I made a vow a few years back. I vowed that I would never buy trees from Arbor Day again. Obviously, I didn’t have much luck with my first batch.
I think the problem with the last batch of trees was that I put them in planters over the Winter. They didn’t do well in them. The planters froze like big ice cubes and only one or two of the trees survived. Since then, I told myself that I was just going to buy the more established trees.
Well, as usual, I softened my stance on the subject. I thought about it a few days ago and decided to give another round a try. This time, I would plant the trees directly in their permanent homes right from the start. Since they ship the trees in the early part of November, the soil is still soft enough to get a shovel into.
I became a member (again) at ArborDay.org. With membership, I got 10 free Blue Spruce trees. I then ordered 10 Norway Spruces. Yesterday, I received the Blue Spruces in the mail. I was pleasantly surprised at the health of them and immediately planted them along the edge of the lawn and the woods. Since the trees are less than a foot tall, I also put bamboo stakes next to each tree, so I don’t run them over with the mower.
I have yet to receive the Norway Spruces, but since I liked what I saw with the first batch, I decided to order 10 more Norway Spruces. That will be 20 in all. I am going to spread them in between the Blue Spruces towards the front and side of the property. In about 10 years, we should start to see some growth.
I was driving up to Manchester this afternoon when I noticed how brilliant the trees looked. It’s mostly the Maples, Birches and Hickorys. Their leaves are really getting bright. I see mostly orange, red and yellow. The Oaks are still green.
After I got back, I took a little stroll up the driveway. I even took a few pictures for you.
Ok, I will admit the nice leaves aren’t the only reason I am writing this post. The new pile of fire wood is.
For the past few days, I have been working to build a new pile of fire wood. I took three piles out from under the porch and moved them next to my other pile, out in the sunshine. Having the wood stacked under the porch wasn’t doing it any favors in the way of drying out. I compared the older fire wood that was under the porch to the newer (greener) fire wood that was stacked outside and the outside wood was much dryer. I also took down an Oak tree to add to the pile.
I know, I know, I did a lousy job at stacking the right side, but it was a bit tricky. Part of the tree wasn’t available to go right up against because the other pile was there. I did my best.
I really like the wood when it’s split, no matter how small it is. It dries faster and burns better. The only problem is my ax. It is too big. It’s more like a maul than an ax. It is quite heavy and better for splitting larger pieces of wood with a full swing.
With this in mind, I went out and grabbed a thinner ax. Something that will slice right through the smaller pieces of Maple, Hickory, Birch and Oak. Here is my new ax…
Ax with fiberglass handle
You might notice that I have already used it a few times. These things get beat up pretty fast.
This is one of the firewoodpiles I made so far. There are three others about this size. I am not sure how much wood that is, but it’s a pretty good amount.
I did a little wood splitting this afternoon. It was so nice outside. The temperature was cool, so I didn’t sweat like I did over the Summer. It’s great to work around the house during Autumn. The crisp air is very welcome.
I got a little excited after splitting the larger logs, so I decided to go over and cut down a stump that has been bothering me. I split that too. Now, that’s on the pile.
Then, I went into the woods and cut down a nice Red Oak tree. I tossed the branches down on the pile and cut up the firewood. I need to split some of it, but I’ll save that for another day. After I was done with that, I turned around and noticed a really pretty scene.
The demand for woodpellets has been rising like absolute craziness. There are no licenses and no classes to take. All you need to do is get a truck, find a vendor, put an ad in the Yellow Pages, get a garage and start making money. It’s pretty much a year round business now. You’re crazy…CRAZY if you don’t listen to me on this one.
I visited a website the other day checking out all different brands of woodpellets. This place sold and delivered to the entire state of Connecticut. They prided themselves on having the most diverse and best quality woodpellets in the state. Well, when I got to the order page, guess what? Every single brand of wood pellet was sold out. Even the pellet stove store I bought this pellet stove from stopped answering their phone. Now, you have to leave a message and they will get back to you. I had to stop by in person yesterday just to speak with them.
I am not sure about the margins for sellingwoodspellets, but I would guess they are flexible. You could probably make up for a lot in delivery charges, but I would expect the rest is pretty easy. Just think about it…if there were blogs back when people started delivering heatingoil, you might have seen a similar post.
I swear, if someone doesn’t start doing this, I will.
Yesterday, I decided to start riding my mountain bike in the morning, when it’s cooler outside.
I think we were going for a walk when I came up with that idea. You know, as I was out and about…I always get good ideas. When morning rolled around and I was drinking my coffee, let’s just say I was less enthusiastic.
