After several days of making Pumpkin People, they are ready to pack into boxes and send to the grandbabies.

October 5, 2017 - Thursday 

32 degrees/clear skies/calm winds

Pentoga Road

After a sunny, but windy and chilly start on Tuesday, I broke down and started a fire in the wood stove last night. 

The temperature on Wednesday never got out of the mid 50's. It felt good to wear jeans and a flannel shirt.

Go ahead and call me a wimp, a sissy, a Sally, a Mommy's boy. I don't care. After working and sweating outside all afternoon, then coming in and taking a shower and cooling off, I got the chills. As I told Sargie, there's no reason to sit in a chilly house when we have three year's supply of firewood stacked outside.

The inside thermometer was registering 81 degrees when we went to bed last night.

Wednesday was a busy one on Pentoga Road. After returning home from Iron Mountain, I busied myself by doing a couple of loads of laundry. Sargie is off today and I didn't want her spending valuable time away from the Vision Center washing clothes.

It was noon before I got to the shop. The first thing was to fix the pumpkin guy's face from yesterday. It took over an hour to sand his old mouth and redo his eyes, but in the end, Pumpkin Man had a new face. (He's third from the left in the opening picture.)

Here's lookin' at you!

I started scroll saw work on a bluegill to give as a birthday present.

I managed to get all the fins drilled and some of the delicate work sawed. It takes the longest time threading a very thin blade through a teeny hole for an inside cut. I'll continue with the bluegill this morning while Sargie's sleeping in.

I got a good start on working up the cord of birch firewood that's been under a tarp alongside the wood shed for the past two years.

A cord is the amount of wood that when stacked, would be 4'x4'x8'. I actually had a bit over a cord in total.

I started cutting and quickly found the chain on the saw was about as sharp as a dull butter knife. I had no choice but to sharpen the chain in the shop and begin again.

In the old days, I'd have worked up the entire cord in one day, but I quit at 5 PM. I was thirsty and my back hurt, plus, there's always tomorrow or any day in the future to finish the wood. (That's called being retired.)

Still, working up a face cord (half a full cord) in one afternoon isn't too bad for an old guy.

I find I'm suffering from Turner's Guilt, a deep-thought term I invented yesterday. I look at a piece of good looking wood, the right grain, length, dryness, and without knots, and I can't seem to part with it. All I can see are future bowls and other vessels. The size of the future turning stack is beginning to match that of the firewood pile.

Once the wood is gone and the area raked and cleaned, I'll need to paint that side of the shed. The stack of wood kept me from doing it two years ago when I painted the other sides. 

While feeding the goldfish last night, I happened to check the rutabagas. The summer might have been horrible for warm weather vegetables, but it appears to have been a banner year for the root vegetables. The rutabagas are huge.

Just to put things into perspective, the rutabaga in the middle is bigger than my hand with my fingers spread. There are others in the patch that are even larger.

Sargie arrived home around 7 last night with a family-sized pizza in hand. By evening's end, all that remained were two small pieces. These two piggies know how to step up to the trough!

Since Sargie's off today, I'll let her decide what we'll do. I need her help to replace a storm window that I recently had repaired, but other than that, the sky's the limit. Put me in coach, I'm ready to play.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Just after sunrise Wednesday morning on Pentoga Road