The Internet Gods Relent

The internet gods have finally relented. My ISP is Comcast, which has hereto been reliable, but my signal went down Thursday evening and only resumed this evening. Every time I phoned I got a different story: the signal from the Master's in Augusta caused the disruption; it was a problem in my house; there was a system software problem; and oh, yes, the problem is in my house, and no, we can't possibly send anyone out there before Monday afternoon.

So before my signal goes out again, I'll post some more April photos.

Cottages and Cabins and Bungalows, Oh, My!

Our little city was founded as a summer getaway for Atlantans. The original lots, which sold in the mid-1930s for $69.95, were a mere 20 feet wide by 100 feet deep. Tents and trailers were eventually replaced by cabins-- many with a single room and no indoor plumbing.

Over the decades many of the lots have been combined and cabins have been expanded, rebuilt, demolished, or lost to fire, so today we have buildings from every decade.Every home is unique. Most are small and could be called cottages or bungalows, and a few might most accurately be called cabins.Each has its particular charm.

The postage stamp-sized lots are full of trees, flowering shrubs, and yard art of every description. The houses are of every shape and every color. This makes Pine Lake a visual extravaganza.

I present here some of Pine Lake's houses. Maybe you'll recognize yours!

I'd like to say that I picked my best shots-- not necessarily the best or most interesting houses. For some reason my walk today up Oak and back down Pine was particularly productive. I've actually taken more shots of the houses on the back side of the lake, but morning sun spoiled many of them and I just couldn't get a good perspective on others. Still, you'll see home from both sides of the lake.

So anyway, here are quite a few of our community's bungalows, cottages, and cabins.Click on the photos to see them in large format.

Click MORE, below, to see the rest of the photos.

Taking Photos

On my 14th Christmas my parents gave me a cheap plastic camera. I don't remember the format, but it must have been 110. It had a serious light leak, and I had little budget for film or developing, but I loved the camera and had a lot of fun with it.

Despite the small format and little in the way of controls, I nonetheless got a few good shots. Here's a photo of my Dad's beat-up 1950 Dodge pickup. For three-and-a-half years I rode 20 miles to school in the morning and 20 miles back in it.

Here's a photo of my siblings.

Click MORE, just below, to continue

Early April Photos of Flowers

To see more, click More below

Dredging the Lake

Young People Swimming in Pine Lake, ca 1940s

A young lake is said to be oligotropic. It is usually relatively clear, high in dissolved oxygen, and deep and receives few nutrients, thereby supporting little plant and animal life. As nutrients increase, together with siltation due to the acts of humans and nature, plant and animal life increases. The lake then begins to mature and is referred to as a balanced mesotrophic lake. The continued siltation and accumulation of organic matter begin to fill up the lake, making it shallower. This, together with proper nutrients, increases the growth of aquatic plants, particularly algae, and the lake becomes mature, or eutrophic, with low water transparency, large organic deposits colored brown or black, and often hydrogen sulfide odors. If there is an excess of nutrients, the algal growths greatly increase ("bloom"), die, and decay. The decay process uses up more oxygen to the point of there not being enough for other forms of aquatic life. As the growth and decay progress, the lake fills with organic matter and and silt to become a marsh and, eventually dry land.

     -- Salvato, Nemerow, & Agardy, Environmental Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, 2003, p. 551

Dredging the Lake

The average lifespan of a man-made lake is about 75 years. During that time sediment carried in by the lake's headwaters slowly settles on the lake bottom, making it more and more shallow. As the lake's depth increases the temperature decreases; this leads to increased algal and bacterial growth which can pose a hazard to swimmers and fishermen. Eventually the lake will fill with no longer be a lake.

Our lake was created in the mid-1930s-- 75 or so years ago. The eastern portion was purposefully shallow, the western portion less so. Snapfinger Creek apparently fed directly into the lake-- along with all its silt. At some point-- I believe it was the early 1940's-- the city created a berm along the south side of the lake, creating a separate channel for Snapfinger and a flume for inflow into the lake.This certainly reduced sedimentation, but by the beginning of the twenty-first century the lake was moving inexorably toward eutrophy. The lake had become warmer as it had grown more shallow, and bacterial counts often precluded swimming.

