TCC for 5/20/08

The Caretaker's Concern 5/20/08
Lake Temp. 53 F.
Ghetto temp. 57 F.
Island tmp. 57 F. Yesterday's L/H: 50/51 F.
Current conditions: Mostly clear sky, star filled moonlit, mild wind from North West.

The daily text report has been suspended from May 17th, 2008 to after the weekend of May 17th/19th, 2008. However, daily photos will still be posted.


--The Caretaker

TCC for 5/19/08

The Caretaker's Concern 5/19/08
Lake Temp. 52F.
Ghetto temp. 49.5 F.
Island tmp. 50 F. Yesterday's L/H: 52/50 F.
Current conditions: Mostly cloudy, occasional breaks of moonlight, wind mostly from the South and West, blustery, around 5 to 10 mph, a bit chilly.

The daily text report has been suspended from May 17th, 2008 to after the weekend of May 24th/26th, 2008. However, daily photos will still be posted.

--The Caretake

TCC for 5/18/08

All photos from today, shown in order taken.






The Caretaker's Concern 5/18/08
Lake Temp. 52.5 F.
Ghetto temp. 53.5 F.
Island tmp. 50 F. Yesterday's L/H: 52/65 F.
Current conditions: Dead calm, total cloud covered sky, touches of fog and low lying clouds here and there, light sprinkling of rain, a bit of chill in the air.


Report will follow tomorrow morning.

--The Caretaker

TCC for 5/17/08

All photos from today, shown in order taken.







The Caretaker's Concern 5/17/08
Lake Temp. 53F.
Ghetto temp. 60 F.
Island tmp. 60 F. Yesterday's L/H: 52/58 F.
Current conditions: total cloud coverage, little to no wind, damp and moist from earlier rain.

Report will follow tomorrow morning.

--The Caretaker

TCC for 5/16/08

The Caretaker's Concern 5/16/08
Lake Temp. 52.5F.
Ghetto temp. 55 F.
Island tmp. 56 F. Yesterday's L/H: 54/64 F.
Current conditions: total cloud coverage, no wind.

The Caretaker was finally able to get over to Clay island and do some leaf wrangling, he was a bit concerned about losing his raking form due to a lack of practice, but after just a few swift sweeps of the rake he was back in fighting shape. Enough with the leaf wrangling, even the Caretaker is getting board of it.

While in town today doing some errands the Caretaker noticed that much was in bloom, all the Spring flowers on the plants, and bushes, and trees, were creating quite a cornucopia of aromas for the noses. The Caretaker should make a point to get into town more often, using some of his free time to dawdle amongst the villagers' many various floral plantings. Given all the polluting noxious fumes we have pumped into our atmosphere, it is good, every once in a while, to provide the nose with something other than say, vehicular exhaust. Take your nose on a holiday, go smell the flowers. Treat the world, plant a garden, be it floral, produce, herb or mix of all three, it will make the Earth sing.

--The Caretaker

TCC for 5/15/08

The images from the Caretaker's field trip to Shelving Falls on the 13th of May have been posted on his new blog, the narrative will follow at a later date, (yet to be determined). The link to the Caretaker's new blog: The Caretaker's Travels, can be found just to the left.





The Caretaker's Concern 5/15/08
Lake Temp. 52F.
Ghetto temp. 60 F.
Island tmp. 59.75 F. Yesterday's L/H: 48.5/65.5 F.
Current conditions: Little to no wind, sparse cloud coverage, intermittent fingers of clouds streaked across the night sky, a touch of haze mildly obscuring the moon which is illuminating a large ring around it. Moon is a touch beyond half, lighting the Island in a soft blue-white, glow.

Early midmorning the Caretaker went for a paddle to do what he was supposed to do yesterday. The sky overcast with clouds, there was a brisk wind from the South, the Caretaker paddled the canoe around the North point of Clay Island to avoid as much of the wind and wave action as possible. This time around the Caretaker remembered to bring the house key, and his work gloves. While watering the house plants it began to rain, this was not looking good for the Caretaker's leaf wrangling practice session on Clay Island. After passing through the isthmus between Clay island and the mainland, out on the main body of he Lake, the cloud obscured Sunlight glimmered chrome on the ebony colored water.

