Doing Our Thing During COVID

 Six months!?  It's been six months since my last post?  Hard to believe, at least for me.  But it is true, time has gotten by me, at least where this blog is concerned.

My readership has dropped to embarrassingly low numbers.  This blog is more of journal for my own purposes rather than a public publication.  The upset in all things normal caused by the cruelty of COVID-19 is easy to blame for my reticence to sit down and write this blog.  It seemed as if every day was the same as the last and not worth the effort to write about.  But after doing some photograph file maintenance today I realized that we stayed busier than I thought.

The open outdoors seemed to be the go-to thing with everything else either closed or with severely restricted access.  Riverside Park hosted two disc-golf tournaments in June and September of 2020.  The September tournament was several weeks later than planned but the civilian that organizes the tournament did a great job of making it happen.  Cyndee and I were dispatched to the golf course to mow everything accessible by our large zero-turn mower and garden tractor mower.

All day mowing job at Riverside Park

Cyndee and I got tagged for the mowing job because the summer volunteers that usually did the landscaping and trail maintenance jobs had gone south for the winter.  So we loaded a rusty trailer up with two mowers and made a day of it.

Speaking of rusty trailers, I thought it was a shame that a piece of equipment that we volunteers used and depended on frequently was so dilapidated.  I asked to and was approved for rehabbing this cancer-ridden eye-sore.

After a significant number of hours on a wire-wheel grinder, the crust of rust had been taken down to smooth (well, more like rust pitted) metal and then two coats of rust reformer were applied.  I can't say enough about how well the rust reformer works.  I've used it on several projects and it always performs great.  Once the rust reformer cured it was time for a matte finish spray paint.  All this was done with cans of spray paint.  The compressed air spray gun we have in the shop was way too big to use.  Using the spray can amateur method was the way to go.  Two coats of rust re-former and five coats of paint.

Another one-off team effort project that came up was to assemble and replace all the decades-old conference room chairs in the Allatoona Lake Headquarters.

Cyndee unpacked and staged parts while I assembled.
There were several volunteer teams working on this day but we
each took a part of the room and kept our distance.

35 chairs assembled when it was all said and done.
A whole truckload of cardboard and packing had to be
hauled to the city recycle.

While many organizations that usually participate in the annual Allatoona Great Lake Cleanup dropped out last fall there were still enough that wanted to do it to make it happen.  So on a bright, crisp October morning hundreds gathered to scour the shoreline for all things trash.  Getting good shots was a little more challenging this year as everything was done at a distance with a telephoto lens.

The morning started off a little chilly but once things got moving and bags started getting heavy the cool air felt good.

Even with quite a few organizations choosing to stay away due to COVID this year, there were still shorelines full of people picking up refuse.

Two of our finest, rangers Davis and Simpson were at the ready.

Proud of their haul.  This small scout den pulled a pretty good load out.

This troop is made up of about six or eight dens/packs and they scour Kellogg Creek shoreline every year.  The clean-up efforts seem to be having an effect, their accumulated total is a pile a fraction of the size from previous years.

Not everyone on this glorious day was participating in the cleanup.  This beautiful lake is attractive to outdoor enthusiasts year 'round.

Click and enlarge.  These two are very fashionable for being on 
stand-up paddle boards.  To bad there is not a PFD in sight.

November rolled around and yet another delayed disc golf tournament was about to happen.  We got tapped again for the mowing.  Actually it was more like leaf mulching than mowing.  Not much grass was cut but tons of leaves were.

Since the contractor seasonal mowing crews were gone for the winter we had access to two zero-turn mowers.  Cyndee and I made quicker work of the golf course this time than we did back in September.

In November our volunteer coordinator arranged for an all-hands-on-deck workday to do some much needed maintenance on a chestnut tree orchard.  We met every Tuesday for a month to get this place up to snuff.  There is a story behind this stand of chestnuts, a little over a hundred of them.  The American Chestnut is in crisis.  It is being wiped out by blight and disease transmitted by invasive species.  The COE in cooperation with the Agriculture Extension Agency and a local university have been hosting a study of breeding blight resistant chestnuts.  The university bred the saplings and the COE provided land and hands to plant and maintain. It has been several years since planting and many of the saplings have outgrown their anti-browsing cages.  Our assignment was to weed, mow, prune, and increase the size of the cages of the growing trees and remove and store cages from trees that did not make it.

