Well Monday turned out to be a rather pleasant day with blue skies and bright sunshine with moderate temp's into the high 50's and maybe even a 60 by late afternoon. I spent as much of the day as possible outside after trouble shooting what was happening to my propane heater and then fixing the problem. Finally we have constant heat with a blue flame and that should always be the key that things are working properly. If you encounter or observe an orange flame that means dirt and dust has entered the all important pilot light and then trouble begins.
Speaking of the propane heater of which I installed over 10 years ago and have never cleaned the burner or pilot light which I found to be unbelievable that it worked that great all that time and even for nearly a week or more this year before acting up. I learned it should be cleaned every 3 months but since we only use it for a couple weeks a year and some years never use it at all maybe that's why it functioned properly for just a long spell, oh well I learned something today.
After getting it working like brand new, neighbor Gerald came by and we shared a bowl of tortilla soup before heading down the driveway with a post and a gate I had stored from years ago. Nancy thought it best if we put a gate just below Gerald's driveway that will close our driveway and his. It took us maybe an hour to dig a hole, adjust the gate to the pole and garner enough pieces of chains with separate locks that both Gerald, I and the Blue Ridge Electric power company can enter the properties if need be. What a brilliant idea as few people will walk up our driveways yet each of us will be able to access our cabins if the other party is gone.
I loaded up the chain saw and headed over to our "mountain moms" place and sawed up several downed logs that were interfering with her mowing operations as well as several jack oaks. I actually worked up a sweat in the bright sunshine. We didn't visit long as she had a technician there to investigate why she couldn't access the Internet on her computer. Turns out she had acquired a virus and the tech managed to once more get her on line. We wondered what did we do years ago when we didn't have this almost instant access to our accounts, mail and what was happening in the world especially with Facebook, yikes I would hate to think we have to depend on "snail mail" again.
We took a nice hike through the woods and to the top of the mountain. We saw no one on top and despite it being a clear day the haze reduced visibility in the far distance. Zeke walked with us for awhile before turning back home. The leaves had really piled up on the back trail and road but most of the trees were leafless and bare from the heavy wet snow and later from the high winds. About the only thing green in the woods are the white pines, mountain laurel bushes and rhododendron. There is some green grasses along the roads and yards and I suppose this is what the deer eat as most everything else is dead due to the hard freeze and snow.
We cleaned up some leftovers for supper then settled into the Fox News channel. I finished up Julie Garwoods book THE MURDERS LIST. It wasn't long after a hot shower it was horizontal lab time for me, LATER
