winter

Grandpa's version of winter.
He painted it in January 50 years ago.

gardening season

Gardening season is about over for another year.

That is both bad and good. A big garden can be a lot of work, but the goodies are more than reward. For me gardening is as much therapy as food. I still have Kale that will be eatable all winter and the cold frame has some salad greens, but mostly it is over.


Yesterday I backed the big flat bed trailer up to the garden and began loading debris that does not compost easily. I cut the tops off all of the asparagus, pulled out the tomato and pepper plants, stacked the tomato supports and got ready to attack the corn patch.

This morning I am going to make some peach crisp. Never heard of such a thing but as daughter said: why not? I was going to make a peach cobbler but the recipe called for an egg. We are out and grocery shopping day / pay day is later this week.

The freezer is full of the bounty, the fruit jars will be full after the grapes. Grandsons are anxious that I bring some grape juice Thanksgiving.

I wil miss grabbing a knife and heading out to the garden to get fresh veggies for dinner.

We gardeners dream of “next year,” the rows will all be straight, the strawberries red and the weeds will magically disappear. Already my garden journal already has pages of notes for next year.

Pilots “hanger fly.” When they can’t be flying they sit and talk about it. I “paper garden.” Soon seed catalogs will begin to arrive!

I have told Miriam how good she would look in a nice convertible.
She always had other thoughts!
Romantic as can be and as impractical, I'd still like to see her in one!

cars

Spendy little critters, on a good day, but important to our life out here I the rugged west.

Today I get Miriam’s little car. It has been in the shop all week. The repair price is about half the “book” value of the car, but that number is skewed, I fear. My back up account will take a hit on that one.

I like to buy as nice a car as I can afford and then drive it the rest of it’s reliable life. At 17 this car is still an acceptable ride. Miriam gave her good care. Mile wise, it is about at it’s half life now.

GM never made the best cars I the world, and this is not an example of their best work, but it is a solid little buzzer. It is noisy and it rides hard. But in the years we have owned it, we have put remarkably small amounts of money into maintenance. Not a great car for sure, but a pretty solid one.

Maintenance is crucial for a long term keeper car. I am not a mechanic, so when there was a problem I found a good mechanic and paid them to repair it. I have used the same shop for a decade. They know me by my name or by my cars! “This is Dave with the Blue Cavalier” and they know exactly who they are talking to!

Once again the guys with the chrome plated tools have done their magic. The shop foreman, a man named “Sparky,” tells me that it is solid now, that this model has a weakness with the head gasket and that yes, they have replaced a good number of them.

This little blue critter is not overly afflicted with creature comforts, but it has a good AC, that is wonderful in summer, and in winter the heater works well.

Compared to my father’s brand new 1940 Ford, this car is pure luxury!

Brianna May. Self portrait, and a very clever one.

yes we can, i think

“I am a nurse, we can do it.”

That from my child bride.

My dear friend David is here with his wife and aged mother in law. Mom is about 90 and while she can get around OK she needs someone to be with her all the time. David and his wife do it well.

But they really need to go out of town for three days. Would Miriam and I be willing to look after mom? I am not good at looking after other people’s people. I am scared of all sorts of things, so I tried to wiggle out.

But when I got home I mentioned it to Miriam and got that response.

So, we will be hanging out at David’s house for a few days soon. Miriam can look after grandma mostly, and I will cook and wonder (and wander too?).

There are not many people in this world who would ask me to do that and there are even fewer that would get a positive answer from me, but good friends are not that easy to find.

I know we will be OK.

yukon golds

'taters'

I planted a fair sized hunk of garden to potatoes: yellows, reds, whites.

This week it was time to dig and sort potatoes. And I did!

As much care as I had put into growing them my gopher friend put into eating them. Half of what I planted were Idaho Russets. Boy did Gopher like those. He ate, or ate at most of the crop!

He liked the Reds pretty well too, and ate a fair hunk of those too, but he did not like Yukon Golds at all, or didn’t get that far.


So now we have potatoes. The ironic part is that the whites keep the longest, and I have the fewest of those. So for now we are going to eat a LOT of yellow and red potatoes. That is not bad, they are very tasty.

Even then I got over a hundred pounds of good potatoes. Good thing we like to eat them!

But next year (gardeners live by next year) I have got to find a better location for friend gopher, maybe even gopher heaven.

camping

In our part of the country it is often very warm in the day so the shade tent is very useful, but it can get quite chilly at night. So we carry both shade and warm blankets to use in the tear.
The Cavalier I bought for Miriam 17 years ago has some mechanical problems at the moment, so we were using the pickup. Room for a lot more stuff, but some how it lacks the discipline of limits.

loved

Some things are too nice to use.

Like that gold edged china that sits in our cupboard. We bought it at a yard sale from friends who got it somewhere else. Hasn’t had more than a meal or two on them in 20 years.

Rv’s fit into that category too. Particularly hand made teardrop trailers. There are some truly museum quality trailers out there. The wood is used expertly, the trip is perfect. They are truly a visual feast.

But how much are they really used?

Ours is a different story. I built it to use and we have. So far we have logged 9000 miles and slept in it for 85 nights. One night in a truck stop near Winnemucca, Nevada will hardly qualify as a good night sleep -- those truckers are noisy. And there was that night we drove from SF to Winnemucca in early December.

The thermometer I the Dodge read 6 degrees and we stopped in a rest area (among several much larger RV’s). It was bloody cold in that trailer and it took a LONG time to get it warmed up.

Sometimes, when the moon is nearly full, we have to throw a towel over a window because the light is so bright (the tear does not have curtains), but mainly I sleep extremely well, and so does Leo and Miriam!

My tear is not as wonderful made as many -- it cost a lot less to build than most, and it is lighter than almost any. But most of all it used and loved.

Like all things wood that are around water, this one has some maintenance issues, so after our last trip of the year (not done quite yet!) it goes into the shop for winter upgrade and maintenance.

Bill gave me a boat I enjoyed one year. He traded me back the boat for a ’56 Dodge car, which I sold, and used the cash to finance the building of the tear.

Thanks Bill!