 

Looks like our work paid off.  After a cold and dreary winter where it was not real obvious how successful we were, the onset of spring really highlighted what a difference was made.

A perineal job at Allatoona Lake is the collection of discarded Christmas trees.  Most places that take trees like this generally grind them up into mulch.  But the COE repurposes them by making them into fish attractors.  There are numerous spots around the lake that have long cables staked to the bottom of the lake.  These spots are dry in the winter when the lake is at its winter low level but are submerged anywhere from eight to fifteen feet at summer full pool.  Trees are collected from drop-off spots all around the lake and transported to a location scheduled for rebuilding.  This year (2/21) a fishing jetty at one of the popular boat ramps.

As luck would have it, the truck Cyndee and I were using got a flat on one of the duallies.  And that same luck put us at the absolute farthest point from where the maintenance guys would be dispatched from.  It was going to be hours before this truck would be back in service.

But there were plenty of other trucks and trailers to be loaded.  We just paired up with them and went on about our business.  On this day we moved a little over 200 trees to their staging area where the tree trunks could be drilled in preparation for heavy aluminum wire to be threaded through and then tied off to the anchor cable.

Volunteers John (me) and Tony pose for a quick pic by Cyndee.  Some of these trees were big, there must have been some folks with really high ceilings.  Or maybe they just Clark Griswald it.

 

Once all the staging and prep work is done the installation can begin.  People on this day are a variety of park rangers, DNR (Department of Natural Resources) and fishing clubs.  Other than Cyndee and I there to photograph the event, no other Volunteer Villagers are there.

Another of Allatoona's finest, Ranger Jones, walks a couple of trees down from the staging area to the anchor cables.

Ranger Jones telling Ranger Pingle; "I caught a fish thiiis big".

More trees coming down.

Anchor cables secured to concrete "curbs".

Making the connection.  Using an aluminum wire to thread through a hole drilled in tree trunk and then wire-tied to anchor cable.

Three of six sections loaded up with trees and ready for the coming summer's crop of fry

In late 2020 I was asked to submit photos to an internal Corps of Engineers photo contest.  Here are the ones I selected: (If you follow this blog, several of the photos have been previously published and may look familiar.)

CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

The contest is focused primarily on water related activities but they did have some non-water categories.  That was good for me because I had almost nothing on the water that met the contest's criteria of it exemplifying safe practices, i.e. wearing life jackets and if rangers in the shot that they are "properly uniformed".

Much to my surprise one of my least favorite photos took first place in the non-water sports category - The guy in the blue shirt playing disc golf.

I'll finish this post with a project that was done entirely by other volunteers, all I did was photograph it.  The Chimney Swift has seen a decline in population in recent years and loss of habitat seems to be a contributing factor.  To that end, the Corps of Engineers have provided land, building materials, tools and supplies to build a chimney swift tower.  A condo for birds if you will.

This is not an off-the-cuff project, it is following exact requirements for the location and construction of the tower.  It is hard to tell just by looking at it but there are a lot of design features that must be met in order to attract the swifts.

Pre-build work began in the depth of winter in our on-site shop.  As much construction as possible was done where there was easy access to power equipment and a warm building.

Two volunteers, Cindy and Clista, drill pilot holes.

The "gang-pusher", volunteer Rick, has three sections ready to go.

Once the weather warmed enough to make pouring concrete in an off-grid location possible, the foundation was poured and the tower base was fixed in place.

Foundation and tower base in place.

Hefty foundation.

At first glance the foundation looks like it may be suffering from a little over-kill.  But there is a lot more to go.  It will be much taller and need to be able to hold fast in a stiff wind.

To close out here is an animated group of photos of the tower build: