Apr 12/13 - clearing the land

It's not just the pioneers who cleared the land -- we who own a piece of Florida swamp have to do so as well ...

Back to the 12th -- Easter Sunday.

As planned, I went to my usual 7am Mass and then went for a quick bike ride. This was a really quick bike ride, less than an hour. Back home, cleaned up, we left for Bev's.

Bev had a crowd -- her daughter Julie and her five kids, two other couples, us, them ... I guess that would be 14. We ate soon after we got there -- quite a spread -- we ate our fill of ham, a couple of other casserole-type dishes and it seemed like endless deserts. There were sweet dishes that were part of the main course and then pies and cakes. Pumpkin pie was on the list -- one of my personal favorites -- yummy. I don't eat many pies -- they have to be tart, except for pumpkin. Key lime pie, strawberry rhubarb ... those types of pies I love. Banana cream pie, apple pie ... those types of pies I can eat, it's not that I don't like them, but I don't have any particular need ... I'd sooner have a second helping of the main course.

We left Bev's around 5pm and were home at 6:30, early enough for a couple of SG1 episodes ... then snacks. We'd already had our big dinner for the day !

This morning I tackled the Gainesville 600k route, setting it up in bikeroutetoaster for the bike GPS. That took a couple of hours, and then Stephanie Wolfe from the Marine Discovery Center arrived with her volunteers to remove the invasive Brazilian Pepper.

Now, what would your expectation be for these volunteers ? Mine was college kids -- strong, strapping (whatever that means), male ... working so fast that I'd be in the way. Well, there were 5 volunteers + Stephanie. Stephanie is probably in her 20's, the volunteers we older than me ! One look at the volunteers and I realized that I was not going to get a break ... it would be embarrassing to sit around while they worked.

We slogged away for almost 4 hours clearing out the entire area. Eventually it worked out that I was doing cutting and hauling to the edge, two guys were hauling from there to the end of the driveway and then the ladies and alternately the guys were cutting the stuff into shorter pieces and piling. While they were working the city came along and took away a load. There's now another big load awaiting their next trip. Two of the ladies left after 2.5-3.0 hours, leaving Stephanie and two men who were probably slightly older than me.

I left the stumps high and after I'd showered, changed, eaten and played on the computer for a while, I got tired of seeing them out the den window so I got out there with the electric chainsaw and cut them down, using a paint brush to cover the ends with Roundup. If you can picture one of these stumps at about 12" across with a dozen 2-3" trunks coming out of the stump at ground level, you've got the idea.

The other thing that I did was clear out the tangled mess of dead palm fronds, some of which made it to the road and some of which are now trampled underfoot. If I get to those, it will be to rake them up into a pile. Once I get that far I'll probably take the mess out to the road. I'm not convinced that it makes a difference though, as far as raking up that stuff (stuff being a polite word for something that rhymes with "it"). Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Sandy had make muffins to take to Bev's but not all of them made the trip. Several of them were gobbled down by the volunteers along with cold bottles of water that we supplied. I should really take some pictures ... ok, never mind procrastinating, I'll take some pictures. I've written enough of this for now anyhow.

I've already had my second shower of the day so I won't be doing any more work outside !