2 trips to Menards
2 trips to the hardware store
9 stones from the original “patio”
16 new stones
7 bags of sand
2 Carter women
9 hours of labor
2 rounds of ibuprofen
1 new patio big enough for our table AND chairs
Once again YA was the impetus behind this project. The initial little patio used the blocks that I had saved when we got our new sidewalk two years ago, but it wasn’t quite big enough to accommodate the chairs around the table.
And YA was very thorough. She insisted that we dig up the initial stones, lay down a layer of sand underneath everything and was scrupulous about making sure all the stones were level as we laid them down and then she spent considerable time sweeping sand into all the spaces between the stones.
Phew… hopefully no more major projects by ourselves this summer!
What do you like to have when you’re dining al fresco?
My bales are doing quite well this summer. I’m managing to keep them watered and the added calcium seems to be helping the romas keep their beautiful shape. We planted watermelon plants on one bale and as expected they are going crazy. Guinevere is enjoying hiding beneath all the tendrils that have exploded all over the place.
As well as they are doing I didn’t expect to be eating my first cherry tomato on July 3. I knew that there were a couple starting to turn but was surprised to find THREE ready for picking yesterday afternoon. The photo above is not the tomatoes I picked. After a quick squirsch of the hose, they went straight into my mouth, one after the other. All three were wonderfully sweet and juicy – no way was I waiting to go inside and get the camera.
I know this is early for tomatoes but whatever goddess of the garden is looking out for me right now, I’m thankful! Better start pulling out my favorite tomato recipes.
YA and I took a trek to Wisconsin last Friday to visit Fawn Doe Rosa. We go at least once a year but on Friday, we got a bucket list moment.
Just by the luck of the draw, we rounded the corner to the llama, mini horse and donkey paddocks to find a donkey mama on her side, just about to give birth. It took only about five more minutes and there was a baby donkey out and breathing. The staff said that the baby would probably stand in about 25 minutes. YA and I had animal food in hand, so we hung around feeding the various critters in that part of the park. The baby stood up almost exactly at the 25-minute mark. Both YA and I have seen an animal being born before (Miracle of Birth at the State Fair) but neither of us had actually seen a new baby take its first steps into the world. Amazing.
Even without seeing the new foal entering the world, it was a wonderful day at Fawn Doe Rosa. We even had a female peacock keep us company during our picnic lunch. We did try to give her some of the corn that we had in our animal food buckets, but I think she was hoping for something from our picnic basket.
There was a new design of sweatshirt in the gift shop. Why settle for the three FDR sweatshirts you already have at home when there is a new one!?!
I saw one field of peas that had been harvested, and I saw two fields that were pretty yellow. They got harvested and then hog manure was applied to them. Most likely the farmer will plant soybeans on it. (That’s about the only crop that can mature quickly enough when planting in July). Will the manure provide enough moisture to get the plants going? We shall wait and see.
The peas were pretty short and the farmers get paid by the ton for the harvested peas. Won’t be much profit there this year.
Fourth of July coming up and the corn has made knee high.
The short corn is knee high; the taller corn is up to my waist. The taller was planted May 5, then it rained for 10 days. The shorter stuff I planted May 18th.
I’ve heard a lot of farmers say the genetics for the seed has improved so much that 20 or 30 years ago, the crop never would’ve survived a drought like this. I know drought tolerance is something the dealer’s market in the seed, I just hadn’t really seen it like this.
I did have the soybeans sprayed. The fields are still pretty bare, but the weeds would have taken over, so they needed to be stopped if I wanted any hope for a crop.
I’ve been surprised at the quantity of the second crop of alfalfa that I’ve seen. No rain, and yet the yield was almost as good as first. The roots of alfalfa can be pretty deep. They’re finding water.
Weeds too; deep roots. I took some close-up photos of the corn leaves curling up compared with how it should look.
The agronomists say we’re having a lot of potassium deficiency, which makes the edges of the leaves turn yellow. The dry weather inhibits potassium uptake, and limits stalk strength, which could be an issue later this fall.
