Hi, everyone!
We had a beautiful week of dry, warm weather after I wrote last. Daytime temperatures were in the 70s and broke some records! That made it easier for Grandma and Grandpa to rake the leaves, and the leaves continued to fall! Four days after the town picked up our first leaf pile, we had another one that was even bigger! We still had a lot of yellow leaves on the dogwood and maples, so we knew we weren’t done raking!
When we went out to the bay, Grandpa had a big project to do! Over the years, ice on the bay had pushed the foundations of the front of the boathouse south. The front wall and roof were twisted as a result. The shoreline repairs involve lining the inside of the boathouse with steel plates, so Grandpa wanted to make sure everything was straight again before that started. He figured he needed to move the front of the boathouse six inches north! He unbolted the frame from the foundation so he could make the frame move.
The first thing Grandma and Grandpa did was haul the inboard rails of the marine railway out from under the boat carriage and stack them on top. Then Grandpa used the chain hoist to move the winch that hauls the boat carriage onto the pile. After that, he tied a line to show where the front of the wall needed to move. The water is so low now that the boathouse floor is dry!
I helped Grandpa put a brace across the front of the boathouse so the north and south walls would move together. Grandpa had to stand on a stool in the water to do the final fastening! Then he set up a block on the decking to show how far the wall needed to move back.
While we were working, there were lots of waterfowl on the bay right in front of us. A flock of swans flew in and landed! I took a break to tell my enkianthus friends how pretty their fall colors were.
When Grandpa was ready to start moving the wall, he jacked up the north side and put pieces of pipe under it to act as rollers. Then he bolted a big beam to the south side of the deck as a brace for the hydraulic jack. When he started pumping the jack, the frame started to move! Pretty soon, Grandpa decided he needed a bigger jack! The pressure on the jack brace broke the big bolts that held it in place, so Grandpa had to install a bigger brace, too!
After the first day, Grandpa had the walls moved about halfway to the goal. He kept adding blocks of wood between the brace and the jack as the gap opened. When the walls were straight again, Grandpa bolted the frame back to the foundation before he released the jack!
It was late afternoon when we were all done! I helped Grandpa and Grandma remove the brace across the front of the boathouse. That made the north wall bounce back a little bit, but Grandpa said that was OK. Grandpa removed the rollers and propped up the north wall. When that job was done, Grandma and Grandpa cleared leaves off the lawn!
When we got back to Fairport, there were more leaves to rake there, too! I helped Grandma put the leaves from the back yard on a tarp. Then she dragged the tarp around to the front and added the leaves to my big pile. There were a lot of tarp trips! The day after, there were more leaves down in the back yard and we had to do it all again!
Grandpa wanted to have some limbs removed from the big oak in the back yard. He and Grandma decided it was time for the crabapple with the see-through trunk to come down, too! When I went to say goodbye to my crabapple friend, there were mushrooms growing inside its trunk! I gave the tree a goodbye hug! I guess the blossoms we saw last month on the tree really were goodbye blossoms!
Last Thursday, the tree service came! They brought their big forestry truck with the bucket on a boom and drove it right under the oak tree in the back yard. They set up the chipper right in front of the crabapple. There were lots of thumps as the big branches on the oak tree came down! The medium-sized branches went into the chipper. The tree person in the bucket had to get really high up to trim the branches hanging over the house! After the work on the oak tree was done, the tree people sawed the crabapple down to a stump.
Grandpa asked the tree service to leave the biggest logs behind. One of our neighbors has a wood stove and can use the wood to stay warm in the winter. The pieces of wood were too heavy for our neighbors to move, so they brought their log splitter down to make smaller pieces they could handle. Grandma let me watch, but I was very careful to stay away from the splitting blade when it was working! When everybody was done, I took a look at the stump of the crabapple. I could see how much damage there was to the trunk!
After all our beautiful weather, it got cold and rainy again. When we went back to the bay last weekend, almost all the leaves were down! Guess what? We could see the frisbee that got trapped in the branches last summer, now that the leaves were gone! Grandpa got it down with a very, very long pole he uses for washing windows! I made sure to let James and Thomas know we got it back!
Grandpa had some more work to do to get the boathouse ready for the shoreline repairs. Grandma and I cleared the leaves off the grassy knoll with the leaf blower. Then we set up my pumpkin as a snack for the animals in the woods. I think we found a nice place to leave it!
Grandma says she thinks we’re done clearing leaves now. There are still a few to fall, but not enough to hurt anything if they stay on the ground until spring. Today we had snow squalls, but nothing stuck. Time to move on to figuring out how to celebrate the holidays during a pandemic!
Love,
Lion-san
Moose-san and Tilly were really impressed with how big a pile of leaves you made. It was a good year for leaves. It seemed that our neighbors were raking everyday, but the next morning there were more. Our town doesn’t pick up leaves so people put them in bags so sometimes they look like big walls. We were all impressed that you were able to help with the repairs to the boathouse that was a big project. The tree work was a big project also we were glad you watched from a safe distance, tree limbs are heavy and we wouldn’t want one to fall on you and turn you to in to flat Lion-san.