The solution to this problem is, clearly, dredging-- draining the water from the lake, removing accumulated silt and hopefully making the lake a bit deeper than it was originally, rebuilding the berm along the south side of the lake, refilling the lake, and restocking it with native fish.

Happily, this is about to happen.

In future posts I'll write more about this project and document its progress with photos.

Mobbed

Today, high over the lake, I saw a hawk being mobbed by a crow.

Mobbing is a term animal behaviorists use to describe the individual or group harassment of a predator by a prey species. It's most often seen in birds, but occurs in a variety of mammalian species as well. The purpose seems to be to alert other members of the prey species to the presence of the predator or to protect the mobbers' offspring by distracting the predator.

If you've ever seen two or three or more birds doing an aerial ballet with a larger bird, you were watching a mobbing.

My  zoom lens was far too short to allow a close-up, but I did get some photos. Here the irritated hawk dives on the crow.

The Draining of Pine Lake

Above: Lake Water Empties into Western Wetlands

The Draining of Pine Lake

For several weeks now the waters have been slowly draining from the lake. This is in preparation for a 1.5 million dollar dredging project which the city has been lucky enough and smart enough to organize. The eastern (upstream) half of the lake is now dry, and the western half will soon follow.

I'll write more about the dredging, but today, here are some photos.

Click MORE, below, to see the pictures.

More March Photos (2 of 2)

More exciting photos of our pocket wilderness...

To see the rest of the photos, cllick MORE, below.

March Photos (1 of 2)

March brought spring to Pine Lake. Here are a few of my March photos of flowers and animals and people. I'll post more March photos in a few days, then some posts about the impending dredging of Pine Lake.

CLICK MORE (BELOW)  TO SEE THE REST OF THE PHOTOS

February Photos

February Photos

I saw my first 35mm single lens reflex camera in the 1970s; It was a Canon AE-1, and I eventually bought it from the friend who had been foolish enough to show it to me. When it eventually broke and I could find no one to repair it, I bought a Minolta Maxxum. Although the Maxxum had autofocus and automatic metering, I never really warmed to it and didn't take many pictures with it. It was stolen in the early 2000s when someone broke into my house.

I replaced the stolen Maxxum with a digital camera, but never really warmed to it. So when I retired a year and a half ago I used a bit of my 410k money to buy a used AE-1 (just so I'd have a good film camera), and  a first-generation Canon Rebel digital SLR-- both on eBay. I bought a bigger zoom lens, a flash, a set of filters, and a couple of extra batteries and memory cards-- also on eBay, and I was in business.

Or so I thought. I didn't take many photos the first year. But this year I've been carrying the camera as I walk about in Pine Lake and have been taking a lot of pictures.

Although film aficionados swear emulsified celluloid is intrinsically superior to the charge-coupled capture devices of electronic cameras, there's a lot to be said for my Canon Rebel. It will shoot automatically, and yet it will allow me to compose my own shots, setting exposure time, lens opening diameter, ISO, focus, and white balance. I can take hundreds of photos before I need to replace the battery or will fill the CompactFalash memory card that holds images-- and best of all, when I get home I simply remove the memory card from the camera and insert it into a slot on my computer and I have instant access to the images-- instantly and without writing a check to Walgreens.

Below the fold are a few of my photos of Pine Lake, all taken February 2011. (Click READ MORE, just below).

This Little Place

Pine Lake, 1950s. Photo by Claude Suttle

This Little Place

If you happen to be reading this blog and know nothing about Pine Lake, GA, let me tell you about my little city.

Pine Lake is an incorporated city in the middle of Metropolitan Atlanta. It has its own city hall, court, government, maintenance workers, and police force, and an elected mayor and city council. The little city lies about 10 miles east of downtown Atlanta, in Dekalb County, just off Rockbridge Road. With a population of around 800 and a land area less than .25 square miles, it's a tiny place. Many people who drive on Rockbridge every day have no idea Pike Lake even exists.

