After our quiet times and a breakfast of sausage, eggs and grits I headed out to check on the gardens for deer damage. I didn't find any new evidence so the deer fence must have worked at least for one night. The white grocery bags fluttering in the air seems to have really helped but makes for an eye sore. I headed down to the shed and loaded up the golf cart with the chainsaw, sledge hammer and wedges, ax and grubbing hoe. I wanted to reduce the oak stumps from the trees I recently felled and sawed up, down to ground level and then drill holes into them to help speed up the rotting process so I can eventually dig the stump out and plant grass seed. I spent several hours working on the stumps which caused me to use some muscles I hadn't used in quite awhile; like swinging a 10 pound sledge hammer and driving wedges into the wood. I often wondered how those old timers made it through the day driving spikes into the railroad ties as they laid the steel rails for the railroad.
I stopped after the first stump removal and we headed out for our daily hike to the top of the mountain. The air was crisp and so fall like it made for vigorous walking and there were some leaves starting to accumulate on the back trails as well. The signs point to an early fall and leaf color change this year. We stopped and took Norm's mail up to him for our good deed of the day. The mountain was quiet with no other activity as we headed down except for some white flags of the deer tails we saw heading off into the woods. These deer looked very healthy and were quite large; they should make for some great eatin' this winter if my huntin' buddies can bag me a couple before we head back to Florida for the winter.
After a lunch of leftovers I headed back out to tackle another stump and then to clean up the mess of wood, rocks and saw dust that I created during this process. I must admit that the area looked a lot better after such back breaking on your knees work. I finished around 4 o'clock then sat on the deck to read until it was suppertime. Nancy had a pot of vegetable soup cooking and the smells were evident along with a cake she was baking for the fund raiser at church on Saturday. That soup was awesome and hit the spot with the cool temps we were having. It was down to 44 degrees this AM when I checked the outside gauge on the back porch at 7:30.
After supper I burned trash and then Nancy decided we needed a campfire so I built up a nice one with lots of the debris that falls constantly in the yards from the trees. Despite the nice rain we had on Friday night the dry cool temps had the wood ready to burn and it made for a nice campfire. We stayed out by the warm fire until nearly dark before heading in as the temp's were falling rapidly, LATER
