As of yesterday afternoon, the biggest part of my gardening year is over. Clean-up from the fall, spring weeding, mulching, flower baskets planted and veggies planted in the bales. Phew!
It took way longer this year than usual. Part of this was the weather. We had spectacular weekends but then I wasn’t following through because Monday – Friday was too cool. I do not like to garden when I’m cold and I certainly don’t want to wear a coat out there either! Then the mess from the fall was much bigger than usual. And all my fault. A triple whammy, in fact.
My gardening season came to an abrupt end the day after my birthday last August, when I blew out my first knee. Then right about the time I might have gotten to some fall clean up, the other knee went. That meant that apart from some watering (most of which YA took care of), I didn’t do ANY fall clean up. No dead-heading the late summer flowers, no cutting back peony stalks, no raking (although YA is a little bitty bit).
The second problem was last year’s mulch. For reasons that pass understanding, I chose big chunky wood chips last year. As we were spreading them about last spring, I was thinking I’d made a mistake, but it didn’t become clear how obnoxious these wood chips were until we were cleaning up this spring. They didn’t seem to have broken down at all and were a mess to work around/with.
Then there was the Creeping Charlie fail. Normally I do a great job of weeding the Creeping Charlie menace but last summer, I was busy in July, thinking I would just do a big push in August. But, then…. well, you know. My nemesis ground cover didn’t give a fig about my knees so there was way more weeding needed this year on that front before the mulch could go down.
I’m feeling quite relieved… there will, of course, be plenty of gardening going forward, but not the three/four hours a day grind we’ve been going through. Time to enjoy!
When was the last time you “shot yourself in the foot”?
For quite some time, I avoided Hudson & Rex, a Canadian tv show about a cop and his partner, a beautiful German Shepherd Dog. But I’ve gotten hooked; it shows on a couple of different cable stations so when I find it showing, I’m all in.
I noticed a couple of weeks ago that one of those two stations plays a few ads A LOT. One of those is about a power washer. You know the kind where some guy says “after using this, I threw out my old power washer”. Blah blah blah. I mute it a fair amount.
Imagine my surprise when a box was delivered yesterday and I came downstairs to find YA assembling a little power washer. It isn’t the power washer from tv (thank goodness); she bought it with award credits from the merchandise side of her company’s business. No money actually changed hands.
She had it out yesterday afternoon, doing the side of the garage and the driveway where we had all the mulch piled up for the last couple of weeks. I guess it works pretty well; she informed me of a couple of other projects she is thinking about.
I’m glad she likes to take on these kinds of projects because it would never have occurred to me but I am a little spooked that the tv seemed to predict the power washer entering our lives.
Hang on tight, I feel like this blog is more ‘all over the place’ than most of them.
I’m so close! A couple more big days, and that will be it for spring work. I finished planting corn about 9:30 PM Thursday night. Just in time as I had to get back to ‘work’ work at the college. Commencement next week. Hung lights over where the stage will be, so the stage can be placed over the weekend.
Things have really moved fast this last week in the farming world. With the nice weather, THOUSANDS of acres have been planted.
I still don’t know which day is which yet.
Last Saturday I spent all day working an event at one of the high schools.
Sunday and Monday I think I farmed.
Over on the rented ground I run, it got fertilizer applied on Tuesday while I was out with the guys doing Township Road inspections. (The roads are all still there. Need a culvert replaced on one road, and some tree’s trimmed, and some ditches cleaned). Wednesday I dug up the fields again, to incorporate the fertilizer, and get it ready for planting. Hoped to have Padawan digging so I could plant, but he’s not a big fan of the tractor. And I don’t want him on the highway. I found him other work to do. I mentioned he was all about cars. One day he said, again, “What should I do about my car?” I said, “Get a girlfriend?” He didn’t like that answer.
He spent 5 hours figuring out what was rolling around under my car. Eventually he found a golf ball had gotten under the seat somehow, and then under the frame. Well. Clearly I put the golf ball in the car at some point… one of those from the tractor and I must have put it in the car. Then forgot about it…
My collection of golf balls
I cut off the stumps of the dead Ash tree’s that were cut down earlier. Got a company coming in to grind them off on Tuesday, then will plant the Larch tree’s. …. pause for us all to say, “The Larch”.
