More Snakes

I hesitate to write this post because I fear that friends and family may decline to visit after reading this ...

Last month I wrote a post about snake skins we've found. Shortly after that post, another large snake skin showed up at the edge of the concrete "patio" under our deck. (Another rat snake skin.)

Snakes are good -- they eat the mice that plague our shed.

Last week, this handsome fella was hanging around:

This rat snake / black snake was about 5 feet long -- possibly the former owner of one of two shed snake skins we've found this spring.

A nice close-up of the head.

Yesterday, while hanging up laundry, I almost stepped on this one:

Lon has seen this snake before -- it has a burrow under the concrete pad under our deck. At first I feared it might be a copperhead (very venomous!), but it's more likely to be a juvenile rat snake which can have this coloration. (The head isn't triangular enough to be a copperhead, and it lacks the two "pits"on the top of the head behind the eyes. I couldn't see the shape of its pupils.)

Today was more disturbing:

Lon heard a timber rattlesnake under the shed while he was getting out equipment. Later, it had coiled up next to the ramp to the shed. It clearly didn't like us coming and going. Lon threw a piece of wood at it and it slithered back under the shed. I hate killing snakes, but if this one continues to hang around, it may have to go.

'Nuf said!

Lots of Rain!

While we were on a short trip to visit family in Georgia and Alabama,  couple of cloudbursts sent enough debris down intermittent streams to clog our culverts and wash across the road. We had some work to do to clear them!

This is supposed to be a gully -- but it's filled about three feet deep in silt and debris.

We never like to see evidence of water washing over our road!

After a lot of work, one of two pipes is mostly dug out.

Before we finished, both culverts were open. The silt and debris had been level with the road.

We hauled three truckloads of debris to other places on our land.

Snakes

Lon spied this recently-shed snake skin while he was watering what passes for our landscaping.

This snake is over 5 feet long. Probably a black rat snake.

A closer look at the head. The holes for eyes were quite visible.

Someday I’d love to watch a snake shed its skin.

[Update early June: We now have a second snake skin of about the same size about 10 feet away from the first.]

Is this the same snake that doomed our old truck? David came across this snake skin when he was going to use our truck while we were in India, but Maria convinced him to leave it (the truck) alone. By the time I got back two months later, mice had taken over the engine compartment and I never could get the truck started again. Eventually, this truck was turned into NPR programming.

Reviewing my old photos, I find that I have pictures of black rat snakes almost every year. Maybe this snake explains why the baby bluebirds disappeared from their nest box earlier this week. Haven’t seem mom and dad bluebird around either.

David has other connections to snakes:

In grad school at Carnegie Mellon, David worked on snake robots.

The snake robots can climb poles and the inside of pipes.

First World Problems

A rare all-text post ...


We lost power this morning. That's not necessarily a "First World" problem. But our generator didn't start. That, too, may not be a "First World" problem -- we had a battery back-up system in India, and almost every business and apartment block in India has a diesel generator ("DG").

No problem --the generator's start-up battery was dead, so we jump-started the generator with our truck battery. But as soon as we disconnected the truck, the generator stopped. Clearly our generator battery (replaced in December 2016, so it's quite new) was out of juice. We have a battery charger, but that requires power -- circular problem! (Even more frustrating, we have solar panels -- 3 KW worth -- but because they are on net-metering, they don't give us power during power outages.)

So we re-connected and kept the truck running to keep the truck battery charged.

But -- we ran out of gas in the truck (we knew we were low on fuel). No problem -- we have gasoline stored in cans for our lawn mower, brush mower, chainsaw, and weed whacker.

But -- those fuel cans were empty. So we siphoned out of the brush mower. (The only yard machine that had gas in it.)

But -- the truck was on a slope. The gas tank wouldn't deliver gas to the engine. The truck wouldn't start even though it had enough gas in the tank.

So we let the truck roll down the hill to a relatively level spot.

