Hi, everyone!
We still haven’t had a killing frost or snow, but today it’s rainy and most of the leaves are finally down! I’m glad we had better weather right after Election Day to work out at the bay!
I helped Grandpa put up the last fascia boards on the south side of the boathouse. While I was down by the water, I could take a good look at all the stone that was dumped on the slope!
Once Grandma and Grandpa had the rest of the channel installed, I could help pull the soffit pieces into place. Grandpa started them from the shoreline end and tied a long rope to the first piece. Grandma and I pulled the pieces toward the back as Grandpa attached more pieces from his end. We ran out of pieces before they reached our end, so we had to stop for the day.
The next day, we did another leaf clearing in Fairport! Our piles were really getting big!
That weekend Grandpa cut more soffit pieces and we finished the job! Grandpa had some carpentry work to do, but he didn’t need Grandma and me to help with that. So when he went back to the bay to do it a couple of days later, Grandma and I stayed home and made an AWACS cheesecake. I did my usual helping by marbling the batter. That cheesecake went into the freezer for “just in case.”
The end of last week, we had some warmish dry weather. Grandma had been tracking the town leaf pickup schedule on line and knew they would be coming soon. When we heard the back-up beep of the loader in the distance, Grandma and I went out to clear as many more leaves as we could. We got five more tarploads of leaves on the pile before the town crew arrived! Grandma found me a safe spot to watch as the crew worked. First, the small tractor scraped most of the leaf pile into the street. The driver had to back up over and over to clear the entire pile! Another worker with a leaf blower made sure all the leaves were off the yard.
Then the big loader picked up the leaves in batches from the street and put them into the dump truck. Our leaf pile filled up the entire truck! Another town dump truck was waiting to take its place for the next leaf pile. It’s a good thing nobody needed to get out of our street while this was going on!
The street sweeper truck was following the pickup crew to clean up any leaves left in the street. That was a lot of trucks and excitement! Grandma said the grass that turned yellow under the leaf pile would have a chance to recover before the town came around again to pick up the last leaves. I helped Grandma fold up the tarp we used to move the leaves.
Last Monday we had a sunny, 60 degree F. day! Grandma said we weren’t going to get a better chance to put lights on the apple trees! We can’t stretch the final strings of lights to and from the clothesline “tree” until the rest of the leaves have fallen and are piled by the road. Grandma will have to figure out a new place for the farthest strings to attach, because we took down our dead trees. No matter what, the two remaining trees will be brightly lighted!
Love,
Lion-san