Working on a rainy day

The weather has changed sooner than predicted. Each day the past few days the weatherman has said they were caught by surprise by the rain as it wasn't suppose to really start raining until Friday night. Apparently when they say there is a 20% chance of rain they don't expect it to rain.

Today's 20% chance of rain ended up being 100% as it drizzled pretty much non-stop all day. But it was warm as the temperature was in the 40s F all day and night. Since rain is in the forecast all the next seven days it makes no sense to wait for drier weather. Drier weather in November may mean colder weather. Besides, a little drizzle never hurt anyone.

With it being wet that meant I couldn't finish mowing the lawn. I have the front half done with plans to finish the back half.

I went through my rocks gathered here and there and on my hikes. I have a rock "garden" in front of the house. I cleared my porch and placed these new (as of several months now) rocks there. I have quite a number of these smaller/medium sized rocks. Some of what once enchanted me no longer did and I "weeded" them out to make room for my newer rocks.

Checked my pocket gopher traps of course.

Did some general cleanup in the back yard. I also straightened ten more steel fence posts. A few posts were hard to balance and also strike with a sledgehammer. I got the idea of putting one end under a heavy stack of wood and either stand on the post to bend it down or pull up on the post. I guess I don't know my own strength as one of the steel posts snapped into two pieces when I pulled it upward more and more.

When straightening the final post my sledgehammer handle broke. *sigh* Fortunately the handle broke off where the metal head fit on the handle. I was able to whittle the handle end smaller and pound the handle back into the metal head, then finish straightening the final post.

I also split the large sections of tree I had cut from my willow tree this past Spring. It had the summer to dry. All but a couple sections split easily. The bigger section took a little more work. The final section was a former end where the tree then sent out a number of branches. Yup, very hard to split. I got it split in two with the help of pounding the sledgehammer against the splitting maul. After I split one half into smaller pieces I decided to leave the other half alone, either to try another day else get rid of.

By the time I was done splitting I had my coat and cap off as I was hot. The drizzle never touched me as the heat from my body evaporated it.

Rut is supposed to start in earnest this weekend. With this warm weather Kelly said the deer haven't been too active out in the pasture. Last night one of the does started her cycle early as Kelly watched two young bucks turn their attention from spar/playing with one another to "escorting" the doe around the pasture.

The following photos are of a tree stump I had dug and cut from the ground last month. It is from a tamarack tree so the wood is very dense and hard to split - though it burns hot. Since my splitting ax barely dented the stump I decided to leave the stump be and placed it on one of my old fuel tanks. The stump looks better in person as my camera couldn't quite capture its look in the dusk and rain.