End of Vacation — The Tugboat

Today was the last real day of this extended Northern vacation for me. I’m not sure if it was that or the amount of activity I undertook but I seemed to have an abundance of photos so I’ll try to do a day in photos entry like that other time I tried it months ago. I’ll have the photo and a short blurb under it with some context. It won’t tell the complete tale of my day but it should give some insight into what I got up to.

Here is the day’s breakfast. It was fairly similar to what I’ve been knocking back most days that don’t involved a McBreakfast. You’ll note the english muffin, egg, cheese and perhaps the dab of sriracha ranch dipping sauce. I had some big slugs of water with it, I felt I needed to hydrate back up to account for yesterday’s lack.

Here is a shot of Mother’s garden. Our visitors yesterday were enamoured with it but my parents consider it boring, just a task to do. They’ve been doing it for over twenty years according to Mother, I’d guess longer. In my youth the Big T hauled up some black muck to give it an incredible amount of soil organic matter, it holds moisture like crazy. They’ve downsized to just two rows of potatoes, used to be four when the kids all lived at home. The window pane greenhouse is a new move from last year, allows them to grow better tomatoes and whatever else sneaks in there. There are way more onions that I’m comfortable with now too. I did take a picture from either end and let Mother choose which to include. What vegetables do you recognize?

This was a little task the Big T asked me to do. They’ve puchaseed and erected a couple of used bins in the last few years and they weren’t part of our numbering scheme. I’m guessing that since I painted the original 1-4 on the bin doors back in the mid-90’s that he thought it was fitting that I do these as well. He made the stencils from a cracker box. I’m showing you the final version, there was a version of each number with lines that dripped off the bottom but I was able to track down some varsol in the garage and clean them up to have crisp lines. There is something odd about that six isn’t there?

Not too much to tell here. My aunts planted my grandma’s garden again this year. Four and a bit rows of potatoes, onions and carrots. Big T is supposed to clean up around the outside, they’ve managed to keep up on the weeding and got the potatoes hoed too. I snapped this picture to send to the Mayor’s wife so she could decide if further weeding was required before the weekend. When I was young we’d have this garden, the one at home and then one up the field. That one was two or three long rows of potatoes, more than a hundred feet. We got tricked into working on it because we were allowed to drive the three wheeler up there to do the work. It was a good trade-off. My grandpa would walk those rows and the ones in this garden with an old spoon and margerine container with a splash of diesel fuel in it and knock the potato beetles into the fuel and to their death. There is a potato cellar under the porch that housed the late summer’s starchy bounty. We’d reserve a selection of the harvest to serve as the next year’s seed parts. Good memories.

When I’d arrived home I had some leftovers from the previous evenings feast and then found myself falling asleep. I had a short nap and then started the power washer for Mother. Unfortunately, I was too late and she’d already washed her car. Since it was out and I was there, I decided to spray the dirt off my truck. I didn’t use any soap, means I didn’t actually wash it, so my streak of not washing a work truck continues. I think the last time was in 2005. With the dirt sprayed off and Mother run back to town to help Nana host her sisters and the cousins I figured I’d do something nice for my parents.

I fired up the weed whacker and did some trimming. Not pictured was a pile of tree limbs I’d cut out in the morning ahead of going down to the farm to paint the bins. Actually I’d flown the drone again in between those two jobs. Either way, I trimmed a bunch of encroaching trees out of the way to make it easier for Mother to cut the grass, I used the whipper snipper to knock out the random clumps of grass that were surviving under the brush, it’s right now, just needs a cut to mulch up the stray fodder that was strewn across the lawn.

The fun didn’t end there. I also did a strip in front of the privacy fence that surrounds the front patio. I got some flack over that move since there were two sunflowers amongst the bunch, grown up out of the discarded birdseed that either the squirrels spilled or the spoiled birds in the winter didn’t eat. Same story, once the mower grinds up the knocked down pieces it will look sharp.

I’d gone this far, why not do some more. The end of the house where my bedroom window lives used to be a rock garden. A few years back we paid a professional to rehabilitate half of it for Mother’s Day but the rest has gone back to nature. The two small cedar shrubs live on but the rocks and the rest of the plants have been moved. I trimmed the long grass and tried to avoid the remaining plants. Apparently I decimated a dead cherry tree that had been there a couple of years. It was clearly already dead, I don’t even feel bad. Two other noteworthy things from this picture, as I was cutting all the grasshoppers moved to the cement, there were at least twenty of the buggers lined up on there, in a nearly straight row. The other thing is that this is where the squirrels sometimes hide. When the dog was let out he nearly got one who was surprised to find it’s long grass refuge no longer available. I saw the whole thing, the dog was sooooo close to catching it, then it realized it could climb and went up a tree. So close.

This may look like just another shot of the garden but it’s actually of the trimming I did. I have a dream of Mother making one pass down the side of the garden, that couple of feet of short green grass makes it look so much better, and cleaner. This was something I learned early on in my research career, plots look better with a bit of buffer around them. I had to stop and get a shovel to remove a half dozen big burdock plants that they gas trimmer wouldn’t have been able to handle. I thought about cutting out some of the trees but those are lilacs, and you don’t mess with someone’s lilacs. I trimmed it back so she could access some raspberry plants on the side and better see the tiger lilies that she’d planted in there years ago. Hopefully they trim out some lilac to make a lane to keep that cut the rest of the year. Doubtful.

The last spot I trimmed was in front of the “new barn” or actually the only barn. Since the other one has collapsed. There is an old bent wagon wheel and two old tractor wheels that I had to roll out of the way. Without a before pictures it’s hard to appreciate the improvement in this area but rest assured this looks much better. And from the road it’s a stark difference. That’s the last of the trimming photos. I put so many cause I took both parents on the walking tour to show them what could be done in a short few hours in the heat of the day. It does make their property look tighter. When the Big T came home early from work we loaded up all the sticks I’d trimmed in the morning and brought them to the outdoor waste pile and then stopped at the farm on the way home so he could inspect my painted numbers.

Here is a photo of the newest bin. I’ve shared a couple pictures of the base in the last two weeks. The guys who put it up just used a zoom boom machine to bring it across the field. It was at uncle Lawerence’s, which is next door. They just lifted it up and drove it across the field and bolted it to the new base. I didn’t get to see that, I think they did it in the evening at one point in the last couple days. That would have been a sight to see.

Today also happened to be the day of the Family Feast. There was some debate about whether to have it today or not. Mother claimed I was driving back so we thought about moving it but no other dates made sense or worked for everyone. In the end, I stayed an extra day and helped my parents make something, for the second time. The Big T and I got everything ready to go incase Mother was strapped for time. We found most of the ingredients ourselves, which was an accomplishment in of itself. The meal was Spicy Peanut Chicken and Vegetables and featured what you see. We followed the recipe closely with just a minor misstep on the last step. It didn’t affect the meal, just resulted in some good natured ribbing. Here are all the versions that were prepared. I got sick of my families propensity for portrait lay-out photos and turned a couple of them to the more correct landscape view.

As it happened, that iced cream cake was left behind, not by accident but as a thank you for the tremendous meal the night before. Since this meal was also pretty good we decided to take down the rest of that cake. It was just as good the second day. From there we watched Sahara, an older movie that none of us recalled the ending to. It ended around ten but I had to go cut one more chunk of tree down that wasn’t sitting right with me. Packing followed and then bed. Must have been the feeling of urgency to fall asleep that kept me up. It was around eleven that I finally was able to find sleep. Big day of driving planned for tomorrow.