The Outback

 

The meadow beyond the back yard is privately owned, but the owners maintain a border trail that abutters can walk.  Let's explore!

Views can be dramatic even on the plainest cloudy November day.  The meadow lies beyond the yard features here...

The meadow was growing high with grasses and brush all summer. The owner recently cut everything down for maintenance. Otherwise, it would become forested eventually, lose character and would be a different habitat.

A border path goes halfway round the meadow, then ends at the brook.

Below, can you see the brook as it flows toward bottom left. In 2018, this brook surged and washed out part of my street, as featured in previous post.

As the brook leaves the meadow....

Below, the meadow is to the left. Entrance to my yard (through an opening in the rock wall) is on the right.

LT followed me on the adventure.  She held a playful look for just long enough to catch it on film.

Good Morning

Later I went for a sandwich and found an unusual situation. In back of the store, was an archeological dig.

Recently this year, someone had found a shaped stone on the ground that was not natural to the area. He reported it to the state archaeologist. It could be paleolithic, I was told, which means possibly 12,000 years old.  Around that time, the New England area became habitable after the Ice Age.

So the archaologist came out with a team.  "you should go around back" said the sandwich guy.  Everyone was casual and friendly.

In the photo, they are sifting through the shallow soil. I was shown a small piece of sharpened chert that was just found. Chert is a sandstone related to flint, of which the nearest natural deposits are in the Hudson valley. So it is inferred that it was brought to this location by trade routes.  There are only a couple "paleo" sites in Connecticut, that is, where objects of 12,000 years ago, have been found.

Autumn Pastels

River Crossing

Part of my street washed out in 2018 after several inches of rain.  First, it's important to learn about culverts to understand the situation. Neptune Brook flowed beneath the street, through a culvert. A culvert is a pipe or passage for water, with earth on top of it to allow a road to cross, or buildings to be built.

Below is a culvert like the one that washed out on Neptune. It's a very old style, at least 100 years old, made from stone.

The culvert was too small to handle the volume of rain that was flowing in the brook, in September 2018.  It was a record amount of rain. The small opening in the culvert was not big enough to handle the flow. Debris could also have easily clogged such a small culvert.  The force of the backed-up water pushed the earth above the culvert away. And around 50 feet of the street with it!

Climate change could be a contributing factor of why the culvert lasted for 100 years, up until now.  I am sure they will rebuild it to have larger capacity.

The repair will be half a million dollars, according to an early estimate in the local paper. The town had to get FEMA funding.  After years of getting the funding and designing the replacement, contractors began setting up to begin the repair in Oct. 2020. No houses were made inaccessible due to the washout, so it was not an urgent priority to fix for that reason.

Last week, I walked down to see them getting ready for the repair. But more interesting than the chasm caused by the washout, was this fine view of the Moodus River.

While on my reconnaissance, I took this relaxing video (10 seconds video):

Here's another example of a culvert. We owe these things gratitude. Without culverts, we'd all be stuck in the Mississippi mud!

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The map below shows how my house relates to the washout. Neptune Brook flows into the Moodus River. Where Neptune Brook flows under my street, is where the breach and washout occurred.  The above Moodus River video was taken from the bend in the road.

The news crew came bright and early the next day after the washout, with this to report:

WFSB News Clip

Neptune Brook is a quiet stream that flows right-to-left through the meadow out back.  Where the arrows are, behind these proud cats.

Garage Painting

 

Below you can see the saltbox garage, taken at my first viewing of the house when it was for sale.  Doesn't it look vintage and military drab, where General Patton might have parked his jeep.  It is of that era, 1938. 

Early 2018:

 How anyone let those bushes take over the driveway!

Fast forward to October 2020

Now back to 2019, another garage view. Before the fence painting:

Back to October 2020. Having tamed much of the yard, it was time for the garage exterior. The plan was to paint the doors and trim an offwhite that I've seen work well on houses in the area.

In the basement were a handful of paint samples leftover from the interior painting, that I experimented with on the garage doors. I went with Montgomery White.  I painted the doors first - but not the trim. Below is the result, though to me it looked a bit utilitarian.

I then painted the trim. Much better!

For the finishing touch, lighting is to go above the doors. At night it's tooo dark out in front of the garage where there is lots of coming and going.

This model of light was chosen, from Lowe's:

Below are wood mounting plates that I made, so the sconce lights stand out more from the outside wall.  The black smudge is Rust-oleum paint to prevent rot where moisture may build up.

