Wrapping Up At The Lot

Our 2016 summer season at The Lot has come to a close. As I write this there is fresh snow on the sides of the Mamm Range within eyesight of our back deck. It won’t last long – we are in a a spell of below-average temperatures – but it is still a bit of a shock. Back in the Como area (the town nearest Sanderling but a bit lower in elevation), the weather report shows at or below freezing temperatures for the next four nights. It’s time to bring The Box home.

October 4: Bringing home The Box

I had been at The Lot over the weekend to finish the last bits of wood pickup; I took a load of stumps to the burn pit and brought home the last load of firewood for 2016. There were a few evening rain showers but the days were very enjoyable. Here is a photo taken on Saturday (through The Box’s main window) of the aspen grove:

Lookin’ out my window

The Lot has quite a few pine and aspen stumps on it; many can be pulled out by hand. A few were larger ends of old trees that had fallen and these needed to be cut before I could move them. At any rate, quite a few stumps had been accumulating and it was time to dispose of them.

In many ways the stumps are harder to handle than the normal burn pit wood as they are bulky, irregularly shaped, and heavy. It was a job to get them loaded but removing them did provide sort of a final touch to Birdhouse Ridge and other areas we had cleaned. There are still many left for future trips!

Which leads me to today (Tuesday), when I brought The Box back from the mountains.  The trip home was uneventful but I did drive through snow flurries from Fairplay to Vail Pass, a distance of 60 miles or so. Here and there some snow was sticking to the forest floor and side of the road. Normally this would be the height of the “color” season (which typically runs into mid-October) but everything appears to be advanced by a couple weeks; winter is fast approaching.

Trailer repair update: A couple of posts ago I mentioned I had worked on the utility trailer, replacing screws  in the stake bed sides with 1/4 inch bolts. This modification has worked out very well; with several trips to the burn pit and a couple loads of firewood brought home since the upgrade I have not had to do any maintenance as I had been doing when the screws were in place.

On to maintenance: Our garage door has one, possibly two, bad pulleys in the system. This has caused problems opening and closing the door and has, of late, been getting worse. I will be replacing the pulleys which is not an expensive job but involves working with the door’s springs and cables, something I have not done in the past. I hope to not have to replace the entire door so we shall see if this repair enables us to get a few more years of life out of it.

Speaking of doors…

When Pam re-arranged the third bedroom to give the foster kittens more room, she purchased this cat door on-line and had me install it in the laundry room door. The indoor cat feeding dish and cat boxes are now in this area and the cat portal keeps the dogs from entering.

Cat portal installed in laundry room door.

So far it is working well; all the cats got used to the new arrangement without any problem. (Pam stained the portal to match the door.)

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

We will have two of the kittens (Pieter and Ernst) from this summer’s rescue litter through October and possibly into November.  Mother Nature is not cooperating re: providing these little guys some action on testicle growth.  Bummer. Which is why I rearranged indoor cat facilities for longer-term house guests. The other two neutered kittens went to the shelter last week, and hopefully are adopted by now.

House hunting has slowed down.  I review new listings [in several cities], and monitor certain houses to see if price drops are forthcoming.  With the snow now showing up in the mountains, maybe some Sellers will start to get real about prices?

Happy Trails.