6/4-6/14 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

On the way, I stopped at Priscilla's and turned on her water sprinkling system for the season. Then I proceeded on to Monroe where I visited with Uncle Charles. The drive over the pass was extra slow because I was in a long slow line of cars following a truck that was painting stripes down the highway. I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 1:09.

The temperature was already 70º but it was nice and cool inside the cabin. Unfortunately, there was one mouse in one of the traps. Since the damaged roof still had a mouse-size hole in it, I trusted that that was how the mouse got in and I didn't worry about it.

After raising the flag, and turning on the valve to water the giant sequoia named Brian, I decided to whack down some weeds and brush. They had gotten a good start and this is the right time to cut them. They are still pretty tender so they are easy to cut, and they have grown far enough so that after they are cut they don't come back very much for the rest of the summer.

I use an old fashioned whacker which is a light-weight cutter that you operate by swinging it like a golf club that just misses the ball. It cuts on both the forward swing and the backward swing, so it's kind of fun walking though the grass and weeds whacking it down.

After lunch and a nap, I went back out and whacked some more brush up to the privy and into the woods toward the giant sequoia grove. On the way I noticed a few holes in the watering hose that were spraying water. When I got to Brian, I was dismayed to find that no water was coming out of the hose, so the tree wasn't getting any water. I figured it was because of the leaks.

I went back to the cabin, got a roll of duct tape, and then proceeded to tape up the leaky hose as best I could. It was enough, though, because now the end of the hose was delivering water to Brian.

When I have the valve open to water Brian, it leaks around the valve and that water runs down and waters Rosie, the rosebush, just in front of the porch. Since Rosie is under the eaves, the ground around her would be pretty dry without that leaking water so it works out well for both Brian and Rosie. Rosie thanked me by prodigious blooming. The bush is full of beautiful blossoms right now and they are worth taking the time to stop and sniff them.

Last week there had been a few carpenter ants roaming around inside the cabin so I had set out some ant bait for them. Now, there were a lot more ants and they were in every room. I couldn't see that they had found the bait because they weren't crawling around the bait containers.

There were a lot of ants on the kitchen counter and they had found the faucet. They crawled up inside the pipe and I suppose they used that for a water supply. They needed to be controlled and the only way to do it is to use bait that will kill the entire colony including the queen. The question was how to get them to take the bait.

I repositioned the bait containers, which were Amdro brand that I got at Lowe's, so that they were up on the counter where the ants were thickest. I also had a bottle of some expensive ant bait called Uni-Trac II that I had used some years ago and there was still a small amount of liquid in the bottle. I laid the bottle on its side up on the counter and left the cap off. I hoped that the ants would get interested in it. Next week I plan to bring up some Grant's ant bait that I can get at Home Depot and also some aspartame (NutriSweet).

On Thursday, the ants were swarming over both the Amdro bait and the Uni-Trac II bottle. If either of them work, I should see fewer ants from now on.

After breakfast, I turned on Brian's valve, went to the truck and got Cindy, and then went into the woods to check on Brian. On the way, I used Cindy to cut down brush that had been too big to whack the day before. I cleared the trails somewhat and was happy that water was flowing to Brian.

Next, I went up on the scaffold and installed two ceiling boards before stopping for lunch and a short nap. My nap was cut short by an ant that had gotten up my pants leg.

I went back out and installed more ceiling boards. I was able to find salvaged boards that were already stained. Some of them were boards that had been torn out of the damaged roof but were still usable. These were not only already stained, but they were the right length too.

Other boards I cut from left over remnants from earlier ceiling work. I had ripped a narrow strip from the groove edge of some pretty long boards. The groove pieces had been used to finish up the final space between purlins and that had left some fairly wide boards with the milling and tongue still in place but no groove.

I ripped the tongue off those boards so that they could mate with the cut side of boards with no grooves. So instead of a tongue and groove fitting, I used caulk between the boards to seal them against insects. The boards were also a little narrower, but up in the out-of-the way place they were going, nobody will notice, or if they do, it won't matter. By the time I quit for the night. there were only about three boards yet to do before the job was completely done. I felt happy about the progress.

By dinner time, I noticed that there were quite a few dead ants lying around the floor and there wasn't as much ant activity on the counter. I took that as a sign that the poison was working. I also noticed that the ants that were still alive were removing the bodies of the dead ants. It will be interesting to see what I find next week. Maybe they will have cleaned up the cabin for me and all disappeared. That would be nice.

On Friday morning there was still some ant activity but it seemed to be somewhat less. If they aren't gone by next week, I will be prepared to do some more serious poisoning.

When I went to work on the ceiling outside, I discovered that I had waited almost too long to staple down the screen over the top board in the ceiling patch. As it was, I was barely able to get into the space between the rafters to run the stapler because the ceiling boards I had installed closed that space up a little too much. But I was able to do it and got the screens stapled down. Then I nailed up one more board and quit for the week. I shot the video scenes for the final video on roof repair. I decided that a video showing the installation of the last couple boards and the removal of the scaffolding was unnecessary. I left for home at 12:50 happy to be near the end of the roof repair project.