Kelly and I moved a couple of the windbreak shrubs, just to fill in some places we missed. And we rigged up a barrel and hose to water them. That worked but it was kinda slow. I have ordered a 12V pump but it won’t be here until Monday. And then I went up a hill and the barrel slid out the back and busted off the hose attachment. Oops. Should have put a strap behind that… Wonder why I didn’t think of that at the time. Woulda Coulda Shoulda.
I listen to podcasts in the tractor. Smarter than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus is a favorite. Then The Moth. Or a lighting one called Light Talk, modeled after Car Talk. Smarter Than Me is really good; highly recommended.
I listened to Arturo Sandoval for a while. I knew a couple of his songs, then heard an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Since I was a trumpet player, I listened to Maynard Ferguson, one of my musical heros. His birthday was May 4th. I believe I have a good embouchure and breath control from all those years of trumpet playing.
Wednesday late afternoon I got over to the last 35 acres and started planting. Got about 2 acres in when a gauge wheel fell off the planter. That’s an important part. It was 5:45PM. Called John Deere and they had the part. Drove the planter back home, drove to Plainview for the parts, (after hours, they leave parts in a metal locker out back) (and got sandwichs at the sub place in town), $130 for that part. had it fixed in about 10 minutes and called it a night.
Thursday Morning Padawan got a different car. Maybe that will calm down some of his talk. Maybe.
But Thursday I got all the corn planted! Friday the co-op applied fertilizer for soybeans and they will be next.
When we replaced some points on the digger last week, I used special, ‘Long-lasting’ points. Supposedly they’re extra hard. And I notice the steel looks different once shined up by the dirt:
Interesting pattern on the long lasting points.
Regular points
There goes the profit.
Oats is growing.
A flat tire filled with mud. Hmm…..that’s weird. I had to cut it open because it was so dang heavy we could barely lift it. Well that explains why.
Our kitchen is very long and runs east and west. The living room is at the east end, and an open area where we keep the piano, media cabinet, and musical instruments is at the west end. There is a window on the far west wall. The photo below shows the west window by the media cabinet, and was shot ftom the livingroom.
Our kitchen cupboards are stained a dark walnut brown. They usually don’t show much dirt or spills. We try to keep things pretty neat and clean when we cook, but spills do happen and we wipe them up, of course.
I generally feel pretty good about the cleanliness of our kitchen, and a casual glance most times of day would support that assessment. However, when the sun shines through the far west window, it illuminates every spill, smudge, smear, and dust particle on the cupboard doors that makes it look as though we have been flinging food all over the place and leaving it to it drip down and dry. That is a lot of cupboard front to wash regularly, but the revealing afternoon sun keeps me on my alert. It is one of my least favorite cleaning chores. I suppose I could just shut the blinds to block the sun, but the Dutch in me couldn’t live with the knowledge that the cupboard fronts need cleaning.
What housecleaning tasks do you dislike the most? What do you like or dislike about your kitchen cupboards.
Our initial plan for heading to St. Louis after Nonny’s passing was to take the dog and leave the cat at home with our fabulous neighbors coming over to feed her and take care of her box. Then the dog passed and I knew immediately that I simply could not leave the cat at home. I have a very bad history of pets passing while I’m gone (it’s happened twice). We did think about boarding Nimue but even that was giving me anxiety.
I bought a brand-new kitty carrier – bigger than the one we use for the block-and-a-half transport to the vet – and a new harness. The plan was to let her out every 100 miles or so and I even brought an aluminum cake pan for a litter box and put some litter in it for traveling. All of this turned out to be pointless. Nimue had no interest in how comfortable we were trying to make her. She didn’t make any noise, but the getting out of the carrier on a harness was not on her list of things to get done that day. The first time we took her out, she sniffed around a bit, but more puffed up than we’ve ever seen her. She wouldn’t eat a treat, wouldn’t drink any water, certainly didn’t do any business. Crickets.
