2:164, #468: Stone Walls and Grass

These are the two primary projects on my mind these days here at Camp Cornelius. The photo shows some of my handy work on the Grey Havens, as well as the new chin whiskers I'm sporting since I decided to connect the Fu Manchu and create a Van Dyke on my face. Facial Hair Feng Shui turns out to be considerably hotter this way, but tolerable...must be some pressure point or something in the middle of the chin that sparks the difference. In any event, I spend Monday and Tuesdays pretty much removing old mortar with a pneumatic hammer and then putting mortar back between solid stones, filling in fairly large cavities behind stones, and even placing some small stones in areas that wind have eroded on the mica schist that was used at the Grey Havens back in 1917 when it was built.

Grass this year is phenomenal...two more days a week are pretty much dedicated to cutting roughly 10 acres that could really be cut twice a week, given the current growing rate. It's an interesting contrast, at least for me, to summer of 1986 when it was so dry that I did not mow at all from end of June to mid-September, so I and another guy rebuilt the stonewalls at the Church Road entrance shown in the left hand picture.

The other thing that is phenomenal is the way my garden is producing. We at the Havens are enjoying fresh lettuce, radishes, cukes, zuchs, tomatoes of 3 varieties, onions, parsley, and cilantro and have been able to farm out lots to the locals on campus...give and it will be given, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, poured over into your lap.

Well, on that note...got salad dressing?