May 9, 2015 - Saturday evening

44 degrees/clear/calm

Pentoga Road

I'm sitting here feeling sorry for everyone other than my sister and me. We have the best mom in the world and on this weekend, that of Mother's Day, I want to thank Mom for being the best any child could ever have. 

My sister and I are well into our sixties, yet Mom remains Mom, just like when we were small children. She's always there to make our adult-version of scraped knees and elbows feel better and to assure us everything will be okay.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. We love you very much.

I was out the door early Saturday morning spraying herbicide in all the usual places, mostly along the drive and around the perimeter of the deer fence. Doing so saves me hours of trimming weekly.

I began stringing the cucumber trellis, but soon ran out of the first hundred feet of clothesline. It's going to take at least another hundred, possibly more. I used garden twine last year, but it barely lasted the summer before disintegrating. The plastic-covered clothesline should last at least three seasons, hopefully more.

I received this year's rutabaga and parsnip seeds in yesterday's mail. Both were planted this morning, the rutabagas for the Mighty Milligan Thanksgiving feed and the parsnips for Sheri and Yooper Brother Mark. It's ironic that the last two vegetables that will be harvested are the first planted. Last year's rutabagas weren't pulled until a week before Thanksgiving. 

The parsnips aren't sweet until after a hard freeze. I pulled those planted last year just a few weeks ago after the snow was long gone and the frost went out of the ground.

The rest of the day was spent digging fill, prying boulders, and moving dirt.

At one point, the truck was filled with dirt using the backhoe, then the backhoe was brought to the front to dig out several large rocks, then taken back to resume filling the truck. 

Some of the rocks dug from the ground.

They are scooped up with the front end loader 

I emptied four pickup loads of fill by shovel today. Needless to say, I'm a tired boy tonight.

Sargie was home early bearing a huge pizza. We enjoyed eating in front of the television while watching an older episode of Blue Bloods on Netflix.

Good news on the diet front. I officially weighed 209 lbs this evening... down from a high of 217 lbs a couple of months ago. It's the first time I've slipped under 210 lbs since before last Thanksgiving. Nine more pounds and I'll finally be back to my summer "fightin'" weight. 

I'll let Sargie decide what we'll do on Mother's Day. It's her first day off in the past six, so hopefully, she'll get to be lazy and relax. 

Brutus isn't allowed in the garden, so he lays just inches on the other side of the fence waiting. Some days it's good to roll in the grass and enjoy the sunshine.

It's time to let the dog out and think about going to bed. It's a responsibility I don't take lightly. After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

I hope to begin mowing this area on the south side of the garden this summer. When I bought the property, it was filled with trash, scrub trees, rocks and boulders, bushes, thistles, and weeds.