We tried two more times with the same result. After that we quit trying. When we arrived at Nonny’s condo, she headed straight underneath Nonny’s bed. I was pretty sure it would be time to go home before she came out. For the next three days, we had to keep Nimue in her carrier for most of the day – with people coming in and out, boxing up stuff, tossing stuff – there was no way to keep her safe except in her carrier. And when we were gone from the condo, we also kept her in the carrier. Both my sisters, my niece and nephew all had keys and I didn’t want to run the risk that they might stop by for some reason and accidently let her out.
All of this made me feel terribly guilty – after all, we were torturing her because of my anxiety. She would probably have been happier at The Cat’s Meow than with us. So, it was with a bit of joy that I came into Nonny’s bathroom late on Wednesday afternoon to find Nimue ensconced in the sink looking like butter would melt in her mouth.
On Friday, when we headed home, we put Nimue in the kitty carrier with a few treats, put her on the backseat and drove off. We talked to her quite a bit during the day but never attempted to take her out – 9+ hours. Within minutes of getting home, she had eaten, done some business and settled down on her kitty bed in my room. Like nothing had ever happened. Apparently no kitty ptsd here!
On the way home from St. Louis, YA were debating about what we should pick up for lunch and she told me that she had noticed a sign (when we were still in St. Louis) that Steak `n Shake was offering an Orange Dreamsicle Freeze. I don’t know if I’ve whined about S`nS dumping their original Orange Freeze – but they let go of it at the same time they dropped the grilled cheese. I haven’t been there since then – about 6 years.
But the new offering sounded good so we decided that fries and a freeze would be an ok lunch. YA found the closest S`nS and we let GPS get us there. As we were waiting in the drive-thru line, we noticed several posters in the windows of the eatery touting their all new beef-tallow. These are their exact words “return to tallow is part of a broader trend to revive traditional cooking methods and highlight authentic flavors.” Snort. I asked the person taking the order if it were true that the fries were now being fried in beef tallow. When he said yes, we cancelled the fries and just got the Freezes.
When I became a vegetarian in the early 70s, it was the end of French fries for me as all the fast-food places used animal fats for frying. Burger King was the first to switch over; for many years I got a whooper with no meat (yes, that’s just a glorified cheese sandwich) and fries. Then Wendys switched, then S`nS, and eventually even McDonalds gave it up and moved to vegetable oils. So this move back to beef tallow doesn’t make much sense to me. I don’t know the science about the health benefits (although RFK touting beef tallow makes me wonder…) but from a planetary point of view, I don’t think we need more cows eating way more grains than it takes to feed humans. My cynical side says S`nS is grasping at straws trying to deal with their currently financial struggles and think this might be a way to differentiate themselves from the pack.
Regardless, YA and I ended up at Subway for our lunch to go with our Orange Dreamsicle Freezes, which unfortunately weren’t all that great. I can’t imagine I’ll ever go back to a Steak `n Shake again.
Fries? Shoestring, curly, seasoned, sweet potato? Or just pass the tater tots?
Sometimes I think maybe I should have gone back to school to get a PhD in family manipulation. I got my Masters training from the master – my mother. Even when I could feel her working her magic on me, I succumbed time and time again.
The inheritance of this talent is a two-edged sword. It certainly works wonders sometimes but then I occasionally feel guilty. I should probably feel badly that I don’t feel THAT guilty. Some things are a slam dunk… if I ask YA to clean in the bathroom directly, she might or might not. But if I leave a wet wash cloth on the edge of the tub or some hair from my brush on the counter – voila! Bathroom cleaned in no time. In the dining room (where she works from home on Mondays and Fridays), if I spread all her stuff (bills, junk mail, computer mouse, keys, etc) all over the table, then she cleans it up lickety split. If I just organize it into a pile myself, the pile will sit there forever. I never ask her to come help me with yardwork but if I ask for one thing – like moving a bag of mulch from the back to the front, she almost always stays to work. My latest discovery is that if I just rinse out the kitty fountain and mention that I’ve done it, she will take the fountain apart and do an extremely thorough cleaning. The funniest thing about all this is that if you saw her room or the sink after she’s been working in the kitchen, you couldn’t imagine she would have any cleanliness streaks in her.
