out the ladder to check it out and found that there was no blockage, but the elbow had been pinced to make it fit into the downspout. I straightened the pinched downspout elbow and waited for another rain to see if the problem had been fixed. And yes id had been resolved, so I could fix the step damage.


I took off the top two stones on the first/top row, as well as two stones on the next, and one stone on the 3rd. I then used a crow bar to lift up the bottom stones and put crushed gravel under it all. I then put the stones back and put some polymerized sand over it all. (That stuff is amazing by the way.)


The paint was peeling off a couple of small spots on our front door. I thought that I must not have cleaned the door properly before I painted it. Then I looked closer and found that the paint and the primer had peeled off. That meant that the primer had not adhered to the aluminum moulding properly, so the manufacturer had caused the problem! To repair it, I will have to give the aluminum a light sanding to scuff up the surface, then prime and paint. I hope the paint is still good. I love that colour!!!

Great Blue Heron, and dogs playing

September 24, 2008

This is a juvenile Great Blue Heron with an injured wing. I was about 4 feet away from this bird when I took this photo, which is absolute proof that it was injured. You can see that its wing on the far side seems injured in some way. I called the wild bird care center and they said they are a small charity and cannot pick up birds. I called the Humane Society and they said that their rules do not permit them to go into water to retrieve any bird or animal. (I asked, "not even one inch of water", and they said yes.)

Wounded herons are dangerous because they use their beak as a spear, their neck is like a spring, and they aim for the eyes. We noticed the heron because Taz saw it and ran down to it, but fortunately left it alone. It was clearly being very defensive but didn't attack Taz.

We saw an adult Great Blue Heron (with its massive wing span) slowly flying over the lake the following day (Sept 25) but not since. I have gone down to the lake several times looking for the injured bird but haven't seen it since. Freda saw it shortly after we initially saw it, but not since.

This is the best bird photo I have ever taken (because I could get so close).


Tawny and Taz swimming after fetching some water toys. Taz has a yellow Wubba and Tawny has a kong that is made out of tennis ball material, but shaped like a hot dog. Taz is chasing Tawny because he wants her toy - he's such a toy hog!


Getting close to shore, you can see that Taz has his toy-hog eyes on Tawny and wants to get the Kong from her as well.

Tawny just drops the toy without a fight (knowing that Taz will drop it in a minute or two anyway), and Taz trots off triumphantly with both toys.

September 14 was a busy day

On the morning of September 14th, there was mist on the lake -- warm water and cold air collide.


Mum and Dad had been visiting, and they left on September 14th. This photo was taken just before we left for the train station.


Later in the day, we went out for an errand and took the dogs. Taz and Tawny were anxiously waiting for us in the car. Taz was doing a lot of "talking". We think he has separation anxiety. I took this photo as we returned to the car - it is a bit blurry because I had been taking some macro photos earlier in the day and forgot to turn it back to normal... Whoops!


Freda's car got dinged in the parking lot, by the wife of one of Mark's co-workers! Here you can see the broken signal light, and maybe you can see the black smudges on the bumper. Small world.

Sep 9-12

dogs Sep 9

Taz anbd Tawny

Aug 31-Sep4

Aug 31 - wild turkeys

Aug 31 - BARK prize winnings

Sept 4 - unknown caterpillar

Aug 23-29

Butterfly bush - Aug 23

Tawny and Taz - Aug 29

aaa

Beavers and their damage

August 16th: You can see two beavers swimming in this photo - they are bold.


August 24: This photo shows the six aspens that the beavers cut down here. This is at the southern end of the lake.


This photo shows one of the six trees that they cut down, and never managed to drag into the lake and then up to their den at the other end of the lake.

The beavers have gone to the happy hunting ground.

Constructing septic tank access covers

When our septic tank was installed, it was simply covered with sand, gravel, and dirt. This is no good when/if you need to get the tank pumped out as you have to find the access covers. This would be even worse if you had to find the covers when the ground was frozen or there was a lot of snow cover. We planned to finish this area with some flagstone that we have stashed away, but before we put that down we had a little project to find the access covers and create an easier access for them.

This photo story is from August 20th. David Reddekkopp came over and gave me a hand with the project. (David actually did most of the work as I had a raging migraine.) It took quite a while to find the first access cover. We initially used my memory to locate the first hole we dug, but after digging halfway through to Taiwan it was obvious that my memory was was worthless. :( So I went back to my photo library and found two photos that helped us locate the access covers.

This photo was taken after about 2 1/2 hours of work. David is standing on the first access cover.

The access covers are 30" (2 1/2 feet) across -- bigger than I had remembered. I thought the covers were about 2' across, which is what I used to calculate how much wood I needed. The covers were also deeper than I had expected - about 20" vs expected 12"... This meant I didn't have enough wood....


Digging is hard work, and David is relaxing a bit, taking a break.

Tawny was curious about the hole. I suspect that maybe she could smell a bit of the fumes from the septic tank, but she was a bit timid about jumping into the hole.

However, jump into the hole she did... Taz is curious but he's a bit more timid than Tawny is.

This is the box that we built to put over the access cover. This box is 3' square and has pressure treated fence boards on the exterior where the wood is in contact with the soil.

Because the big rock is slightly sticking out above the access cover, we had to make some adjustments to the box because of it.

David wasn't that comfortable using a circular saw but he got some practice in. Here David is cutting the angle on a piece of fence board for the side.

This is what the box looks like with the first piece of wood on the top. After this photo was taken, I pulled some landscape fabric through on the side with the customize boards to help keep the sand/gravel from washing in through any openings.

Here David is looking pretty pleased. Why, you ask? Well, it's because of this...

The first access cover is completed, including a custom notch for rock. Because of the gap around the box, Tawny was quite afraid to jump across to the top. Once I filled in the gap with sand and gravel so there wasn't any yawning chasm between the gravel and the box, neither Tawny nor Taz had any fears when stepping onto the top of the cover.

Freda and I had looked for some kind of manufactured stones to put on the cover, as the stone we have is irregular. In the end, we settled on 18" square rubber tiles (made from reycled tire crumb rubber). Although it is slightly more expensive, we think this would be better as it is not as heavy as concrete pavers, and also because the rubber is flexible, we don't have any worries about cracking.

If you're comparing prices, Home Depot charged ~$10 for a 12" round rubber circle, and Rona charged ~$7.75 for an 18" square rubber tile. On a per square foot basis, HD was over $10/sf and Rona was about $3.50/sf (18" square tile is 2 1/4 s.f.), or about 1/3 the price of HD...