Worked up a nice sweat this afternoon…

It hit sixty degrees today! And no wind, light cloud cover … time to dig out the back ditch.


The drainage ditch from the gully behind the cabin had filled up with silt again thanks to those two big ash deposits. It’s the worst kind of mud I’ve ever encountered, and now I wish I’d given it a few more days because I worked harder than I really needed to. But I got the ditch clear from the 90o turn at the top of the ditch to the graywater drain, which you can sort of see in the lower left-hand corner of the ditch in the photo. There’s quite a bit left to do downstream from there, but that’s mostly brush-chopping rather than mud-digging. The ow-my-back part is done now.

Also got quite a lot of yard clean-up done, both wind debris and just junk that piles up because “I’ll get to that when it’s not a foot deep in slush.” All in all it really turned into a fairly productive outdoor day. 🙂

About Joel

You shouldn't ask these questions of a paranoid recluse, you know.
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5 Responses to Worked up a nice sweat this afternoon…

  1. Ben says:

    I think that the digging-out-from-winter portion of your year has definitely commenced.

  2. Mike says:

    Time to say goodby to the winter marshmallow bod… Nice. While you’re working up a sweat, I’m looking outside at a foot and a half of snow still on the ground. I’m just chomping at the bit to get started on the spring to-do list. Dang!

  3. Cederq says:

    Joel if you don’t have a mind about me asking what level of amputee? Are you above or below the knee? Does that kind of work bother your stump much? I may be heading to above the left ankle amputation due to a chronic infection in my ankle and wanted to still keep being active and gardening.

  4. Joel says:

    I’m off below the knee but only because an overachieving surgeon put my knee back together from little tiny parts. To this day I’m not always sure from day to day whether I should be grateful.

    I don’t know how an amputation just above the ankle would even work, in terms of how a prosthesis attaches. But a properly fitting socket can be perfectly comfortable for normal activity – unless your normal activity involves being a stevedore, because the thing that will put me in pain and even actual damage is a lot of back-and-forth with heavy weights. Exercise like shoveling doesn’t bother me much – I’ll run out of breath or interest before I’ll be stopped by pain.

    One thing you definitely want to avoid if you’re gonna have a tiny little stump like mine is putting on a lot of weight. I can’t even hike with a heavy rucksack very long without pain. Anything that drives your stump into the socket with more force than the socket is designed for, over and over, will wear you out fast.

  5. Cederq says:

    That is good to know. Something I am sure none of us look forward to. Oh, by the way I got your first book Walt’s Gulch and started reading it tonight. I will let you know what I think of it. So far great!

To the stake with the heretic!