A beautiful day at the Bolt Hole

Temperatures warmed up nicely to around 75 degrees this afternoon. That's still below the average high for this date but I'll take it.

The warm temperature, strong sunshine and light breezes made for a hot time on the tin roof of the garage. I fashioned a patch in one area where the previous owner had done a half-assed job and I'm hoping my full sheet of metal will stop the worst of the leaks. The previous patch was made from three 18" long pieces that were shingled atop a full sheet but did not reach all the way to the peak. That let lots of water and other debris plenty of room to get underneath. If the weather quacks are correct, I may find out if my patch works tonight and tomorrow.

I also pulled a few dozen loose nails--many with lead washers--from the front half of the garage roof and replaced them with newer rubber-washered ring-shanked nails and then added a dollop of roofing tar over any cracks I came across.

It was hot on that roof. Like working on a reflector oven with the sun bouncing back at me from the silvery metal.

Oh, and I found out where the snakes were hiding. I had a pile of metal roofing set off to one side of the yard from a shed I tore down and replaced. I used one of them for the patch and had to shift through the rest to select the best; i.e. the one with the fewest holes. The ten or twelve sheets housed four garter snakes and a nest of large red and black ants. Only one of the snakes had any size to it. Three were barely a foot long and not much thicker than a fountain pen. The fourth was closer to two feet in length and about an inch or inch and a quarter in diameter. I shook them out and sent them slithering into the brush nearby.

Clouds moved in at sunset so maybe the forecast of rain tonight and tomorrow is accurate.

Late fruit

I didn't mention it but the berries (blue berries and raspberries) around the Bolt Hole have yet to ripen. They are unusually late this year probably due to the cold conditions. That's driven some critters (like bears) to seek alternate food supplies. I had two old bird houses on a post in front of the barn. Operative word there is "had". They were busted open the other night by some thing looking to feast on the young birds inside. Two well formed nests were exposed and the chicks or eggs eaten.

Another note: A big old apple tree on the neighbor's corner has been dropping small green apples to the ground. Either the wind or the cold caused that. The deer have taken advantage of the bounty. There was a big doe feeding on those little green apples yesterday morning when I walked up to check the condition of his cabin.

Still chilly

I'm sitting here at the Bolt Hole with my fingers wrapped around my coffee cup to keep them warm. I'd start a fire in the wood stove but it'll be getting up to the 70s today if the weather quacks are correct and I'd rather not have it too warm inside.

Yesterday, when I was cutting the lawn, I did manage to break a sweat but that was with a medium weight long sleeve shirt and lots of walking under the sometimes bright sun. I say "sometimes" because the clouds that blew in from the west-northwest predominated and even threatened rain. But the threat never materialized and the clouds along with the strong breeze that blew much of the day disappeared around 9 PM.

(Terry said they missed the record low in Elmira by just 2 degrees. Binghamton and Rochester and other points were not so lucky. They set record lows for the 14th of July.)

No overnight cloud cover and no overnight wind meant that any heat that might have built up during the day (and there was precious little of that as the high was only around 65 degrees) was free to escape out to space. And it did. The corrected thermometers this morning still read 45 degrees or so at 7 AM. The underground weather station about 5 miles from here as the crow flies recorded a low of 43 degrees at 6 AM. (I really have to get a more accurate max-min digital!)

The wind picked up yesterday around 10 in the morning and finally dried out the lawn (heavy, heavy dew) so I was able to get the grass all cut using one of Mark's mowers. No snakes or toads were seen which is unusual for a July day. There's usually a few of each in the grass hunting grasshoppers or crickets. Then again, there weren't many of insects in the grass either.

I'll be spending the better part of the day up on the garage roof with some ring-shanked nails that have washers on them and a bucket of roofing tar. Pull out some of the old nails that have worked loose, put a dollop of tar on the hole and then a new and improved (I hope) nail goes in to hold the metal in place. Sounds easy but time consuming. With any luck, there won't be any bugs and the roof will be a warm place to work.

******

My mind keeps wandering to my wife's cousin's daughter who is hiking the Appalachian trail. She started last summer making it as far north as the Berkshires. She picked it up again this June and is poised to begin the Presidential Range in the White Mountains any day now if she hasn't done so already. The last report on the SPOT Shared page (which was on July 10) shows her to be just shy of Franconia Notch but she's backtracked along the trail for some reason.

Current conditions on the summit of Mt. Washington?

At 8:15 AM on Wednesday morning they report a temperature of 35.7 degrees with winds of 53.9 mph (gusts to 59.8 mph) for a wind chill of 19.2 degrees F.