Even thought I was still groggy, I stuck to my word. I got on the bike and started to ride. For any of you out there who have ridden a bicycle for any amount of distance, I am sure you will agree with me when I say it is great exercise. I already knew that, but was reminded of it as I was struggling to get up the first hill. For those who know what “Brewster Hill” looks like, this hill reminds me of that one. It’s not nearly as bad here, but when I was on the bike, it sure felt it.
I had planned on doing the 3.7 mile ride, but when I got to the end of the road, I decided to make a left and do the 5 mile one. I am glad I did, because I keep talking about doing it. There are tons of downhills and uphills. The uphills are much less fun, but my legs got a great workout.
This area is really great for recreation. I am very pleased that people take it so seriously around here. On the last part of the ride today, I had to go through the woods. That was fun because I got to “get some air” off a few rocks. You know what that means, I think I might need to get a helmet.
In my last post, I said that people need to start writing more. I said that our readers don’t care what we write about, just that we write. I even threatened to take my camera out with me this morning.
Well, guess what. I did just that. Since I had to go to the mailbox this morning to put some outgoing mail in it, I decided to enjoy a little walking tour with the good ol’ camera in hand. I know this feels like a Seinfeld episode (about nothing) but this is what I do.
After I put the mail in the mailbox, I headed back down the driveway. I looked at the ground and noticed all sorts of acorns laying there all spread out. Every day this happens. There is a big Red Oak at the end of the driveway that makes a huge mess. I think the squirrels are $%^& with me. I need to call a tree service to come prune a few trees, this being one of them. I hate having this messy tree for everyone to see. Maybe when it’s getting pruned, I’ll take some before and after shots.
Anyway, when I looked down at the driveway, I noticed some ants running around. I took a bunch of pictures of them, but they were too fast and the pictures came out blurry. They would’ve been really cool because they were close up. While I was down on the driveway, I decided to take a picture of an acorn so you know what I am talking about.
There are hundreds of these things. Every time I mow the lawn, I take out the blower to blow off the driveway. Within a few days, they are back. After taking the picture, I had to get up and run because a car was coming. That’s all they need to see…Gaulard laying down on the driveway taking more pictures.
Last night, I also mentioned that I was taking down some small trees in the woods along the driveway. My goal is to make it a bit lighter in there with some breaks of sun. I have to be careful not to take down too much, because I really like the trees. The last thing I want is full sun. I have already made a dent. I would say I am taking down anything smaller than 6″. Here are some photos of that.
As you can see, there is some filtered sunlight coming through. I probably have about 10-15 more trees to remove.
A few days ago, I discovered a faster and quieter way of doing this. Well, one way is quieter, but not faster. I am using a hand saw for some of them. Basically, I take the tree down and then cut the top leafy part off of it. I drag the stalk up and place it in the pile you see in the last photo. I drag the top of the tree down into the brush pile in the woods. I always need a good brush pile. You would be amazed at how fast a big brush pile collapses over time.
The faster way is to do what I described above, but with a chainsaw. I used to cut the wood into firewood right there, but that was noisy. I will do that all in one shot when I am done taking down the trees.
At the bottom of the driveway, I noticed a new flower growing in the spot I just mulched. It was mixed in with all the others. It just bloomed so I thought that deserved some recognition.
After I took a picture of that flower, I walked across the front lawn to get some shots of a nice pink flower up there. I did that and then I took a shot of the Highbush Cranberry that we have growing. There are a few of these bushes and the berries are getting very red.
You see how nice that was? It was a big blog post about nothing and I think I got away with it. Well, we’ll see what people write about it to see if I really got away with it.
As I have mentioned before, Connecticut is the place to be if you like parks, hiking, mountain biking and recreation in general. We are learning that people around here take this stuff very seriously. When driving around, it’s hard not to see people jogging, riding bikes, playing golf…whatever.
Last week, we decided to drive down to East Haddam to visit Devil’s Hopyard State Park. I looked at this park’s trail map online and it looked good. The thing that really attracted me was the waterfall. As usual, I opened up Google Earth and checked it out from above. Well, all it looked like was woods. I don’t know, after seeing the satellite view, I didn’t think it looked all that great. We went anyway. I am usually wrong about these things.
I was really wrong about this one. I have been to many state parks in my life and I have to say this one was the best so far. The water does it for me. It’s a very low-key park. There are no highways around and it’s tucked back in the woods. The waterfall is great and the river adds a lot to the hike. This park is going to be on our list for a long time. They also offer camping, which is cool.
I took a bunch of pictures and will add captions where I think they would fit.
