Lost in Leetonia: Busy Fall time

Lost in Leetonia: Busy Fall time

Busy Fall time

My nieces and nephews were up over the weekend and we did a little hiking and site seeing. The first picture is Diane sitting next to a wild child, my niece, Haley. The energy from this picture tells you how tired I feel today after four days of keeping up with the twins and their brothers.
I took them to the Colton Point overlook of the Grand Canyon. It is always amazing to see into the canyon. The leaves aren't as spectacular this year as years past. It seems they fell off the trees as fast as they changed color. It was cool during the Columbus Day
weekend, but stayed dry for the most part.
I also had a group of 50 people and kids from St. Micheal's school in Penn Yan, NY. stay over night Saturday to Sunday morning. The night was cool and clear and they got to see our spectacular night stars. The kind of stars you only see in a place without any lights to distract from the natural star light.
They stayed in tents and woke to a crispy 27 degree morning with a heavy frost on the plants. They only do one night as for many of the kids ages 8-10 this is there first camping experience. The
picture of the tents and frost is early Sunday morning.
We also had our first snow this Monday morning. Nothing to stick just enough white flakes to tell it was snow and remind us bad weather is on its way. My nieces and nephews squealed with excitement to see the white flakes. Our reaction is more subdued. In fact, the white flakes signal a mourning for the loss of nice weather and a return to the struggles of getting in and out during the winter.
Many other camps were full this weekend and it seemed everyone
enjoyed the dry, cool weather. It does have the advantage of getting rid of the bugs. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out.

Fall Color and egg color?

We are heading into the peak week or two of fall color. Many of the mountains are looking much like the one to the left. There is a cold snap to the air and the bugs are much better to deal with. I think this year was the worst I have ever seen the "no see-ums" with all the rain we had they made a bumper crop. I have a bunch of kids coming to camp on top my hill this weekend and my sister is coming with her kids as well. It seems quite a few people will be coming to Leetonia to see the color this coming weekend as too.
The second picture is two eggs: one is the normal brown color and the other a light green. The
egg was laid by a chicken at Paterson's Maple Farms. They say it doesn't act much like a chicken and gobbles like a turkey. Seems they have a strange one on their hands and this eggs although the color doesn't show as well here could be from a Dr. Suess green eggs and ham book. If we had any green ham.
Thanks to all for the contributions on the many uses of a hair dryer including: removing bumper stickers and thawing freezers. I am glad we aren't the only ones using our hair dryers for something other than drying ones hair.
Well hoping for dry weather to finish up some outside work and make it nice for all the kids and adults coming to enjoy the Pennsylvania wilderness. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out.

Mountain girl uses for a hair dryer

It seems our hair dryer gets used more for projects then drying hair. Lee decided it would be a great way to fast dry some stain on boards so we can get them up today. With a cold 40 degrees this morning stain and varnish won't dry. This isn't the first time our hair dryer has been used for non-hair drying applications. It is my go to in the winter for frozen pipes. I have one pipe when it gets really cold that will freeze up between the well and house. The pipe wasn't buried deep enough since the cabin was mainly used during warmer parts of the year. The pipe runs inside a pipe and allows me to blast hot air into it to melt any frozen areas. Once the water is running it stays good on its own. Sometimes I let the water drip slightly overnight during the problem times to keep it from freezing. But there is the occasional time when I forget and the hair dryer has always done its thing.
I usually let my hair air dry so the air dryer is used for hair mainly on guests. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out.

A day in the life

Above is a picture of Leo and Scooter from left to right. Sometimes having dogs can be fun and sometimes it can be frustrating. Scooter goes to work with me nearly everyday since he is the only one of the three dogs who doesn't mind the nailer and saw noise. He has learned to keep close track of me before I go to work so he doesn't miss the ride and starts getting anxious to go home around 5pm. It is like having a doggie alarm clock. For the most part Scooter is good at the work site and will stay close only barking if someone comes up unannounced. He is good company and gives me someone to talk to at lunch and I admit sharing a bit of my sandwich with him on occasion.

