Picking up brush, and more planting

I got there bright and early this morning. Ray, Jim and I hung out in the roundhouse for a little while. I watched the two of them prep #4 "Laurel" for a day of running, and waiting for the fog to burn off a little. There was so much fog this morning.

Way back on my first day volunteering, Ellen and I cleared a ton of brush and weeds. I wrote then that

We pile the brush in neat, orderly piles by the side of the track; later we'll haul a gondola with the work locomotive and pick up all the brush for disposal.

And that's what I did this morning. Since the steam locomotives take more than an hour to steam up, and we're not open until noon on weekdays, so I'd have the track to myself (which was reassuring, since it was my first time unsupervised out on the mainline). I took #2 "Juniper", the work locomotive pictured on the right, and a flatcar, and worked around the whole track a few times. I wound up with nearly 3 car-loads of brush cleared off the track, which makes it look a lot neater.

Plus, hey, I was running a locomotive, by myself, blowing the whistle at the right places and in the right sequences (there's a code, you know).

I spent the afternoon doing more planting. I put in more liriope and lilies, like yesterday, and added a few lavenders in 1 gallon containers. I promise we're not working our way through the L plants; we're doing some Junipers later, and they start with a J!