We had to wake up extra early today because of a few chores that needed doing. The first thing was to drive Holly to the vet. She has been there a few times since we arrived in this part of the world. Apparently, she got some wound on her tail that needed tending to. She went in this morning to get a little operation, but when the vet looked at the tail, she decided not to go ahead with it. She thought it would heal by itself. That’s good for Holly and good for the wallet.
After that, we ran up to Super Stop and Shop in Glastonbury for some food shopping. Laura’s family is stopping by for a visit in a few weeks and that is going to require an entire Costco ordeal. In the meantime, the local food store is good enough to hold us over.
I stepped on the scale yesterday and noticed that I weigh 190lbs. I am not sure what the ideal weight for a strapping 6′3″ genious is, but I feel like I am five pounds overweight. I am really going to have to hit that indoor tennis center in East Hartford soon. After all, that is about 90% of the reason I wanted to move over here. It’s the little things with me. I am serious about the tennis though.
Since I am waiting for the cooler weather to come to join the tennis club, and possibly because Laura thinks I am getting fat, we decided to go for a nice long walk down the road today.
In general, I usually have no complaints about walking down the road, except for the hill. The hill is where I usually begin to sweat and I hate that. The reason I hate sweating on the walk up the hill is because I cool off on the way down the hill and that usually means another shower for the day. If you are anything like me, you understand multiple showers per day during the Summer.
I thought we could beat the sweating today because it is cooler than it has been lately. Unfortunately, with all the rain, it is also very humid. I didn’t beat the sweating. Either way, I did take some nice nature pictures along the way.
Today, I decided to venture outside into the wall of humidity to dig up and re-plant some rhododendrons. We had a few here and there that needed to make their way up the hill for a nice rhododendron line in the front. I think it will look very nice, come Spring.
Anyway, enough about that. Upon digging my second hole for the rhododendron, I discovered about four while oval things sitting approximately six inches beneath the dirt. I thought they were bird eggs. I left them there and went inside to tell Laura about my find. I knew she would get up and research what they were for me. She enjoys that kind of stuff.
I went back outside and took a few pictures of these things and then covered them back up. I had a feeling they weren’t bird eggs, but turtleeggs. I planted all the rhododendrons and then went back inside.
This was a long one. At least the air was nice and hot for us during the entire hike…oh man…
We knew which trail we wanted to hike when we arrived at Gay City State Park yesterday. We have been looking at the trail map and we (I) thought we knew exactly where to go. Sure, we started off great, but apparently, we were on the wrong trail from the get-go. I think we started off great because, well, at least we were on a trail.
Ok, here is what I wanted to do - I wanted to start off at the yellow trail and go to the end. That would’ve been .8 miles. Then, at the end, I wanted to make a left onto the red trail for another 1.16 miles. I thought that would have brought us back to the road so we could walk back to the car. The problem is that we unknowingly started on the blue trail. I really don’t pay attention to those minor details sometimes.
Well, as it turns out, the blue trail went for .26 miles. It led us to the blue/red trail for another .4 miles. At this point, I said, “Hmmm…this is an awefully long trail. Mileage in the woods certainly seems to take longer than the same distance on the road.” We made a left onto the red trail and walked .91 miles and then (finally) made another left onto the yellow trail for .8 miles. About another .2 miles and we were back at the car. It took a lot out of us, being over 90 degrees and all.
The good thing is that we saw some pretty cool stuff. I could’ve done without the fly that was flying around my head the entire time, but otherwise, it was a good walk.
This is the very beginning of the trail. I thought this was the yellow trail. Apparently not.
About half way down the blue trail, we arrived at the Blackledge River. It’s nice a shady and a great place to sit down and take a break. There is a nice bridge and a picnic table. How do you like my Summer haircut?
Back in the day, Gay City State Park was a mill town. Today, all that’s left are some foundations and cellar holes. The top photo above is a foundation that is right next to the brige that goes over the Blackledge River on the blue trail. The lower picture is a cellar hole that (I think) was along the yellow trail.
This is just a random shot of a big Oak tree. We we saw it, I thought that it was pretty straight. The photographer in me wanted to get a neat photo of it.
We haven’t seen any mountain bikers yet, but there are lots of them in these trails. Probably more mountain bikers than walkers. It can get a little lumpy though. Near the wetlands of the red trail, the trails get quite rocky.
This is the lake (swamp) that lies in between the blue trail and the yellow trail. It’s not really a clear lake and I believe it may be responsible for all the rocks and insects.
Finally, a little cooling off at the pump in the camp on the blue trail.
We were going to go back today for another hike, but it’s pretty bad outside. I mean hot. Maybe later on this afternoon or something.
