Road work

I'd been wanting my son to bring down his tractor with box blade to cut down the high center in the road. He finally agreed to come yesterday because he had a day off for Memorial Day weekend. Coincidentally, all my scheduled birder visits are over for the spring migration. I would rather have had the road done in early April before they all starting pouring in. But I take what I can get. I just wanted the high center cut down in about five places, certainly no more than ten. But while I was busy raking the first place my son decided, unbeknownst to me, that as long as he was there he'd do the whole road. OMG!! That meant I had no choice but to rake the whole road. Later, as I lamented, he insisted I just needed to pick up a few of the larger rocks (football size) and it would be fine. Do I live in a different orbit than everyone else? Look at this mess. I can't expect people to crunch over a mile of that torture. Not to mention that I fully believe that sharp rocks in the road dig into the surface of the road (think can-opener) so that it turns it into dust that blows away. I had no choice. Hopefully a gentle rain will come along and pack the road before any blows away. Basically, there is no high-center left for low clearance vehicles to stress over.

So I raked 8 hrs yesterday and 4 hours today just to get it usable, not to manicure it like I think it should be. Teresa Keck helped for a couple hours yesterday morning and in the evening my two sisters worked on a patch for over an hour. My plan is to leave it until after a huge rain washes it bad and then manicure it better. Here is the best stretch of road after I raked it. 

At the moment, I can't even lift my Canon camera. I'm in pretty bad shape, but I didn't have a choice. In some places I filled the ruts with the rubble because I didn't have the strength to rake it off the road. But at least vehicles can straddle the ruts. I should have taken more photos. Maybe when I get back down there. Trail work will have to wait until I recover. 

UPDATE: Hadn't been in town long when my sister called that she got .55" of rain. My sweet niece went to CMO to check my rain gauge and I had the same amount in it. So I have to run down there tomorrow to refill feeders. That much rain will for sure overflow the internal baffles and they'll be swarming with bees if I don't.  Hopefully, the rain didn't damage the road. I'll find out tomorrow. No water ran into the tanks so it was a slow soaking rain.