This week I hauled two loads of junk to the recycling center and two loads out to the scrap iron place.
I had two electric motors that are sold by the pound and the price was $.20 / lb for that, 5 pounds of copper at three dollars a pound, three old batteries totaling 58 pounds $0.10 / lb, and some bulk aluminum from a TV antenna, and some other odds and ends, That went for $0.15 / lb. I took out this old metal chopper box, which weighed 2120 lbs and they subtracted 250 pounds for the wood floor and beams under it which sounds reasonable. The price for scrap was down from the last time. It was $130 a ton which is better than the $90 something it was in December but not as good as the $200 something in March.
The farm is really shaping up. I’ve cleaned out a lot of random corners and I have a wagon full of stuff to put back when I’m done. I’m almost done with the ‘demo’ part of my shop remodeling; 99% of stuff is moved out, and what’s left to do is removing and moving some electrical wires. I’ve had an electrician out and we’ll be running a new buried line from the pole 300’ over to the shop. Currently the power goes overhead to an old fuse box in the old corn crib, which is the chicken pen now. Then it’s buried 200’ from there to the old shed and another old fuse box. And from there, buried to the new shop and another old fuse box. Old fuse boxes with the 60 Amp cartridge fuses in the block to pull out. I remember dad digging in the line between the two sheds. And I remember him somehow finding a break in the old line between crib and shed and splicing a wire back together. It’s time to abandon that line and upgrade.
I’ve got steel and lumber ordered for the ceiling, I’ve got some of the windows framed in and I finally got the hydraulic hoses replaced on the loader and added the new plumbing that I needed for the grapple. (It took several trips back to the John Deere dealer, but we got it!)
We had trees trimmed, and I got branches laying all over. Three maple trees that had a lot of dead wood in them. One tree I was worried about falling on the wellhouse, one I was worried about falling on some electric lines to the barn, and one tree in the front yard more dead than alive. It’s the swing tree so had to save that part of it. There are pictures of that tree from 50 years ago and the tree seems like it was the same size then.
The baby chicks and guineas are doing well. Here’s a picture of the big chickens too.
We gave Bailey a haircut the other day. She looks like a totally different dog. And we think she really likes it. She doesn’t have nearly so much hair to get cockleburs or burdocks stuck in. I think she just liked the attention. I kept her distracted and amused, while Kelly used scissors and trimmed her up. At one point she lay down on her back and almost went to sleep, so I think she was enjoying the attention.
Humphrey and Bailey sure do play well together; they have such a good time. Humphrey is twice as big as Bailey and he spins in circles and takes her whole head in his mouth, and she just lays there and waits for him to stop. Then she goes after him. It’s fun to watch them play.
Humphrey has three pillows in the house, one in the living room, one in the office, and one in our bedroom. Although in the bedroom, he alternates between the pillow on my side of the bed, or the floor on Kelly’s side of the bed, or sometimes at the foot of the bed. Ever have one of those nights you just can’t get comfortable?
I find it fascinating how he knows the subtleties of our schedule. If I get up and go to the bathroom, he doesn’t move, but it seems like if I put deodorant on, then he knows I’m going out. And he will be up and moving before I get to the bedroom door. Same thing if he’s lying in the living room. If I get up to go to the kitchen he doesn’t move, if I get up to go outside, he knows and he’s down the steps before me. What subtle clues is he picking up?
Remember back when you were dating? I was never very good at subtleties then.
CAN YOU TAKE A HINT? HOW ARE YOU AT GETTING SUBTLETY?
YA and I went to some friends’ home to have dinner last week. They live in an apartment with a security system; you ring their apartment and they buzz you in after you’ve identified yourselves. When Peter answered the ring, I said “Candygram for Mongo”. YA looked at me as if I had hot frogs on the loose.
