June 27, 2015 - Saturday 
47 degrees/clear skies/calm winds
Pentoga Road

And just like that, Mom's birthday has come and gone, but we sure celebrated her 88th last night by meeting Yooper Brother Mark and Sheri at one of our local establishments to enjoy an all-you-can-eat Friday night fish fry.



Oh we ate... oh yes, we ate plenty. Mom chowed down, as we all did, and I think Mark and I had seven or eight pieces of fish each. The best part was sitting and talking before and during dinner. It was a fun evening.



Mom spent most of yesterday supervising my work load, but then as we all know... never mind, I won't say it.

I'd promised her I'd make cranberry English muffins, something she thoroughly relishes. It seems they can only be purchased during the Christmas season so we turned the clock ahead (or behind) yesterday and I began the day by mixing the ingredients with flour and yeast and started the process of letting the dough rise, then pounding it senseless, letting it rise, pounding it again, and repeating the cycle several times.

Later in the morning, I finally began cutting out the English muffins and frying them.



I don't like to brag, but they came out tasting pretty good. 



Of course, there's nothing better than a freshly fried, hot, English muffin coated with butter accompanied by a glass of cold milk.

I'd ordered several perennials to plant in the beds in front of the house last week. They arrived the day before yesterday and it was time to get them in the ground. I thought it would be a simple matter. I thought wrong.

Under Mom's careful supervision (she sat on the porch swing) I dug up one bed, ridded it of most tree roots, then began planting. It sounds simple, but the process took almost three hours... just to plant six or eight perennials. Nobody ever accused me of doing something half way, but that was borderline ridiculous. Oh well, it's done. Just three more beds to go.

We took a break mid-afternoon and ate lunch. Mom watched an old episode of Gun Smoke on television while I sat in my recliner, closed my eyes and did some deep thinking. 

Later, I installed a program on Mom's computer which allows me to access it remotely. We had one on her old laptop that allowed me to help when she encountered a digital difficulty, but had yet to do anything with her newer one. 

Years ago, when I lived in the arctic and Mom lived in Florida, I was able to assist her remotely. Mom loved the fact that she could sit in front of the screen and watch the cursor move, being controlled by someone thousands of miles away via satellite internet powered by solar panels. At that time, I lived in the cabin, seventeen miles from my closest neighbor.

I spent a couple of hours on Friday and got about half the trailer of wood worked up. Once again, Mom supervised, this time from a lawn chair.

Sargie's working early today. I thought about going fishing early and being back home by midmorning, but I think I'd rather stay home and finish the wood. I planted a row of (what were supposed to be) bush beans that are sending out runners. It appears they are pole beans and that means I need to build another trellis for them to climb on.

The garden is full of weeds. All the rain we've received in the past couple of weeks has caused everything in the garden to grow, weeds included.

It appears we're not going to have many strawberries or apples this year. The nineteen degree temperature we experienced three weeks ago seemed to have frozen all the blossoms. It's going to be a fruitless year. 

Time to get the day started. After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...