September 2026 Island Trip – Day 11

I did too much today in a short amount of time…

We have a rather large stack of alder rounds on the west drive that need to be moved before the drive gets reworked next month. I put a load into the truck and unloaded them into the wood shed. Now, before y’all start hollering at me, this wood is on the ground because the trees collapsed under the ‘weight’ of their own rot, meaning their BTU load is minimal and therefore their weight is too. I threw some of the rounds into the woods behind the stack as they were clearly mostly dust held together with native berry vines and ant poop 😂.

Then I opened up the mower access to dad’s garden and started in on the grasses/weeds. This took a long time in the sun. Yes, I was wearing my sun hat. Part of this project was to gather in irrigation lines for the filbert and rhubarb, and collect the stones that held down weed (and vole) barrier around the former persimmon tree. I used the stones to shore up the weed barrier around the filbert, getting rid of some long planks that used to serve the same purpose. The mower did double duty carrying these stones, some of which were, ah, sturdy. There’s a lot of line trimming left to do around the edges of the garden that the mower can’t access. A nice thing to see was actual green grass downstream of where we created a sump for roof drainage from the barns. Even in mid-September the dew from the roofs is running into this system and watering the garden.

We went to sushi with our neighbor to the east this evening. It was such a lovely time. We just kinda get each other. We talked about the gathering on Saturday, about my folks, her grandkids and her latest remodel project. T’was good.