I saw Blazing Saddles at the Grand Theatre in Northfield when it came out in 1974. I laughed so hard I almost fell off my chair a couple of times. Like Star Wars, I went back two more nights in a row to see it again. Also like Star Wars (and Princess Bride and Romancing the Stone), I dragged various friends with me on those additional nights. I’m a huge Mel Brooks fan, starting way back in his early writing days of Show of Shows into his directing years of Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and up to 2000-Year-Old Man in the Year 2000. I love that he was politically incorrect about everybody and everything.
Mel Brooks has been on my mind since we had dinner at our friends’ home because, to my utter shock and dismay, neither of them had ever seen Blazing Saddles, they were with YA on the “hot frogs” theory. How is that possible to be an older adult in America and never had seen Blazing Saddles. Isn’t there a law against that. Turns out they’ve never seen Monty Python and the Holly Grail either. I may have to re-think my friendship with them. At least they have seen Princess Bride. I might have had to leave their apartment otherwise!
Yesterday was Mel Brooks birthday…. He is 97. He’s been retired for quite some time but is still alive and kicking. He gave an interview yesterday saying that he was glad to still be alive! I’m not sure there will ever be anyone else quite like him!
Tell me about movies you’ve seen REPEATEDLY. To the point that you quote them standing in apartment building lobbies.
Yesterday was my last “real” day of work. I probably have a handful of hours to put in on final accounting but from my perspective, I am no RE-retired.
I had only agreed to come out of retirement because the programs were our local warehouse programs – a little like the old supermarket sweep programs. You get a big cart on wheels and a minute to run through our warehouse, all the while flinging stuff into the cart. These are great programs as they usually target folks who might not otherwise have the opportunity to qualify for an incentive program. The winners are all (well, just about all) extremely grateful to win these trips, even though it usually only involves one night at a Minneapolis hotel and you can’t bring your spouse/SO. We even take them straight from the warehouse to the airport! But they still seem to love it.
The photo above is the decorations for the festivities. Lots of beverages and snacks including a dilly bar car and a catered box lunch. In addition to the fun of the run, we also had a 360° photo experience in which you stand on a platform (hopefully with a tiara and bubble machine or some such accoutrements) and the camera circles around you. Then you can get the video emailed to you (or airdropped). A hoot.
I have a few things on my to-do list for the few days, but mostly I think I’m going to laze around and read and work in my garden.
If you won a prize like this, what would you prefer — a warehouse, a supermarket, a bookstore?
Went out on Saturday morning and discovered that two of my iris’ are gone! Not eaten by some little critter, but gone – as in pulled up and removed. I water these things every day so I know it happened between 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon and 9 a.m. on Saturday morning.
One was a brand new Red Raptor (the deepest reddish purple you can get without it actually being black) and a lovely shade of orange call Savanna Sunset, which I planted last year. Both of these are colors that are outside the iris norm and that I really loved.
It was quite disheartening and I feel like I’ve joined the ranks for crime victims in the Twin Cities. Obviously this isn’t on the level of car theft or having your house broken into, but it still makes me a little sad. At least both of them were just past their bloom glory for the season.
All of our car talk the other day struck a nerve here.
YA loves cars. She has always had all the cars in the neighborhood memorized and can tell you the make of any car she sees as we’re driving down the street. I wondered if she might go into some kind of automotive engineering but she never seemed interested in that route.
When it was time for her to purchase her first car, she did a lot of research. Unfortunately the first car we went to look at turned out to be one of those cars that was totaled out by an insurance company and fixed up by a third party. As these cars are generally not insurable and YA needed my name on the loan paperwork, I was able to put my foot down easily on this.
The second car was at a dealership and didn’t start. I would have left right then – what kind dealership doesn’t even run down to check that the car will start before an appointment? But she pleaded with me so we looked another car on the lot. It didn’t look to me like the kind of thing she would like but she REALLY wanted a car. The salesman then tried to convince her (while I sitting right there) that leasing a new car would be good. Her eyes got that kind of glazed-over look. I squashed this idea as well as telling the sales guy that he was out of line. But she REALLY wanted a car, so ended up buying one that had fairly low mileage and pretty good price. I told the sales guy that if he was even thinking of telling her it was pre-owned by a little old grandma, to think again.
