it ain't sunshine and pretty flowers

Gardening can be down right disgusting at times, with a hint of discouraging and disappointing.  The stem of the pumpkin plant has been eaten by some type of bug, maybe ants.  When I pulled on it slightly  the stem became completely detached.  I am not sure if I should have left it down, but I pulled the whole thing up and chucked it into the compost pile after I pulled the two pumpkins.

I am not sure how long these will survive, but I will keep them in the house in the hopes that they last until Halloween.  I was hoping to get four pumpkins. Two for the kids, one for our niece, and one so that I could try to make a homemade pumpkin pie.

And the Survey says!

When you live in the concrete jungle you usually have a pretty good idea where your property lines begin and end.  Of course there are many a neighbor who have had a dispute over small patches of land, but it gets even harder when the boundaries are out in the woods covered with over grown brush in areas where a fair number of poisonous snakes are found.  The survey crew has been out in the woods over the last week trying to big up these old markers.

Some of the points are fairly easy to locate because the corner posts from the old fence are still standing in a couple places, but just getting back to those corners can take a whole bunch of hacking through brush with a machete.  Even more to get a clear signal for the GPS devices that they use to mark these spots.  Luckily the kind of survey we are have done does not require them cut a line of site from one corner to next.  If that had to happen I would have to cut the lines myself due to certain budget restrictions.

Most often each spot is marked with some type of buried metal.  Pipes, old tools, sometimes old rifle barrels where used to mark property corners.  Working from the field notes on the deed they have to locate each one and clear enough area to get a GPS signal. Most often the marker hasn't got any actual marking on it at all, but since that should be the only reason to bury an old piece of rusty pipe out in the woods you know when you have found it.  With two machetes and a metal detector they have found all the marked corners of the property and are drawing up the survey. 

Some of the markers are from when this property used to be part of one large piece owned by the Kirby lumber company.  The survey crew says that a few of these concrete markers should have had some brass plates on them with field notes them from way back when, but the plates have come off.  They don't need to find the plates if they locate the marker, but I am going to check around these areas with our old 1970's metal  detector and see if I can dig any of these up.  I figure that in ten years I will be able to do the survey with an app on my iphone.  It might be sooner if they ever figure a way to get a better signal out here in the boondocks.