Translation: Freakin' Cold! But that's somewhat normal for Mt. Washington.

Freakin' Lawn Mower!

remember how I sort of bragged about the lawn mower with its Briggs & Stratton engine starting on the first pull after sitting in the shed all winter? Forget it.

Three weeks ago it started on the first pull again but died after five minutes. It took me nearly an hour of pulling the carburetor apart, draining the fuel and all sorts of stuff before it finally turned over again. But then it ran like a charm for two days.

Today? Not so much. Again it started on the first pull--and died after 3-4 minutes. But this time I could not get it to turn over again despite my best efforts. I ended up borrowing one of Mark's old clunkers and cut the grass using it instead of the Craftsman mower that's just two years old.

So this afternoon I put the Craftsman in the back of the Tundra and hauled it down to a place on the south side of Utica and dropped it off for repairs and maintenance. With luck it will be finished in three weeks which is just about when the lawn will need cutting again.

Meanwhile, the old lawn mower--almost 20 years old, the one with a slight bend int he shaft and held together with baling wire, a couple of oak stair rails, and with an old license plate bolted on the rotting deck still runs. It's a bear to push around because of the wobbly wheels, but it still runs. Go figure.

35 43?! On July 14th!

A mere 35 degrees on one of my two bi-metal analog thermometers at the Bolt Hole this morning at 6:45 AM. (The other read 39 but is just outside the sliding glass door to the bedroom that was cracked open a couple of inches so may have been warmed by my body heat.) Awfully cold for a July 14th. Not a breath of air outside either after yesterday's strong breeze. A weather underground station on a farm several miles to the west recorded a low of 43 degrees at 6:30 AM but it's also about 300 feet lower in elevation and the station picked up the sunlight just prior to that reading.

Brrrr.

Might have to jog along as I push the mower today just to warm up.

UPDATE: I had to run some errands in the Tundra this afternoon (more about those in the next post) and it has a digital thermometer that is pretty accurate. I checked it against the bi-metal thermometers attached to the cabin and found they were 8 degrees lower. I've since fixed them but that means the low temperature this morning was closer to 43 degrees than 35. My bad! Still, that's bloody chilly for the 14th of July.

Monday evening at the Bolt Hole, July 13, 2009

Terry and I went berry picking again this morning. Murphy's Blue Berry Farm is open 8 AM to 8 PM Monday through Saturday. The late afternoon rains caused them to shut down early on Saturday (around 4 PM) and with no picking on Sunday, the bushes were loaded with deep blue, ripe berries this morning. We go there around 8:30 and there were already two dozen folks spread out along the rows of bushes. Most were there to earn a few extra bucks at 75 cents a pound. They were teenage girls and some seniors. Others were trying to fill the freezer like Terry and I.

We each filled a paint bucket in a little over an hour and a quarter and left before the sun got too warm. We only picked berries from five or six bushes to fill our buckets. When we weight out we had over nine pounds of berries in total. Mrs. Murphy said we could have earned a little over $7 for our effort. We paid her the $14 ($1.50 a pound) we owed and went on our way. When we packaged them for the freezer we had seven quarts. Six went into the deep freeze and one went into the fridge for more immediate consumption.

We'll probably go back one more time to assure plenty for the winter.

******

After an early lunch and another cup of coffee, I packed up the Tundra and head for the Bolt Hole in the Adirondacks 220 miles northeast of the Aerie. I do like to drive! And, with its lumbar support, the driver's seat in the truck is very, very kind to my back. Of course when I finally get out of the truck my legs are a bit wobbly....

******

It was 57 degrees when we went out berry picking this morning and Terry says it got up to all of 73-74 degrees this afternoon. The temperatures are a bit cooler here at the Bolt Hole and I expect it might get down into the 40s tonight. The weather quacks are predicting a high of only 72 or so on Tuesday and maybe 78-80 on Wednesday. The average high for this date is around 82. As might be expected when things are coming out of the north there's only a slight chance of rain late Wednesday and into Thursday. That's when the winds will shift to the southwest. Should be no problem getting all the grass cut Tuesday if I don't run out of gasoline.

Current reading list

Terry presented me with four books for Fathers' Day. Two were westerns by Robert B. Parker (Appaloosa and Resolution) and two were books one and two in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher (Storm Front and Fool Moon).

I read both of the Butcher books two days ago and found them to be real page turners. My initial plan was to keep them by the bedside and read a couple of chapters each night before going to sleep. That plan lasted but one night. I brought Storm Front down stairs the next morning and finished it that afternoon. Immediately I picked up Fool Moon and finished that the next day.

