As on this remote slope in tiny town, most of our midlife houses have standard asphalt shingles, cupped , humped, and cracked by sun and rain. Lichens and moss have found a moist home and scattered fairy ranges of tundra have evolved.
Field flowers followed in natural secession , and then woody plants like these black raspbery brambles.
Next on this roof came Honeysuckle. This one appears to be of the foreign invasive variety, but take it from Davey, if you uprooted it or one of the sapling cottonwoods (which actually may be adding some structural support to the entire system} THEN you and the chimney and all would likely fall into the everlasting darkness.
Here and now, in this rapidly aging world, we have to deal with things as they are, and immediately take care of the obvious chimney problem.
In place of the tree junk and rooted growth which has built up behind the chimney, there should be what roofers call a cricket: a short ridge between two little roof slopes, to shed water each side of the chimney. Nature loves a Cricket and has built one here, but it is not doing a great job of shedding water.
Davey's solution?
It's high time for a green roof conversion, and anyway, the process is
well advanced. So we made a U shaped aluminum trough and stuck into the cricket, to help it drain through. Then another to make sure the water was carried past the receding eaves.
We also gooped the minor flashing gaps at the chimney side, and made sure the squirrel entrance into the cricket was not going to take water and was unobstructed. You do not want to shut squirrels in your roof.
They might try to get out by way of the bath room vent .
And , in case I didn't say this at the very beginning. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WALK ON A ROOF IN THIS CONDITION. GET OFF OF THERE.
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