Hydrology

Care and feeding of the driveway. Stage one was a success. We'd opened up the catchment enough that the hard rain yesterday afternoon cleaned it out completely. Today we moved 20 feet of the ditch in closer to the bank, straightening the run. B grub-hoed out the new channel, and because the driveway was wider there (fifty feet above the catchment) I was able to rake the new material into a berm. Looks good, a nice tidy job, but drainage is always tricky. One more smaller section needs to be rechanneled, and two more catchments to clean out. Three more mornings of shovel and rake, then I have to get started on next year's firewood because I burned two years supply last (brutal) winter and I'll be home more next year. I probably need three cords. One cord cut, that needs to be hauled, and two trees, standing dead, that B can drop and cut to length in maybe an hour each, a day each for me to haul, then bust them into halves and quarters so they can dry completely. I'll split them into smaller pieces as needed. I have to take my splitting maul in, to get it sharpened; I'd do it myself, but you have to careful about the temper in tools that take heavy use. There's a welding shop in town that has a water-bath grindstone, and they do it for free, because I take them a six-pack, late on a Friday afternoon. I tried taking them decent beer, but they preferred Bud Light. I need Deihl to come, or Christine, someone that can teach me how to generate a file. I'm way down on the food-chain with that, I just write paragraphs, I haven't even thought about 'publishing' for 15 years. I like catching the day, that swing of a butterfly net, the way it might rain. Other than that, I have no immediate concerns. Neither of my daughters are addicted to heroin and neither am I. Success, in so far as it goes; they live in Colorado and smoke very good pot. The phone conversations are interesting. I almost never know what's being said. Luna Moth outside, wing-tips beating against the window.