Today I ordered books 3-10 in the series from Amazon. It will be a week or so before they arrive.

Meanwhile I picked up Parker's Resolution (not realizing it was not the first in the series) and started reading. I was familiar with Parker's work in the mystery genre from his Spencer series and knew I would find his characters engaging and that they are. Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole are men--or should I say "gunmen"--of complexity and honor. They may buck the system from time to time (or at least Hitch does, Cole is more "by-the-book") but they live by the Code, if you know what I mean.

The "series" with Cole and Hitch is a short one with only three novels listed to date. (The third book, Brimstone, is listed for release in 2009 and I'm sure it is not yet available in paperback.) Here's hoping that Mr. Parker finds these gentlemen as engaging as I do and see fit to share many more of their adventures with the public.

So there you have it. Terry fed me four books in two series and like a drug addict I am hooked. This is going to end up costing me a bundle. Authors who write series, be they fantasy like Terry Prachett's Discworld, historical mysteries like Lindsey Davis' Marcus Didius Falco, or some silly fluff like Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures (alas there will be no more of these) that get under my skin have at least one sure sale. (And, believe me, this is NOT a complete list of serial authors on my shelves!)

And, yes, I tend to buy rather than borrow. The public library just doesn't have the same intense need that I do. Nor do they seem able to maintain the entire series on their shelves. Although, the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell
was pretty well intact. And they had all three books of Cornwell's The Grail Quest and the first three books of The Saxon Stories.

BTW Terry is in the other room reading an Andre Norton book (Year of the Rat) a sequel to a story she really enjoyed. She could have bought it used for around $60 but, instead, asked a friend in NJ to check it out of the library and send it here. As soon as she finishes, she'll send it back. I wasn't aware that Terry had any more of Ms. Norton's books to read.

Aerie Report, Sunday evening 7/12/09

Gorgeous day here at the Aerie today. Late yesterday afternoon we had a cold front move through with some severe T-storms and heavy rains. One moved from west to east just north of here across the NY state line and produced penny sized hail. We just got some strong winds and one torrential down pour that yielded 0.83 inches of rain in about 40 minutes.

This morning we had a low temperature of 53 degrees but that quickly went up to 68 degrees this afternoon after the sun got over the hill.

That's cool for a July 12th but it sure beats the cold that hit Key West yesterday! The weather station at the International Airport reported -11 degrees. As Watts Up With That asks: Will they keep that false reading in the NOAA books just like they kept the false "record highs" from Hawaii earlier this summer?

******

I didn't go blue berry picking last Friday because the eel work at the labs took longer than I expected, the lawn needed cutting and the forecast was for rain on Saturday. (It did finally arrive very late in the day.) Terry and I will be heading over to the blue berry farm early tomorrow morning to see about getting two gallons of berries for the freezer.

******

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon cutting some long, straight posts and poles to support a chicken wire fence across the front of the garden I built into the side of the hill. That's where the tomatoes, cucumbers and most of the beans are planted. I caught a small bunny in there last Thursday and want to make it a little harder for it to eat my beans. I'm told that nothing will eat the tomato plants being as how they are related to belladonna which is, of course, poisonous. I've planted some marigolds along the edge as well. Still, two-foot high chicken wire may make it more difficult for a bunny to steal sting beans. It might also do a little something to deter raccoons and even deer. If they can find some other food source nearby. (Who am I kidding? This little fence will do nothing to keep the coons and deer out. And if a bear wants in/ It's all over.)

******

Speaking of lawn care.... It's time to head up to the Bolt Hole to cut some grass--again. I'll be hitting the road right after lunch tomorrow (Monday) with plans to do just that. Tuesday and Wednesday are supposed to be lovely days up there so I'll spend time walking behind the old Craftsman lawn mower getting some exercise in.

Maybe I'll get some roof tar and see if I can stop the garage roof from leaking so much if I get the time. Mark's got a bucket of barbed nails with rubber washers some place as well as a half tub of tar.

******

The Mets won two in a row? Holy Cow! As Rizzuto would have said.

My Hero du jour

Professor Ian Plimer

He's an Aussie geologist and he believes anthropogenic global warming to be (according to James Delingpole, author of Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick) "a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact."

Professor Plimer says:

‘I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical[sic] of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Computer models are subject to the old GIGO law: Garbage In Garbage Out. Not only do they fail to predict the future, they don't even predict the past.

The article describes, in part, the progress or lack thereof of the Australian version of Cap-and-Trade and how its likely failure to pass the upper house may well spell the dissolution of the Rudd government.