All sorts of wiring was needed inside the garage, to tie the new lights in to an existing circuit.  It took a couple days and three or four hardware store trips.

And, voila!

Below, you can see it blend with fall colors. The garage windows, I painted the trim as well.

In this part of Connecticut, I've seen a few nice homes with a similar color scheme. I will probably have the trim on the house painted the same Montgomery White.

Stump grinding!

 Just to the left of the garden shed (little white building) was an overgrown lilac that hardly bloomed.  The lilac and its stump are gone in this picture. 

August 23, 2020

I cut the sad lilac down with a chain saw.  The lilac stump was maybe a foot across so I couldn't just dig it out.  And who needs a stump in their sanctuary. So then I ground the stump down with a stump grinder!  Both the chain saw and grinder I rented. The stump grinder rental cost is steep and they were $300 combined for the day.

Stump grinders are powerful beasts because they have to pulverize solid wood in the ground. 

The rental center has the stump grinder machine ready on its own trailer, but you have to tow it home yourself.  Backing up a trailer in reverse is tricky because the trailer wants to go in the opposite direction that you steer. 

Ready for action!

The machine is heavy and it drives itself while you work the controls and walk next to it. You get nervous trying to figure out how it works (even though they explain it at the rental center). 

I rented the stump grinder mainly to get rid of an old stump in the front yard that I was tired of mowing around.  But also took care of the lilac to make it worth it. The stump is kind of in the shadow, under the cutter wheel.

The cutter wheel has grinder teeth on it. You move the wheel side to side, and gradually lower it. The stump gets pulverized. I ground it to a few inches deep, then filled the hole with the sawdust and earth that is collected under the cutting machine.

In the above, you see the stump partially ground down.

It was 4 hours from when I picked up the rentals to when I returned them. 

I returned it at 1pm and told the attendant that it worked great. He said he does alot of work to maintain the grinder.  Thinking the stump grinder was his favorite of his rental equipment, I asked "so it's your baby" and in reply he said "more like the death of me!!"   He went on to say, that some people rent it and abuse it by applying too much force or trying to grind stumps that are too big for it.  So he has to spend time fixing it and charging customers $1000 to replace broken parts.

He was careful to explain how to use it gently before I took it home. And it has safety features that make it impossible to grind yourself up!

Tropical Storm Isaias

The storm on August 4 brought much wind and power outages to all of Connecticut. Some footage below!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmREfW25QZM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2JjuelJ_fA

A battery-powered tropical theme light in the front window to go with the tropical theme!

New Roof

The roof was so old that it was hard to look at!  But first, Rockport, Mass. last weekend.

The harbor

tee shirts showing consensus

The sign says Philosophie.

The art galleries were all open, but too hot to stick around very long. And the beaches were only open to residents.

Replacement of the Roof

You can see the "old" roof on other posts, except for the garden shed roof, which looks like it was written by Stephen King.

The garden shed is attached behing the garage. Its roof was already in pieces when I bought the house!  Getting mossy even.

The day before the work, dumpster and shingles arrive!

Early on July 23, the noise in the house was hard to describe. Possibly like having a rock-crushing operation on your roof.





There were seven guys plus the boss.  How do the keep their balance all day?



The roofing company, is called AMPM Roofing.  They do roofs in one day: Start in AM, finish in PM!  I took these before 9AM, look how much was done already.

The wood you see is called tongue-and-groove, named after how the planks are cut and fit together. The roofers stripped the old roof to bare wood, then built it back up!

While his Holiness the Buddha watches on.

Imaging trying to work with that stampede overhead, being a Thursday.  After taking the above pictures, I went in to the office for rest of the day.

I got home at 6 and met the new roof




the Buddha approves.


















Goodbye to the old roof!



The garage too.  The old roof infrequently leaked, but nothing too bad.




Peak harvest!




The new garden shed roof! Infinitely nicer.  Some parts of the roofing don't have much of a pitch, that is, they aren't very steep.  Leaves and debris can build up.  Some leaves you can see fallen from the honey locust on this roof already!

Time to learn how to best maintain these low-pitched roofs.




The shingles are Owens Corning, Duration Series, color selection is Estate Gray.




The yellow front door color is experimental from a few weeks ago. It will probably end up a pale blue or crimson.


I couldn't pass up a photo of the sky and the light hitting that tree.  I had to park out back there, to make room for the dumpster and roofers.  Did Michelangelo paint those clouds?































Raise your glass to the new roof!