We had two weeks between my mom’s passing and when we went down to St. Louis to clean the condo and have her service. During that time, YA had two trips, one long work trip to Cancun and another for-fun trip to Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms. She had planned it a couple of months back and was scheduled to get home on Sunday night and we were leaving very early on Monday morning for St. Louis.
A few days before she left for Washington DC, she told me that I should get the car washed and vacuumed before our trip. Luckily I was on my game at that moment so I said “well, I’ll try but I have a lot to do for the service and getting ready for the trip.” Three hours later, I looked out the back window and found her vacuuming my car – see the header photo. Heaven forbid she should have to travel to Missouri and back in what she considers to be a health hazard. (Brekke is NOT a health hazard unless you compare her to YA’s car, which is clean enough that you could eat off the seats!) After she was done, I volunteered to run the car through the little car wash down on 54th while she was in DC.
Win/win, right? What chores do you prefer to outsource?
There are many down-sides to not having a dog. No walking companion, no one to keep the kitchen floor “clean”, no big furry foot warmer on cold nights.
And then there are the squirrels. They have absolutely figured out that there is no dog patrolling the territory any longer. And they certainly don’t see me as a threat. Yesterday I made a trip to get something from the car and the squirrel on the feeder and the squirrel sitting on the swing hardly even looked in my direction, much less fled in terror.
They’re also eating the hot seed cylinder that they’re not supposed to like. I called Mr. Bird, the company in Texas who makes the cylinders to ask about the problem. They said at this time of year, when squirrels are having their young, they are particularly ravenous and will deign to eat things that might not taste too good to them. This phase will probably pass but in the meantime, they also make a hotter cylinder called “Disco Inferno” that I can try. I looked it up and Gertens carries it. Guess I’ll add that to the cart when we are there next week!
Hopefully there will be a dog to guard the sanctity of the yard some time this summer; until then we’ll just have to put up with the squirrels laughing at us!
Things really have been going well so far. Last Saturday we closed the spring college show, the last show for the director, Jerry. He’s retiring at the end of the academic year. He and I have worked together at the college for 25 years, (I was free-lance the first few years) and have known each other longer than that.
Notice the students in the background.
Did you make the connection? His name is Jerry. And we like ice cream.
Our buddy Brian, in a scene from the play. Brian has been around, like, forever. As a student he was the thorn in my side. A fun thorn, but one of those kids that pokes the bear right up to the edge. He’s one of our besties now.
Monday we got 0.65 inches of rain. I had concert rehearsals Monday and Tuesday with a final spring concert on Wednesday and we finished planting the windbreak bushes. The oats started poking out of the ground on Thursday. Got some more corn planted, too. Making progress.
I have 25 Tamarack trees to plant yet. I didn’t realize they’re also known as a Larch. And when I heard that, my head immediately said, in that Monty Python voice, “The Larch”.
Saturday, at one of my other jobs, I’ll be working the Bernie Sanders visit to Rochester. As usual, I’ll be way in the back in the booth. His advance crew has been very nice and on our walk through with six Rochester Police officers, the high school kids were sure staring at us. I saw one young lady, whose mouth fell open at the sight of us, and I said, “You’re in trouble now.”
On Tuesday the township had a culvert replaced on the only road into our place. The neighbor and I just planned on staying home. As part of my township duties, I went up and was an official inspector. They had a shovel I could lean on.
It was interesting to watch them start the project. Another contractor had a high-pressure water jet, and a giant vacuum, and they made a trench to expose the two telephone lines and the fiber optic line that bisected the culvert on the West side. That fiber line through the culvert is what started this whole thing. Turned out to be another phone line on the East side. The old culvert they could cut in pieces to get out. The new one, the contractor put all the way to the west, then slide it in under all the cables. Added the aprons on both ends, and add some rip-rap. Good for another 85 years.
