Today I installed the roof framework onto the outhouse and then installed two pieces of 7/16 OSB as decking. It was only as I tried to attach the decking that I realized my roof framework was slightly out of square, a condition I could had more chances to work against had I built the roof in place (as opposed to as an installable component). But with a building this small, errors that would be intolerable in larger buildings are trivial.
One of the complications of the outhouse is the fact that I will be installing an enormous Purple Martin house on its rooftop. This bird house was originally designed to be installed atop a 2.5 inch metal pole, so I will have to supply my own pole rising from the outhouse roof ridge to keep the various layers of the birdhouse together (the birdhouse was designed as separate layers to be impaled by the pole like chunks on a kebab skewer). I spent some time today strengthening the roof around the point from which the pole will rise. But then I found myself wondering: what should the pole be made out of? I didn't have any suitable pipes (and steel pipe of this gauge is expensive).
So at some point I went for a walk in the nearby forest looking for a straight tree about 3.5 inches in diameter. This is the size of the perforations through the birdhouse layers, though the screw thread in the top layer is for 2 inch NPT (which actually has that outside diameter of 2.5 inches). Surprisingly, most of the best trees were Ironwoods (Hophornbeam), a small, unusually dense species related to elm. Eventually, though, I found a suitable White Pine. It was alive, but in the process of being shaded out by taller trees. So I cut it down using a bow saw.
Back at the house, I processed the White Pine bole by first chopping off all the side branches and then, using a handheld power planer, reducing its diameter in places where it was too great. This worked okay, but I soon found myself craving a simple drawknife like the kind my folks had when I was a kid. But in a garage as cluttered as ours, it wasn't hard to find something that worked nearly as well, the bent and busted-up old blade from the power lawnmower. Particularly after I sharpened its old blade edges on the grinding stone, I could use it almost like a drawknife to quickly eliminate bark.
The underbark of the White Pine, particularly at this time of year, is extremely wet, spattering me with droplets of water as I worked. Somewhat surprisingly, this water didn't seem to be the least bit sticky or resinous. Directly under the bark was a soft white stringy material (cambium?) that slowly turned orange after being exposed to oxygen. The goats used to eat this stuff back on the farm when we'd feed them old Christmas trees (and other pines we'd gather for them in the winter). I also remembered something about Native Americans eating this stuff. So I put it in my mouth and began to chew, eventually adding enough to generate a substantial wad. It remained fibrous, but seemed gummier than the grass stems I often chew. It was so gummy, in fact, that I found myself automatically attempting to blow a bubble with it (though of course this didn't work).
As I did these things, I caught sight of a pair of peculiar black beetles I'd seen a week or so before. These beetles had large abdomens, tiny wings, smallish thoraxes, and large heads. When I'd last seen them, these beetles had been courting and mating, and I'd run to get my camera. But they'd disappeared before I could document their existence. Today, though, they were back, in exactly the same place, and doing exactly the same thing. But they were doing it in slow motion, as the air temperature was a bit colder now. The female had a much larger abdomen than the male, though otherwise they looked similar. They were so persistent that I worried I would step on them accidentally, so I placed an old spray paint can next to them to remind myself to avoid them as I walked past.
The web is good for some things, but animal and plant identification is not one of them. It's difficult to enter characteristics of creatures into a search engine and get back web pages having useful information. Still, somehow I managed to track down the name of these beetles using Mr. Google. It turns out that they are Short-Winged Blister Beetles, Meloe angusticollis.
The female Short-Winged Blister Beetle.
The female Short-Winged Blister Beetle again.
The male and female Short-Winged Blister Beetle mating. The female was happily eating this plant the whole time.
