3/18-20/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at about noon. It was 38 degrees and raining lightly. It had snowed again since last week, but it had shrunk down to where there was less on the ground. Spring is on the way.

After moving in, I went to work ripping plank edges and got four of them ripped before I quit for the day.

On Wednesday, I continued ripping and fitting planks. I spent a lot of time selecting the planks to make the width come out so there would be a seam at the center of the Grid F2 column. That way, I could notch the plank on either side so that there would be a tight fit around the column and I would still be able to get the planks to go in place. To get it to come out this way, I had to choose the narrowest planks I had, and of course, they were all on the bottoms of the stacks of planks. I did the necessary shuffling and re-stacking in order to get them out from under the stacks. I got all the planks fitted to the center line of the column, and I notched the one plank. I was very pleased with the fit and I am very happy with how the deck looks with those planks. It will look even better now that I am going in to the wide planks. Some of them are up to 22 inches wide. That makes for some nice looking wood.

Since the water in the creek was running pretty high, I went up to the spring to try to get a string in the stream bed where it goes underground. I used the same aspirin bottle with the parachute cord and I tried it various ways from completely empty, completely full, and several levels in between. Nothing worked. I tried feeding just the string in, and I was encouraged in that the stream sucked the string in and I just kept feeding it out. But it didn't come out the other side. I decided to give up for the day, but I just left the string in the creek and tied off the uphill end. I figured that maybe in a few days the string would work its way down and come out the other side. We'll see.

In the evening, when I was talking to Ellen on the phone, an idea hit me. I am going to try to get a plumber's snake to follow the creek bed. I am going to have to put something blunt on the end of it, but I think it just might work. I'll plan on bringing a snake up with me next week.

On Thursday morning, I spent the whole time making jigs for a Cub Scout project we were going to do that evening. The boys needed to saw with a handsaw, and I wanted some kind of a mitre-box arrangement to hold the work and help them keep the saw aligned. I also needed to round up a bunch of tools I needed to bring home for use in the project. By the time I got all that done, it was almost time to have lunch and go home. I made a quick trip back up to the spring to see if the string was peeking out, but it wasn't. I left for home at about 1:30. I didn't see any jays at all this week.