Success! The truck started. We quickly backed it up to the top of the slope and our level parking area, then put all three empty gas cans in the back of the truck and headed to town and a gas station. (Fortunately, we can just about coast from our house to the gas station -- a drop of about 500 ft over 5 miles.)

Now we have a full tank of gas in the truck and three full cans of gas for our yard machines.

After three hours, the electricity came back on. (A tree had fallen on the power lines between here and Clifton Forge.)

And we need to find out why our generator is not charging the start-up battery.  But that's for another day....

And we need to fill our gas cans before all three are empty!

Straw Bale Garden

Way back in 2012 we grew a few plants in a small "straw bale garden". Then we went to India in 2013 and never pursued the method further. Now we're trying again -- on a larger (but still modest) scale.

We set up 16 bales of straw (that's what fit into the 6 1/2 ft bed of our truck) along the edge of the fill that makes up an access route to the back part of our house. It's mostly sunny, but will have shade in the very late afternoon/evening.

Then we collected the compost we've been "aging" for the last year. We discard all of our plant-based food scraps along with some fall leaves and other garden debris into a compost heap. Each year we start a new pile and let the old one mature into compost. At the right edge of the photo you can see yesterday's project -- a replacement "fence" that holds our recycle and trash bins. The old one was pretty flimsy to begin with and had one too many an encounter with black bears. (The bears ignore the compost and go straight for the garbage, which is in bear-proof trash cans. They've never gotten into the trash cans, but they have bitten through the 1/4 inch thick plastic.)

We spread the compost on top of the bales, worked it into the top inch or two of the straw, then planted seeds. Lon then soaked the bales with the rainwater we collect off our shed.

These gnats are my summer nemesis. They may be tiny, but they bite and are way too easy to breathe in. This is the "sky" or "up" picture from my "Picture Post" -- a way of taking photos from the same vantage point over time.

Jackson River Scenic Trail -- Smith Bridge to the Bath County Line

Last fall we walked part of the extension of the Jackson River Scenic Trail while it was under construction. A mild winter meant that a lot of the work could be continued. It's now almost completely ready -- a few of the road crossings need to be finished, and there are no amenities (picnic tables, toilets). The extension almost doubles the length of the trail.

The first, and one of the longest, bridges on the new section. Last fall we had to ford the stream here.

This bridge came along quickly since the old railroad structure was still intact. Last fall we gingerly walked across a bridge deck composed of rotting railroad ties.

There's about 100 feet of very rough surface just south of the Natural Well road crossing.

A new access point (Cedar Creek trailhead) at the northern end of the trail has been constructed.

The trail ends at the county line. I hope that someday Bath County will fix up their part of the old railroad bed and the trail will be complete to Hot Springs.

A very nice turnaround loop has been constructed at the northern end.

Lon was waiting for me to finish taking photos.

The northern 2 miles or so of the new section is less populated than the southern parts. A ground hog (woodchuck) ran up a tree as we rode by. On Thursday, we saw a black bear with a cub.

Clearly the ground hog doesn't read signs -- he's trespassing. (See below.)

Property rights along the upper Jackson River are contentious. Virginia takes History (with a capital H) seriously, and the property rights here can be traced back to colonial times and direct land grants from the King of England (Crown Grant). Once the US Corps of Engineers built Gathright Dam on the Jackson, the river below the dam was declared publicly accessible. Courts have since declared that while the riverbed is privately owned, the water is not. So it is legal to canoe/kayak/tube down the river, but you may not touch the river bottom or the banks.

Snow - Finally!

Until yesterday it was an almost winterless winter. But we got a bit of snow overnight:

That big, gloppy, heavy snow that covers every branch. About 3 inches fell.

But what a difference an hour made. As the temperature approached the freezing point and the winds picked up, all the snow came off the trees. No where near as "magical" now!

By the afternoon, the snow was gone, but the temperature eventually dropped to 13°F (-10°C) with windchill below 0°F (-15°C). Cold!