What the birds see

My buddy George has been playing with drones for about eight years. (You can see some of his amazing video here, here and here.) In 2015 he got his drone snagged in a very tall tree while shooting some video of our place. So I was a little surprised when he agreed to come back and shoot some video of our recently expanded homestead.

As you might imagine, the technology has gotten a lot better in the last half dozen years and George has gotten even better at flying the things. The video below runs right at 2:30.

This was shot from an altitude of about 400 feet so the drone was just a black dot but the quality of the video was even better than what I’m streaming here.

I love trees. I love being surrounded by them. And I’ve tromped around our acreage over the years so I know there’s a bunch of them. But it took this birds eye view to give me a real sense of just how many trees surround us.

More big rocks

A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of a big rock on our newly acquired property. The previous owners built their house around this formation. Since then we’ve discovered another big rock on the other side (and behind) of the house. Hard to see because it’s covered in about forty years worth of dead leaves, Honeysuckles, and brambles.

We still have work to do but Rock #2 is finally getting some love.

The 20 second clip below shows what the formation looks like before and after some clean up.

Goodbye old pine tree

We had a few trees removed today. Couple of dead/dying cedar trees and the big pine tree shown above. About half the limbs on this tree were dead and it was too close to the power line to take a chance. Once down we could see the tree was rotting from the inside so we made the right call.

On another part of the property there was a big (ugly) cedar tree in the middle of some gorgeous oak trees. It won’t be missed.

Our thanks to Cedric and his crew from Korte Tree Care. If you’re wondering, he’s wearing a “hard” cowboy hat.

Rocks and Trees

The Annex was designed as an earth-contact home with a big ass rock as the defining feature. It is a cool rock and serves (for me) as a reminder of the impermanence of my existence.


But those giant oak trees. For years the previous owner allowed ivy vines to cover these beautiful trees. Very damaging to the trees over time.

So my first task after closing was to cut the vines. The tree guy we use assures me the vines will die in coming months and within a year the dead vines and leaves will fall from the tree.

We’ve been calling the rock “Dwayne.”

The best neighbor… is no neighbor

We’ve been living in our home for 35 years. We built it in 1986 on about 3.5 acres of wooded land (A). In January of 2020 we purchased an additional 3 acres (B) when the lady who owned it died. Our closest neighbors (a woman and her adult daughter) have been talking about selling their home (C) for a couple of years but never seemed serious, until this year when they bought a house in “in town,” as we used to say.

One day a couple of months ago she told us she was going to put her home on the market. When she told me the asking price, I said we’d buy it. No inspection, no appraisal, no haggling. We closed on the sale yesterday at noon. We haven’t told many about the purchase because it happened pretty fast. But the first question is always, “So, what are you going to do with the property? Sell it? Rent it?” The answer is, nothing. The woman and her daughter are — in all likelihood — the last people who will ever live in that house. Why, you might ask?

Have you ever lived next to a really bad neighbor? It can make every day a living hell. But you could sell the place to some nice folks, you say. But you can’t control to whom they sell it, I reply. No, the best neighbor is no neighbor. And we didn’t buy the property for the house. We bought it for the towering, hundred-year-old oak trees. I think of it as a tiny nature preserve. The thought of someone cutting down those trees so their whiny little brats can have a swimming pool was… unthinkable. Or coming home to that TRUMP 2024 sign every day. Or their pit bull terrorizing our dog. No way, Jose.

To my way of thinking, we don’t really own the land. We own the privilege of living on it. Or saying who does or does not live on it. But we are nothing more than temporary stewards. And as we enter our Golden Years, Barb and I place great value on privacy. How does one put a price on something so precious? Oh yeah, did I mention the quiet? You can hear your heart beat. And at night the only light you can see is a yard light a mile or so away.

So we called the propane people to come get their tank. A plumber will winterize the house. The phone and electric are disconnected. And we’ll start giving away the appliances. What remains will be a big old storage building I’ve been calling The Annex.

This chapter is just beginning so watch this space for updates.

Gravel road


One of the best features of where we live is the gravel road that leads to our place. It comes up a moderatly steep hill and dead-ends at our driveway. It can be a booger in the winter and bone-jarring after a good rain. The roads are owned — and maintained — by our homeowners association so we all kick in to a road fund a couple of times a year. A few neighbors have lobbied for paving but it would cost a fortune and most of us are fine with living on a gravel road. A feature, not a bug.

Living at the end of the road, at the top of a hill, there is never any traffic. If I see or hear a car or truck it is a) someone coming to see us, b) someone coming up to turn around, or c) someone who is lost. I wouldn’t know how to put a price on that.

Honeywagon

A nice young man showed up this morning to pump out the contents of our septic tank. Watching him work, I was reminded of the slang term, “honey wagon.” Let’s go to Wikipedia:

A honeywagon is the slang term for a “vacuum truck” for collecting and carrying human excreta. These vehicles may be used to empty the sewage tanks of buildings, aircraft lavatories, passenger train toilets and at campgrounds and marinas as well as portable toilets. The folk etymology behind the name ‘honeywagon’ is thought to relate to the honey-colored liquid that comes out of it when emptying the holding tanks.

They honeywagon has a long history:

The honey wagon was originally a horse-drawn vehicle that went through back alleys to collect human excreta. Houses at that time did not have flush toilets or indeed any form of indoor sanitation beyond the chamberpot. In rural areas the outhouse (privy) is associated with a pit latrine of various sorts, but many towns and cities depended on some variant of the pail closet, which needed frequent emptying. At each outdoor toilet, the driver would stop the wagon, flip up the back hatch door (trap-door) of the outhouse, slide out the pail (bucket), pick it up, and dump the contents into one of eight oak half-barrels in the wagon box. The half-barrels had no lids.

Like the young man told me this morning, “Somebody’s gotta do it.” In the television and film industry, the term has a different meaning.

In America, the term honeywagon is usually given to a truck, trailer or combination of both with a number of dressing rooms for the actor. These either have individual toilets or a communal set built in. Some honeywagons will be just two large toilets. Others are a combination of variously sized rooms for specific purposes: these rooms can be private dressing rooms assigned to a single person, larger rooms configured for the wardrobe, or makeup departments, small individual toilets for the crew to share, and multiple user or individual shower rooms for bathing.

What, you thought Meryl Streep used a Porta  Potty?