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pine needle harvest 2010
Thursday, October 21 2010
I'd heard predictions for rain showers today, so I got up early this morning to rake pine needles to replenish the household supply. Pine needles are an important commodity around the house, used for insulation, kindling, compost bulk, and incense. This is the best time of year to collect them, when they're lying on Dug Hill Road and not too contaminated with other leaves (or gravel, pine cones, and dog shit). Later in the season the highway department comes through and vacuums them up, so I can't procrastinate too long. And I also don't want to collect them after they've been rained on. So this morning I ended up collecting two wheel barrows full just before the rain started coming down in earnest. There weren't as many needles to collect as there have been in past years, and I found myself having to venture down Dug Hill Road nearly to the driveway of our downhill neighbors to get as many as I feel I need. As always, I stuffed them all in our doghouse, which otherwise goes unused.
The rain petered out fairly quickly without drenching the firewood I'd gathered yesterday. I ended up bringing all of that back and putting it in the woodshed. It came to two carts' worth, meaning I've gathered six carts for the season thus far.
Gretchen was out again tonight, so for me it was yet another teevee night. I ended up watching the 1982 gross-out horror classic The Thing, the beginning of which I feel I might have seen before. The stomach-turning special effects were surprisingly good given the primitive technology available in those days. Also interesting was the fact that the cast was entirely male and there were absolutely no romantic subplots. It's usually impossible to completely elide such an important aspect of the human condition from a two hour movie, but then again, The Thing was set entirely in Antarctica.
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