June 11, 2018 - Monday evening

70 degrees/partly cloudy/calm winds

Pentoga Road

I'm waiting for Sargie to arrive home from work so I figured I might as well write tonight. The living room is fairly dark, Alexa is playing Mozart through the Echo, and if I'm not careful, I'll nod off to sleep before my bride arrives home.

Monday morning began in the garden. First thing was to reseed the parsnips. For whatever reason, few sprouted after last month's planting. They are hardy enough in the fall that I can safely plant now and hope for a decent crop.

Over an hour was spent thinning the rutabagas. I found that to grow decent baggies, one must show no mercy. The top part of the picture (below) shows the bed after thinning. The lower two-thirds is what the bed looks like before thinning. As I said, thinning must be unmerciful.

The rest of the working day was spent taking down two trees. The first was a medium sized spruce tree that was dying after being blown over during last summer's storms.

It's the tree leaning to the right

 Though I don't pretend to be a logger by any definition of the word, I've cut a few gajillion trees over several decades. Still, I made a beginner's mistake and managed to pinch the bar of the chainsaw.

The old Ford tractor was put into service to lift the tree and take the pressure off so I could free the saw. Thankfully, no damage was done.

To say the tree was rotten would be an understatement.

I also took the opportunity to cut away a dead portion of a nearby maple tree. Since I had to do it from a ladder, sawing was a bit dicey.

Worry not, Mom, I was careful and everything went as planned.

I got the opportunity to put Sargie's Father's Day gift to me into action. After airing up the tires, I transported chunks of maple to the wood shed.

The spruce tree was dragged over by the garden where the limbs were fed into the chipper shredder and the chips blown into the paths of the garden.

With the rot on the bottom of the tree, I could only salvage two eight-foot bolts from which to make future lumber. They were transported into the woods where I hope to make a staging area as the year goes along.

It was early afternoon. After cleaning up the mess and putting everything away, I was about all done in.

The phone rang.

It was Sargie saying that she noticed a slapping sound coming from a wheel well on the Kia and she was fearful of driving it home tonight. I told her I'd be over.

As it turned out, it was a torn liner in the wheel well, no doubt ripped as a result of the deer collision late last winter. It's not a big deal and I'll see if I can order another online and install it myself.

Sargie and I each enjoyed a milk shake during her lunch hour before she returned to work and I came back home.

Sargie's off tomorrow, her last until she starts a one week vacation next Sunday. With rain in the forecast, I'm questioning if we'll go fishing. No worries, when she's not working, we never seem to be bored regardless what we end up doing.

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

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Mississippi Brother Garry sent a picture of the southern  rabbit eye blueberries he's been picking. Even our bumper crop of last year couldn't begin to touch his harvest.