Trees, Rails and Walls!

Hi, everyone!

Even though most of the leaves haven’t started turning color yet, there are definitely signs of fall now!  The sun is setting so far south that it sets over land, even if we go to the lighthouse to watch.  In the morning, the sunrise is really far south, too!

Remember the big oak branch that came down in Fairport last spring?  There were some other branches that looked like they were ready to come down, so Grandpa had the tree people come to prune the tree.  The tree people drove a bucket truck right into the back yard!  We were home, so I didn’t have to watch on webcam like I did for the last tree work at Sodus! It was fun to watch the tree people maneuver the bucket to reach all the branches that needed to be pruned.  The truck had to be moved once to reach all the branches because the oak tree is so big!

The tree people brought a wood chipper trailer along, too.  They chipped up all the small branches to take them away in their truck.  The chipper is VERY loud when it is chewing up branches!  Grandpa had them leave the bigger sections of branches in a pile because he thought our neighbors would like them for firewood.  They came to get them a few days later and I helped them load their van!

At Sodus, I helped Grandma and Grandpa haul in the marine railway sections.  Then I helped Grandpa winterize the motorboat and hoist it up off the railway carriage.  Grandma and I took all the lifejackets out of the boat to store in the house, so the mice don’t chew them in the winter.

Now that the boat is hoisted off the marine railway, Grandpa is planning to replace the rails on the boathouse end with stronger ones.  He thinks that will make the boat easier to move in and out.  He got steel stock to make a new set of rails, and then he cleaned up the shop in Fairport so he had room to work on them.  There were lots of holes to drill so the sections can be bolted together!  Then all the pieces had to be painted with rustproofing paint in the garage before they could be assembled.  I was a good and very careful helper with that!

While Grandpa was working on that project, Grandma had a project, too!  She has been wanting to hang new wallpaper in the front hall at Fairport, and she finally found a wallpaper design that she and Grandpa liked.  I helped with that project, too!  First, we had to pull the current wallpaper off the wall.  Then we had to moisten the paper backing of that wallpaper so we could scrape it off the wall.  Then we had to repair all the cracks and dents in the walls with spackle.  I was a good helper for all of that!  After all that, we could finally hang the new wallpaper!  Doesn’t it look nice?  Grandma figured out how to use the paper so only little scraps were left!

Today Grandma and I had a nature adventure!  We took a walk with the Genesee Land Trust in Gosnell Big Woods Preserve.  Gosnell Big Woods is a pretty piece of land in Webster with a meadow and an old growth forest.  There are very big  and tall trees and I got to make friends with some of them!  There are trees that can grow under the shade of taller trees and other trees that only grow when there’s a gap in the forest canopy.  I saw a tree with a bent trunk.  Our guide said that someone probably bent it over when it was just a sapling to serve as a trail marker!  The soil in Gosnell Big Woods is very sandy because it used to be the bottom of a glacial lake.  That means sometimes trees sometimes fall right over because the sand can’t hold the roots in big storms!  I was glad there were roots that did hold in the steep parts of the path, because that helped me climb!

When we got to the end of the walk, there was a surprise!  Gosnell Big Woods is ten years old as a Land Trust preserve so we had birthday cake!  I’m glad Grandma took me on the walk!

Love,

Lion-san