Pardon the borrowed picture, but it says what's most appropriate for this joyous day!

April 12, 2020 - Easter Sunday

34 degrees/cloudy/calm winds

Pentoga Road

Boy oh boy, it's dark and quiet this morning. It really is the calm before the storm.

How much snow will fall is anyone's guess. The National Weather Service is hesitant to predict an exact amount and I've read we'll be getting from one to two feet and the official storm warning says from 8 to 17 inches.

Who knows?

Seems strange. Easter Sunday and Sargie and I will be celebrating it alone, without any friends or family. We love each other's company, but will be lacking the extra thirty (give or take ten or fifteen) Milligans who also gather to celebrate this most holy of days. It's just one of those years and God willing, next Easter, we'll all be together once again.

The camera seldom came out of my pocket on Saturday. There're only so many ways to describe doing annual spring maintenance on a portable backhoe and keep it interesting. 

I did install a new carburetor, spark plug, plus changed the oil and the hydraulic fluid. After greasing the mighty beast, I can pronounce it ready for another year of yard work, mostly digging pesky boulders that have been pushed to the surface by this spring's frost.

Sargie kept busy all day raking last fall's leaves and this winter's debris. She has the north side of the yard looking better than ever.

Sargie was raking by the kayaks and bending over, scooping up leaves, when she happened to look up and saw a squirrel sitting on one of the kayaks about a foot away from her face. I'll tell you, for a grandma, that girl can still run.

The year's early heavy snowfall broke the kayak racks, another repair job before gardening season begins.

Speaking of gardening, I planted two giant pumpkin seeds from last year's record holder. They are on a heat mat in front of the living room window.

 I'd like to think I'll grow a thousand pounder this summer, but it's always a crap shoot. I've grown big ones one summer and had them rot on the vine the next. Who knows?

Sargie and I tried to replicate Miss Jody's sausage ball recipe last night. Though they were good, something happened that made the balls flatten out like oatmeal cookies rather than retaining their shape. I think it was because they are meant to be made in the south, not in Yankee Land.

Oh well, they were good and none will go to waste. I think I ate eight or ten.

I'm going to close and walk to Pentoga and back before the storm begins. I just received a notification saying that sleet will begin fairly soon, so I best get a move on.

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

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Today's random Alaska picture:
It was early September. My friend, Terry, had just brought me up river to my cabin from Kotzebue. (I can't remember why I was without my own transportation.) The temperature was dropping so quickly that while I was unloading, his boat almost got frozen in for the winter seventeen miles from the village. Thankfully, he crashed through the ice and made it out to the open channel.