This was the car that got sideswiped and totaled out two years later. Back down to a different dealership. This car turned out to be a stick, which was why it had been sitting on the lot for a while; the website didn’t say it was a manual so everybody who came to see it passed on it. I suggested to her that if the dealership couldn’t be bothered to fix the listing online, maybe they weren’t to be overly trusted. But she REALLY wanted a car so she signed on the dotted line. Luckily she learned to drive in Civetta, my Honda Civic, which had been a stick.
She’s whined about this car for a bit over the last few years and in the past month or so had set out a timeline (about 8 months from now) for looking for a new car.
Fast forward to last week. I got some frantic texts – she had locked herself out of her car at the station/carwash down the street. Apparently she got out of the car to pay for the carwash and the door swung shut. I know you’re thinking, how did it get locked? Well, if the car is RUNNING when you get out to pay for the carwash……. I drove down with her spare key, but of course it didn’t work. It took about 20 minutes and $80 to get somebody there to break into her car (AAA had a 2-hour wait). As I was driving home I thought to myself “that’s the nail in the coffin for that car.”
And I was correct. A couple of days ater, she took off at lunch with a “I’m going to look at a car” called over her shoulder. I thought to myself “she’s going to buy a car today”. Luckily the days of my having to go with her are over. I was correct again – she bought a car. A new car. Honda (I can’t remember the make) with some kind of hatch back and I think it’s a hybrid as well. Won’t know for sure until the end of June when she picks it up. She’s done the math and says she can afford it, although she did sheepishly say she should probably cut back on some of her clothing/shoe purchases for a while. Good thing she’s living rent-free with mom!
There’s been A LOT of car talk the last few days – I’m just grinning it and bearing it – hopefully it will die down for a bit soon. At least until it gets closer to the car’s arrival!
We took the grill out on Monday and fired it up! For many years, when YA was younger, we had an old kinda-grill that we inherited when I bought the house. It looked like it had been cobbled together from parts found in the garage and was so rickety that I wasn’t sure I could get it to the boulevard to give away before it collapsed. I felt a little guilty that somebody stopped and took it before I’d even had a chance to go in the house and make a “FREE” sign.
Our second grill was a little hibachi-type thing, but we didn’t use it much. Let’s face it, spending 30-40 minutes coaxing charcoal to just the right stage so you can heat up a veggie burger for a minute.
I finally caved and got a gas grill when YA was about 12 – got it using award credits at work. Then I splurged to get a little wheeled cart that it sits on; it was a little too big to lug around. Last year we switched from the little canisters to a big one. It works much better and saves a lot of gas.
So to celebrate Memorial Day we did grilled corn on the cob and veggie brats with all the fixins. It was a perfect day for grilling and eating at our outdoor table! And so much nicer to just turn on the gas for 10 minutes and then turn it off!
We have finally identified the bird living in the birdhouse – it’s a house wren! It took a while because she (I have no clue but I like to think of her as a her) hangs around near the birdhouse but is a little skittish about going in and out while we’re in the yard. I’m also not a whizz where bird identification is concerned.
She sings like crazy. I’m not sure how birds do it; I’d need throat lozenges every night if I gave out as much as they do. On Saturday, I was lounging about in the backyard and I thought I’d doublecheck my identification, just to make sure. She was hanging about, singing her little heart out so I figured comparing her birdsong to bird calls on the internet would be interesting. I opened the first website I found and hit play.
Her reaction was immediate. She lit off her branch and came straight at me. She didn’t get too close for comfort, but it was definitely a warning. No other house wrens allowed in her yard. I did it again on Sunday to see if it had just been a fluke. No fluke. She definitely did not want any competition and came at me again. No more bird calls off the internet for me!
Trail Baboon 