It's quickly approaching that time of the year

September 8, 2019 - Sunday morning

49 degrees/cloudy/calm winds

Pentoga Road

I love the fall, the colors, the smell, the feel. Only one problem, winter comes directly after. 

Now don't get me wrong, I like winter. I just don't care for how it seems to start earlier each year and now extends well into late April, sometimes early May. 

There's a chance we might experience our first frost tonight. Some of the garden goodies aren't ripe yet. Last year by this time, the garden and berries were finished. We currently are two weeks late, probably due to the very late spring we had earlier this year. 

Oh well, we'll do what the farmers in Maine do when it snows. 

We'll let it snow.

Saturday was a busy one. I worked all morning and much of the afternoon putting the sheets of particle board on the garden shed. The first big challenge was to figure the angles under the west side peak.

Let's see, E = MC 2.... no, that wasn't it. Oh yeah Pythagorea invented some theorem or the other on how that's to work.

Hmm, it has something to do with a right angle and hypotenuse, whatever that is. I thought a hypotenuse was a water-loving, pig-shaped, animal on steroids that lived in Africa.

A squared plus B squared = C squared, then a person takes the square root and multiplies that once, but only if by land and twice if by sea, after which Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore.... or something like that. 

Yeah, well, in Tom's world, that wasn't going to happen. I'm the guy who still uses his fingers and toes to count past ten and flunked Geometry 1 twice and turned around and flunked Geometry 2 two more times in high school. I finally passed sophomore geometry two days before my high school graduation.

To me, a square root is a rectangular carrot.

So, I did what any geometrical-challenged builder would do... I simply measured the three sides and threw them all together. In the end, the covering under the peak came out just fine.

 I'm pretty sure Pythagorea was the spawn of Satan, put on earth to make the lives of mathematically-challenged people like me purely miserable. 

Despite the late, cold and wet, spring, we've had a bumper crop of blueberries. Since Sargie and I have been busy this past week, we decided to have a hot berry-plucking date, meet in the blueberry patch, and pick Saturday afternoon... and pick we did, and pick some more, then continue picking, almost two gallons worth.

Even after harvesting gallons and gallons of berries this year, there is still probably a third of the crop that's not yet ripe. I have my doubts as to whether they'll make it this season. 

It's a banner year for apples. The Wolf River tree is going to have a few this year, the first since it was planted nine years ago.

The apples are big and getting bigger and anyone who wants to go bobbing for them in the pond, feel free. Being a winter apple, we won't harvest those until well into the fall when we'll take them to the basement for winter use. They are an excellent pie apple.

The Macintosh apples are also doing well.



Sargie and I shared one yesterday and decided it'll be another couple of weeks before they are ready to harvest. Those, too, will be eaten fresh, given away, dehydrated, or stored for winter use.

We called a halt to our blueberry picking by mid afternoon to take our usual drive. It's amazing how quickly the leaves are beginning to turn colors. I wouldn't be surprised if the trees reach peak colors in another two to three weeks.



I returned to the garden house late in the afternoon and got half of the back covered. I'm planning on finishing the covering today and with the exception of the front windows, door, and fascia, it should be all enclosed.



After, will come the exterior trim for the windows. Jambo said he'd help to make the door. With his artistic carpentry skills, I'm anxious to see what kind of design he comes up with.

It's time to pay a bill or two, then head outside. I don't mind working in this morning's cold, but am dreading having to go swimming later today to set the pump in the pond several feet lower for the winter months. It ain't gonna be pretty, but since I can't talk Sargie into wading into five feet of water and no one else has volunteered, I guess it'll have to be me.

Who in the devil came up with this hair brained idea for having a pond anyway? His mama didn't have a very bright baby.

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

So are the tale from Pentoga Road...