Wayne came to investigate whether suitable gravel for the road was obtainable on the site, and he started by scraping the thick layer of peat moss off the road.  What he found was that most of the road was just fine and needed no gravel, except there were some deep ruts caused by the machine that hauled out pulpwood before I even bought this place.  The only place that needed something more was a short stretch that goes across the boggiest part in the very bottom of the route.  That took cutting some poles and laying them in a hole where the ground was very wet.  So I guess the road is basically ready, after 2 days work on it with a machine, and no loads of gravel at all!  Hurray!  Now the rest of the area will have to be cleared and most of  the wood chips he made scraped off into a pile, and I will be ready to lay out the labyrinth.  Yahoo!
      

It is a long time since I posted anything here, but that is because nothing new has happened for a long time.  Recently I decided I have enough money to go ahead and have the road finished so I can get in there and finish the clearing.  But I have been unable to contact the guy who was doing the work.  Even when I tried to call his father I got nothing.  But I finally got through to his father's office, where a friend of mine who works there occasionally, answered the phone.
      He said Timmie has moved his equipment to Alberta or sold it, and has split up with his wife.  So who will I get to finish the job?  I need someone with a dump truck and a dozer.  I know people with dump trucks, but I don't think any of them has a dozer.  This is liable to cost more than I was expecting. I sure wish I had been able to finish it last year.
    I think I will try to call Wayne, with the mulcher and ask him to come look at it to see if he can get across in this dry weather.

A couple weeks ago, a woman called me who didn't even have my name, but some friend of hers had told her that I could use lilac wood and she had just cut down a lilac bush. I told her I would ask my friends and see if I could find someone going to Halifax who cold pick it up for me. Some friends did go, but they didn't get time to go get the wood. But sooner or later, I will get it. A woman I have known for many years also told me she had cut down a lilac and would give it to me, but I haven't got it yet. I guess I could just drive over there and get it.
I just decided I should post here about that wood, but I see that I haven't posted about the Christmas fair I went to the 3rd and 4th of December. I sold over $2300 worth of spoons, but not so much lilac, because I don't have much lilac wood left. If I added up how much was lilac, I forget how much it was.
I have spent the last few days cleaning up the scraps, making little spoons and spreaders out of the scraps I saved from making bigger spoons and spatulas, and a good many of those scraps were lilac. So I made a bunch of lilac spoons, but they are all pretty small, or even tiny.

They did work. Timmy is back for a couple weeks from Alberta and he and John K. came and hauled gravel and spread it on my road into the area where I want to make the labyrinth. They spread 14 loads of gravel and billed me a $2100 for the gravel, $315 for spreading it and $150 for haulin the dozer over here, plus tax. Timmy said 15 cm of snow is predicted for tomorrow, which probably puts an end to the project til spring, but I won't be able to afford any more til I sell some more lilac spoons and things anyway. He thinks it will take about that much more to get the road clear across the bog. Fooey, I was hoping to be able to finish it this fall so I would be able to plant in the spring.
I need some more lilac wood, I think, to be able to make enough more things to raise that much money!

November 22, a sunny day, and the equipment operator has come with a truck I can hear down at the road and has walked up and started the bulldozer and is driving it down there. Has he come to work, or to take the machine away? We will soon know, I guess. He didn't come talk to me.

Pouring rain all day. No sign of the operator, but then it's a holiday. But it rained enough it may not dry sufficiently before it snows. It was warm today though. I wish I'd looked at the temperaturein the afternoon.

As you can see, if you look at the dates of these posts, it has been over a month since a heavy equipment operator I've dealt with before promised to come look at it, but nothing happened. I called him and he said again he'd come but I didn't hear from him. So I called again and he said he had come but it was too wet. He said he'd come again. He did and wanted to know how much mony I was willin to spend before he brought the equipment back from wherever it was. I told him and he said he'd call Timmy, who owns the machines.
Yesterday I went early in the morning to take my car to have a rear wheel bearing replaced but they never got to look at it that day, so I had to stay overnight at my daughter's place, and they got it done sometime in the middle of the day. I went to a store and a gas station and came home, and I find the dozer here. So he is finally ready to begin. But heavy rain is predicted tomorrow and tomorrow night and rain the next day, so we will see how far he can get.
Delays and mechanical problems have been plaguing my effort to get enough spoons made for the Christmas fair I'm going to the first weekend in December, too. One of those delays is that a woman who promised to bring me a piece of lilac she cut down went to the US so I will have to wait til she comes back to get that. As I said last post (or was it the one before?), I am almost out of lilac wood except for small scraps. I wish I had some for this fair coming up.
Terron