What's the Name of that Song?

A lot of times in life we go thru places or things and we hear music in our heads.  Some of us can even nail down the tune quickly.  But for some of us we have to work at it.  Saturday at Lane St. a bunch of us worked along the Shelton Lakes Recreation Path cutting briars, mowing hay and fixing boardwalks:

Mike Flament was leading this week's work party and replacing old boards in the boardwalk with Shayaan.  The two of them were probably hearing The Pretenders, while they worked.

The RecPath was busy Saturday too.  Mike and Sam probably thought they were working for ConnDOT on I-95 with all the traffic on their bridge job.

The hay was pretty thick along the RecPath and was getting out of control.  Normally the Land Trust has a farmer who hays it by now.

  

This mower was a out of it, but luckily we had a mower that was up to the task.

Jim and Mark drove over with the Gator and our mower and tried to cut back the hay field to restore our 3 foot wide RecPath back to 8 feet wide.  I think they both inhaled their own weight in grass seed that day.  If you have any bare spots in your lawn you can book them ahead of time and they'll stop by your home and just roll about in the grass and help re-seed the place on their way home.

 

This is the after picture.  We have to do some more close mowing or other controls to keep the meadow from taking over the RecPath, but this was a great start.

Rachel, Bella, Val, and Graham were doing a fine job clearing the cuttings and making the RecPath more presentable.  It was really nice having so many good volunteers take time out from their weekend to maintain one of Shelton's really special open spaces.

In case you were wondering where all that yellow pollen was coming from; White Pine flowers along the edge of the meadow.

There were other wildflowers along the Path in the meadow.

Grahmn was doing a great job with the new bushcutter.  It's deadly, but he just kept going with it.

Trail Safety Tip:  If you're running, biking, or walking on the trails, and volunteers are using power tools ahead of you, get their attention, and wait for them to stop before you pass.  You can get seriously hurt if they swing around suddenly and hit your with a brushcutter or chainsaw, which almost happened Saturday.  A trail runner almost scared the crap out of me when he passed as I was getting ready to swing around.  When you're working, hot, tired, and getting sprayed with rocks, poison ivy, briars, etc, and you're covered with hard hats, face masks, safety glasses, ear muffs, etc. you just don't hear people coming up behind you silently.  We want all our trail users to have a good time and return home with the same number of legs and parts that they set out with, so please, get our attention before you try to pass someone working on the trails with power tools.  For our sake and yours.

Shayann and Mike screwed down all the decking on the boardwalk after they made repairs.  Thanks to Betsey, Val, Grahamn, Mike, Sayann, Bella, Rachael, Jim, Mark, and Terry for all the hot work.  It really helps when there's a decent turn out.  The RecPath thru the Land Trust Meadow at Lane Street is one of Shelton's hidden wonders, and well worth the visit if you've never been there.

 At the end of the work party you turn off the equipment, pull off the ear muffs, listen to the birds and look around.  It's really a nice corner of Connecticut when you stop to enjoy it.  Now, what was that song that was going thru my head at the end?