Yesterday, however, he got on the bad dog award. I was running out of stained boards and thought I would stop early and run to pick up some more before the lumber yard closed. Just as I got ready to open the truck door a squirrel ran past the truck. Scooter ran over to the driver's side and nicely hit the lock button for the doors. I looked at my keys in the ignition and the closed windows and realized I now had a problem. First I thought how hard can it be to get him to step on the button again. I walked to the driver's side and called him he moved over and I tapped the window. He just sat there and looked at me.

"Scooter, step on the button!" I yelled.

He just cocked his head and looked at me like I had just spoken a foreign language. I had this happen once before with another dog when I stepped out of the truck running at the lumber yard. That time I was able to crawl through the sliding back window. After that I always took my keys or left the window rolled down a bit...until today.

Now I had to call Lee and admit my stupidity as she brought an extra set of keys. It took about a half hour for her to get there. As she backed into the drive I noticed her back tire was flat. Well that rounds off the day nicely, I thought. I had an air compressor at the site and we blew the tire up. I thought for sure I would hear some gaping hole letting the air out as fast as it went in, but to my delight it held. It must be a slow leak. She got home alright and I made it to the lumber yard, no thanks to Scooter, my helpful work dog. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out.

Lifting a mountain girl

Lee and her sister Diane finished staining a large cabin in Leetonia last week. They did everything except this back from ladders. At first Lee was a bit nervous about riding in the bucket, but once she got the hang of it she loved it. It reached the hard to reach spots near windows over 30 feet high without the need to move a ladder or worry about it falling.
I am afraid the one downside to this rental was that now Lee never wants to use a ladder again. Something I think the people at the Wellsboro Rental place secretly know before they rent these addicting machines out. Although, this unit was nice on this camp it is limited to places you have enough room to set it up. They have another unit which is larger and is self-propelled eliminating the space needed for the truck to move the unit. Lee painted the whole back side in one long day(about 11 hours).
The summer has been bad for doing outside painting jobs until just recently when the weather changed and has been much drier. Now all we have to worry about is frost. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out.

First frost and will the color be good this year?

The picture to the left has nothing to do with frost, it is a fire pit project I finished. I built the benches out of left over hemlock from the earlier dam project.
Its official last night was the first frost of the season. It got down to 31 just enough to leave a little glaze on the ground this morning. I thought I would see if there is anything that might predict the fall color and the following is what I found.
During the spring and summer the leaves have served as factories where most of the foods necessary for the tree's growth are manufactured. This food-making process takes place in the leaf in numerous cells containing chlorophyll, which gives the leaf its green color. This extraordinary chemical absorbs from sunlight the energy that is used in transforming carbon dioxide and water to carbohydrates, such as sugars and starch.

Along with the green pigment are yellow to orange pigments, carotenes and xanthophyll pigments which, for example, give the orange color to a carrot. Most of the year these colors are masked by great amounts of green coloring.

Chlorophyll Breaks Down

But in the fall, because of changes in the length of daylight and changes in temperature, the leaves stop their food-making process. The chlorophyll breaks down, the green color disappears, and the yellow to orange colors become visible and give the leaves part of their fall splendor.

At the same time, other chemical changes may occur, which form additional colors through the development of red anthocyanin pigments. Some mixtures give rise to the reddish and purplish fall colors of trees such as dogwoods and sumacs, while others give the sugar maple its brilliant orange.

The autumn foliage of some trees shows only yellow colors. Others, like many oaks, display mostly browns. All these colors are due to the mixing of varying amounts of the chlorophyll residue and other pigments in the leaf during the fall season.

Weather Affects Color Intensity Temperature, light, and water supply have an influence on the degree and the duration of fall color. Low temperatures above freezing will favor anthocyanin formation, producing bright reds in maples. However, early frost will weaken the brilliant red color. Rainy and/or overcast days tend to increase the intensity of fall colors. The best time to enjoy the autumn color would be on a clear, dry and cool (not freezing) day.

Our experience has been that the rain tends to knock the leaves off a little faster so for long lasting color we need little rain or wind during the color period. The frost we had last night was probably not heavy enough to affect the tree color and we often get frost in the middle of September. So we will see how true this information stays as we progress into the fall color season. Our best color usually lands in the second to third week of October about a month from now. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out.