Padawan is getting more experience every day. There are days I feel like I spend all my time explaining things and answering his phone calls. I try to remember he really doesn’t know anything about this stuff. And the more he learns, the more valuable / knowledgeable he becomes. The other day I had him move the tractor and digger on to the concrete, then I showed him how to replace digger points, and I went out and graded the road. He found a broken shank, which he learned how to replace one other day, although this one was a bit more difficult, and it took a few more phone calls but he got it. Two weeks ago he would not have know what a broken shank was or that it was important.
He cut grass. Until he ran it out of gas. I mentioned that it has a gauge. “That thing sucks!” he says. “Don’t blame the tools” I remind him. “That gauge was blinking way over there. I cut grass for another hour!” …so you had an hour’s warning to fill it?? He walked away from me. And got a gas can and refilled the mower.
He has a one-track mind and that track is cars. My goodness he talks about cars a lot.
Friday morning a crew was out to burn the CRP ground. Conservation Reserve Program. They burn every five years as part of the regular maintenence.
I spent 6 hours chisel plowing the cemetery field I started running last year. It was the last field to be harvested last fall, just before it snowed, so I didn’t get it worked up last year. After I got that worked up I spent an hour planting corn.
It’s been some real nice weather.
Sunset
Moon rise
BEEN TO A BEN AND JERRY’S ICE CREAM STORE?
GOT A FAVORITE MONTY PYTHON OR FAWLTY TOWERS MOMENT?
Prologue. Before YA and I went to St. Louis for my mom’s service and to clean out her condo, my middle sister mentioned that we should keep an eye out for Nonny’s wedding ring. She had stopped wearing it a few years back (due to her arthritis) and apparently it was now missing. When we arrived and stopped at my sister’s house, she talked about it again. Over the course of the next 24 hours, it was clear that she has also told everyone else in the family about the ring being missing.
Everybody looked all over the “normal” places and one of the funnier parts of the week was all of us, one by one, discovering the plastic bag in the closet labeled “Wedding Ring”. Unfortunately we all had our hopes dashed one at a time as it was discovered over and over again that it was an old quilt in the wedding ring pattern. Shoot.
On Tuesday, in the back corner of a closet, we found “the box”. It was a security box – a little surprising since it probably cost more than we figured Nonny would spend. We were pretty sure we had all of Nonny’s important papers so were a little perplexed as to why she had a high-level security box. It took us quite a while to find the keys as we had made quite a mess of her condo, emptying out drawers and closets to start sorting into piles of “toss, keep, donate”, and in that time, we had a whole lot of wild speculation going. Were we all adopted and the papers were in there? Witness protection proof? Secret bank accounts? All most all of us (there were ten of us in the condo at that point) were thinking we would find her wedding ring.
This is what we found when we opened the box:
As a non-believer, I was a little hesitant to unseal this envelope so my nephew pulled it out of the box. He was a little wary as well. There was one piece of paper in the envelope:
What? Wars, Vaccumn (sic), David Surgery, Dorothy, Sunday School. What? Two hours of discussion. The list was obviously made two and a half years ago. That’s when David’s first surgery happened and was when Dorothy, her neighbor across the hall passed away; we think that wars, David and Dorothy were ideal candidates for God to keep an eye on. But vacuum and the Sunday School class? And why this single sheet in this single envelope labeled God and locked by itself in a very secure box? I mean, Nonny was an inveterate list-maker. We found several of them while we were cleaning but none of the others made the box.
During our talks, we came up with more wild ideas about why, why, why. I won’t go into all of them here but I’ll tell you mine, simply because it got the most laughs.
Sometime in the future, 10 people (all strangers) will be staying at a fancy spa on a little island in the Caribbean. Beginning the first night of their stay, two of these folks have envelopes delivered to their room. In each envelope is a notecard with the word “wars”. At breakfast, they all scratch their heads about it, but then later in the day, both folks are found murdered. And of course, the only boat has been disabled and no one’s phones can get a connection off the island. Too far to swim to the nearest island. One the second night, two more folks get an envelope with a card waying “vacuum”. You guessed it… both those folks are found dead during the next day. The remaining six folks have one day to figure out the clues before the next deaths….
Any better thoughts? Do you have a lock-box? Will it be a mystery to your heirs?
Trail Baboon 