Created in 1937 as a planned resort for people eager to escape the city, the developer offered tiny 20' x 100' lots for $69.95. During its first decade, the city consisted of one-room cabins, tents, and trailers with wells and outdoor plumbing. Over time the trailers and tents disappeared and rooms were added to the cabins, turning them into cottages. City water, sewer, and gas lines were run and property owners began to live in the city all year round.

Pine Lake was long ago enveloped by bustling Atlanta. Today, the Metropolitan area stretches a good 30 miles east of downtown Atlanta and at ten miles Pine Lake is considered "close in," but the city retains the girl scout camp ambiance it had at its birth.

Many of the houses date from the founding of the city, and every one of the approximately 200 homes is unique. Builders of newer homes have for the most part had the good sense to build to fit the aesthetic, and new structures blend into the quirky ethos of the city. Houses fill the bulk of their lots and trees are everywhere. Lawns, in the rare places reached by the sun, are pocket-sized and surrounded by flowering shrubs and trees. Homeowners paint their already unusual houses unusual colors and express their individuality with yard decorations ranging from pterodactyls on their roofs to painted mannekins half-buried in the ground.

Most of the homes are small-- they have to be to fit on the tiny lots. Minimum lot size today is 60' x 100', but many homes sit on 40' wide parcels, and one (it happens to be mine) fits on a single original 20'-wide lot.

There are no McMansions in Pine Lake, no huge lawns, no three-car garages. Instead there are single family dwellings and a half-dozen or so small apartment buildings, lots and lots of trees, and of course Pine Lake.

The lake is the jewel of the city and lies at its center. It's not a big lake, maybe .1 square mile in area, but it provides a focal point for recreation and city events. Residents and visitors can swim in the summer, fish all year round, launch canoes or kayaks, or walk the trails that encircle the lake or the paths in the newly-acquired-and-landscaped upstream and downstream wetlands. A city-owned gazebo, a beach house, and a newly-renovated clubhouse provide space for activities; city-sponsored and private events are also held in the park that spans the southern shore of the lake.

The Residents of Pine Lake are diverse. There are lots of professionals, many artists, single people, couples, and families with children. Residents are gay and straight, black and white, and of many ethnicities and religious backgrounds.

Unlike most communities in twenty-first-century America, almost everyone in Pine Lake knows almost everyone else. There are plenty of opportunities for residents to meet one another-- at festivals, concerts, and potlucks, while enjoying the lake, at city hall meetings, or at city meetings, online via the three active newsgroups, or through the Pine Lake Association for Involved Neighbors. Social activities are frequent, and unlike most places, attendees can and do walk to events. There are parades, pancake breakfasts and international suppers, an Octoberfest, an annual lighting of the lake, concerts and art shows, a city-wide yard sale, and any number of classes and special events.

Despite its serene and homey look, Pine Lake has not been without its political and financial problems. During the early 90s the city's police force was far too large and far too overactive in stopping and ticketing residents who passed through the city on Rockbridge Road, giving the city a reputation as a speed trap. Several mayors were removed from office, and at times the city was broke and unable to pay its bills promptly. Today many citizens struggle to pay property taxes, which are higher than those of surrounding unincorporated Dekalb County. The area outside the city has been hit hard by the recession, and crime has always been considerably higher in neighboring unincorporated Dekalb than in Pine Lake.

Pine Lake still struggles with its budget, but government has been stable for the past ten years under the leadership of Mayor Greg Zarus. The size of the police force has been reduced and the city has been successful at acquiring federal, state, and county funds for development and expansion of its waterways and assorted city projects.

Pine Lake is a wonderful and surprisingly affordable place to live that is still unknown to most Atlantans.

She's Ba-ack!

So jeez, I got sidetracked for a couple of years and totally forgot I had made this blog. So sue me, already!

But I'm back, and will post regularly, promise.

Sorry for the lapse.