I've Been Working on the the Route

All the live long day! I've been working on the the Route just to pass the time away!

Yesterday and today, I put in hours pulling out NM locust by the roots and sawing off what I couldn't pull it out. Those plants are tough!

Picture me bending over, holding the trunk of the prickly locust with one hand and furiously hacking at it with my tiny saw, all the while worrying a mountain lion will pounce. Chances of that are probably pretty slim, especially since today's work was within sight of a paved road but it pays to be aware! ; D I much preferred the ones I could yank out of the ground but, boy, it was back-breaking work even then because some of them required heavy-duty pulling and always with both hands!

My wonderful work gloves from Walmart have holes in the left-hand fingers so I got lots of thorns that will work themselves out over the next week (that is, the microscopic ones I couldn't see well enough to dig out). In the meantime, my fingertips are sore! I threw out the Walmart gloves and have an unused pair that Los Alamos County gave away Earth Day 2008 for picking up trash.

Yesterday, I picked up a large Bed, Bath and Beyond bag full of trash from a beer party at a road near the Ocean. Today's trash was minor but the locusts were much more numerous. Anyway, this ought to hold it until next fall when I'll pillage the locusts again. There are still loads more but they aren't growing in the middle of the trail or overlapping the sides.

It was so strangely quiet up there today. It was cloudy which was great because it kept the temps down. Maybe clouds muffle the sound. I didn't get started until a little after 1pm and didn't get back to the car until a little after 5pm. No rain at all today even though it looked like it could rain a lot. I only walked two miles total because I only had half of the four mile roundtrip Route to clean up. I more than made up the mileage earlier in the week! Besides, it was pretty strenuous tangling with those locusts!