It is also a promo for Professor Plimer's book: Heaven and Earth

Reading Plimer’s Heaven And Earth is at once an enlightening and terrifying experience. Enlightening because, after 500 pages of heavily annotated prose (the fruit of five years’ research), you are left in no doubt that man’s contribution to the thing they now call ‘climate change’ was, is and probably always will be negligible. Terrifying, because you cannot but be appalled by how much money has been wasted, how much unnecessary regulation drafted because of a ‘problem’ that doesn’t actually exist. (South Park, as so often, was probably the first to point this out in a memorable episode where Al Gore turns up to warn the school kids about a terrible beast, looking a bit like the Gruffalo, known as ManBearPig.)

Go read the entire article and then see about getting Prof. Pilmer's book.

Adieu, adieu.

Before heading out to the labs on Friday morning, I checked the robins' nest on the corner of the Aerie. Sure enough, the last two young had left home either late Thursday or very early Friday. I gathered up the nest and placed it in a plastic bag for the garbage. If a third brood is to be raised, a new nest (the third this year) will have to be built. So far eight baby robins have left that corner of the Aerie this summer. With luck they haven't fallen prey to the four cats that wander around my yard. (Not my cats. I don't see any collars but I can't bring myself to do more than throw a stone or two at them.)

Eel Report

It was a good time at the USGS Northern Appalachian Experimental Labs in Asaph yesterday. Two lab employees (Vinca and Jeff) who are directing the transplant/research of the eels-mussel project were on hand to direct/assist as members of the Tiadaghton Audubon Society (TAS)--and a couple of guests from California--implanted computerized tags (PIT tags) beneath the skin of fifty young eels. Each eel's weight and length were measured (my job) and recorded along with their PIT tag numbers.

Gary and I thought we might have only three folks there to assist Vinca and Jeff. We ended up with eight (five TAS members, two California guests of members, and a high school senior (James) working in the labs for the summer). Add Vinca and Jeff and we had a heck of a crew to gang up on the poor eels.

The eels had been collected from the Susquehanna River down in Maryland below the dams that currently make their migration upstream next to impossible. Each measured between 18 and 29 cm in length and had a weight of approximately 1 gram for each cm. They were being held in the labs vast array of holding tanks. Gary would scoop a couple of eels from the holding tank and place them in a cooler of water containing an anesthetic solution. One of the California guests (Mike?) would monitor the eels and when they seemed docile enough he would pluck on from the water and try to get a firm grip on it. Jeff would take a special needle designed to puncture the skin and, with a plunger-like inner structure, implant a PIT tag beneath the eel's skin. A scanner would record the number of the PIT tag (James' job) which the recorder (Diane of TAS). Once the tag was in place I would place the eel on the scale and take its weight and then try to stretch it out straight to get its length before placing it in a recovery tank. We processed 52 eels in all with two of the little devils getting pricked by the needle but having their muscles spit the PIT tag back out.

The entire procedure took us close to two hours. Things might have gone faster but we kept bumping into one another in the small confines of the aisle/doorway in which we worked. I left Phil (TAS President) to assist his daughter (Vinca) in transporting a separate batch of eels to Pine Creek fro release.

******

I mentioned yesterday that the eels serve as a symbiotic host to the larvae of mussels living in the creek/river. There were some mussels recently collected from the Susquehanna down in southern PA in a large aquarium that had everyone pretty excited. The tank, approximately 2' x 5' had a dozen or so mussels scattered evenly across its graveled bottom on Wednesday. By yesterday, most of the mussels had moved to an area about 18" square nearer the inflow from the filter where O2 levels were higher. As interesting as the migration of adult mussels might be, even more exciting was the display of fish lures by five or six of the larger female mussels.

The mussels were wedged into the gravel so their open edges would stick up high into the water. From those edges protruded soft tissues that looked for all the world like small, one-inch long, minnows with fins waving in the current. Each little "fish" even had what appeared to be a dark eye-spot to complete the illusion. The idea, apparently, is to lure a larger fish (or eel) into range of the mussel, the larvae of which will hitch a ride in the gills of the more mobile creature. The mimicry of a small fish was excellent and, if you didn't have the entire mussel visible to you, you could easily be fooled into thinking it was indeed a fish. They sort of reminded me of the long fins and tail of some koi or a Siamese fighting fish.

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Future tagging and release of eels into Pine Creek is planned. And, as soon as Vinca and Jeff choose an antenna/sensor design they want to work with, we'll be on the creek attempting to locate the eels that have been tagged and released.