The paddle back started in a mild rain that became progressively heavier, the Southerly wind began to pick up a bit, neither of which became too heavy and the temperature wasn't too cool, making for a rather pleasant paddle back. Unfortunately the Caretaker wasn't sure how long the rain would last, so he decided to put off the Clay island leaf wrangling for yet another day. Wrangling wet leaves is a rather slow arduous process, besides, it is the antithesis of the conditions used for competitive leaf wrangling, so more often than not to practice under such conditions only serves to ruin strong leaf wrangling form. With such sound reasoning the Caretaker shirked this responsibility for yet another day and merrily paddled his way home.

Later on in the morning the wind eventually died down calm. It remained this way for a while, but then come early mid afternoon the wind picked up again from the East, coming from the Narrows with many fast feet. When the wind picked up the Caretaker was up top a ladder on Cocktail point removing an outdoor light fixture from a tree that was slated to be cut down in the next few weeks. Having little interest in practicing his sky dive landing technique he decided that the light fixture could be brought down at another time and so descended the ladder. (Not that the Caretaker has a sky dive landing technique, although he imagines that there must be a lot of the bending of the knees involved.)

From there the Caretaker went on to do some other electrical work, mill wood, and various other Island work into the early evening. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day that the Caretaker can finally get some leaf wrangling practice in, if he doesn't he runs the risk of losing his title of "Professional Leaf Wrangler". Meh.

--The Caretaker

TCC for 5/14/08

The Caretaker's Concern 5/14/08
Lake Temp. 53.5 F.
Ghetto temp. 65 F.
Island tmp. 65 F. Yesterday's L/H: 48.5/63.5 F.
Current conditions: Total cloud coverage, mild to moderate in density, light wind from the North.

Late in the morning the Caretaker had planned to canoe over to G. G.'s to water the house plants and then stop in at Clay Island for some more leaf wrangling. After arriving at G. G.'s the Caretaker realized that he forgot the house key, so he hopped back in the canoe and paddled over to Clay. After arriving at Clay he realized that he had forgotten his work gloves, not that the Caretaker is above working barehanded, but he is in the habit of wearing gloves when working with his hands and to wrangle leaves without gloves would most likely cause friction burns on the palms and fingers of his hands. Once these friction burns become calloused all is well, however, during the interim it can make things a touch difficult with hands being tender and raw. So the Caretaker hopped back in the canoe and paddled back home, by now it was almost lunch time so the Caretaker lunched. The off Island obligations will have to wait for later.

While preparing his lunch the Caretaker heard a loud bang come from the South end of the Island. He went out to investigate. On the South side of the South dock was a center console type boat with three men in it, they were holding on to the dock, a fourth was standing on the dock with his fishing rod in hand.

"Having boat trouble?" The Caretaker asked, he wasn't very pleased and made sure his tone expressed this.
"We got hung up on the dock here." Said one of the men in the boat.
Knowing that this was false the Caretaker responded, "will you need help getting unhung up?"
"Oh no, we're all set."
Seeing a bunch fishing rods and gear in the boat the Caretaker asked, "how's the fishing?"
"We just got started."
By this time the fourth man was working his way back into the boat.
"Good luck fishing," said the Caretaker. He then turned his back on them and walked towards the house to finish preparing his lunch. The boat of fishermen motored away from the dock.

Every once in a while this sort of thing happens, the last time it was a pontoon boat full of "Easterners", they had brought their boat up along side of the South shore of the Island. When the Caretaker came upon them, two men from the boat were standing on the South shore, this was a mildly amusing incident, but the Caretaker will share this story at another time.

After lunch the Caretaker began the ritual raking and burning, once the fire was started he moved on to do some milling work. At one point in time, while adding some more brush to the fire the Caretaker noticed a family of Geese over on Little Recluse Island. Grabbing his camera and tripod the Caretaker took a few minutes to get some photos. Baby water fowl are certainly cute, too bad there are far too many Geese, cute as they may be as younglings, as adults they can be quite a nuisance (as flying crap machines). If the Caretaker was smart he would get his hunting license so he can harvest some Geese come the proper season. Sometime ago the Caretaker came up with a way to go at it with a Goose in hand to hand combat, he should probably give it a go some day. Arrrrrrr.

--The Caretaker