A little bit of everything

 I started the weekend off by painting part of the porch. The handrails and bench, to be exact. Lynne has gotten a couple of splinters from the handrail, so it was time to do something. They were sanded down first.

 Even the long one on the ramp got sanded and a couple of coats to help make it smooth.

 The bench was done too. We made sure it was dry before we sat on it.

 I had to replace the drive belt on the tiller, too. It has never been replaced, so it was about 15 years old. Excellent durability. I hope the new one does as well!

Mom had a good weekend, too. There were 4 of us at Lisa & Jim's this weekend. Boo & Sarah were here for a dog show and Matthew was here for training in Georgetown.

Got the boat out finally

 The lake is still well above flood level, but I know which ramps stay open during high water. This ramp is Alfrey, at the Twin Knobs area. The street light is an indicator of the water level, since it usually is well back from the water.

 Here, the nose of the boat is tucked into a tree top and the water level under the boat is 28 ft. You can just make it out in the bottom left corner of the sonar unit.

 The space under this boat is the Clay Lick launch and parking lot. If you look closely, you can see a street light top on the left side, as well as a roof.

It was still a beautiful day on a very pretty lake. I managed to catch a branch while I was out fishing

Catch - up weekend

 The grass was getting pretty long, so I had to get the mower ready to go. I changed the oil, and while it was draining, we cleaned and painted the underside of the mower deck.

 It turned out Ok. It could have used another coat, but we ran out of paint.

The "we" part was some help from Allen. He came down with Sheri for our late March birthday celebration.

And first thing Monday morning, we got a gravel delivery. Another 28 tons added to the driveway. It had gotten quite soft over the winter. This should help. I still have a couple of small piles to spread where the truck couldn't get to.

Flood damage

The water has receded and the culverts are gone. So is most of the backfill that made up the bridge. Heather and I walked downstream about a mile and a half this morning and found one of the pipes and brought it back. The other could not be found. After we repair the fence, we will decide what to do.

Flooding

Today's extremely heavy rain produced quite a bit of flooding. I didn't expect it to take down the fence, though. I hope my culverts are still there. I won't know until the water goes down.

Garden experiment

 Since our spinach seems to drown more than it grows, we're going to try an experiment this year. This will also include the scallions. They didn't grow last year, either. First, you need an old scrap pallet and some scrap lumber for legs.

 You knock the last board off each end of the pallet and attach the legs and something for the end of the box.

 Then add something for extra support in between the slats. Heather had some wire left over from the rabbit cages, so we used that. I stapled it down to keep it in place.

 Add sides, also from scraps I had around. These happen to be 5 1/2 inches tall. Then put in some landscape fabric to keep the dirt in. That was the most expensive part of this elevated bed. It was $8 at Tractor Supply, but I needed it for something else too, so it will all be used.

Then just add dirt. This one held 240 lbs. to fill it to the top - 6 bags of topsoil. They were on sale today at Tractor Supply for $1 per bag. Now we will see if the veggies grow better.

Redneck Snow Plow

 OK, it was just an idea until it started to snow AGAIN. We got another 10" last night. I'm starting to think I'm back in New York.

 I threw it together this morning with what pieces of scrap lumber I had sitting in the shed and clamped it to the front rack of the 4 -wheeler.

It doesn't lift or pivot, but it sure beats shoveling all this by hand. Now when they plow the road, we can get out.