I wonder what he ordered?

May 10, 2020 - Mother's Day

29 degrees/partly cloudy/calm winds

Pentoga Road

Happy Mother's Day to Sargie and to Mom's everywhere. Just as importantly, Happy Mother's Day to you Mom. I know that Dad is spoiling you, his way of thanking you for being such a great mom to two near-perfect children. 

Right, Barb?

With chilly temperatures and a blustery wind, Saturday was a mixed bag of tricks. My walk was beautiful, but cold. The wind had risen midway through which made the return trek a bit nippy. 

Back home, I began work on the flower planter, the third go around for this particular one. Patterned after the Trug, a raised planter popular in Great Briton, the treated post base has remained solid. It's the bed that rots after a few years.

Sargie's on the other end to help carry it back outside.

The bed is made from half inch castoff treated dogeared fencing material. I attach bracing across the bottom to help distribute the weight of the soil.

I then stapled a layer of perforated protective black plastic (a garbage bag sliced into one long piece) to protect the bottom of the planter.

Finally comes the soil. This is leftover from the old pyramid planter that was disassembled the previous day. I'll add manure and compost in the next few days and it will be ready to go.

Carrying scrap lumber to the burn pile, I was greeted by our resident pair of mallard ducks playing in the lone puddle previously called Lake Pentoga.

Both have lost their fear of me and we're old buddies now. Had I had a fistful of corn, there's little doubt they'd have waddled up and eaten from my hand.

Sargie and I worked yesterday afternoon getting the electric deer fence ready for another season of protecting the garden.

There's a short somewhere. The charger is rated for a fence fifty miles in length and discharges 9,000 volts of electricity. Right now, a mere, wimpy, 2,000 volts is surging through the wires. When at full strength, it works well. Believe me, I've touched it several times and wondered after what kept me from having a heart attack.

I'll have to walk the fence line again today to find the short. Chances are, there's a wire touching a metal post. 

Hambone's birthday is this coming Thursday and he's receiving his very own pint-sized shovel.

You might remember how busy he was last week when digging a hole to reach the core of the "erf". The boy engaged in some major excavating (in the middle of the garden) and talked nonstop about how the core was going to heat not only the pond for swimming, but our home as well. 

I burned his name and special day into the handle so he doesn't mix his shovel up with Pawpaw's. After all, a man has to have his own shovel, doesn't he?

I put it off long enough. It was time to try the new lathe. Though the new chuck, used for turning bowls, won't arrive until Monday, I used a spur to hold a piece of spalted birch in place.

It wasn't a very good piece to make anything from, but soft, it was forgiving and good for learning the particulars of a much bigger and more powerful lathe than I am used to.

 

 I'll get more serious about turning, especially hard wood, once the chuck arrives.

I'm going for my morning walk then we'll see what Sargie wants to do. Since it's Mother's Day, she's the boss. (So what's changed? She's ALWAYS the boss.) Macrea, Mel, and Hambone, are coming over later this afternoon and I hear that Grady will remain behind to spend a few days with Grandma and Pawpaw. 

I like that. I like that a lot.

Meanwhile, it's time to strap on the hikers. 

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

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Today's random Alaska picture:
Streams have carved their way across the arctic landscape over the millennia. Many stream beds are quite steep and can make for difficult land navigation. I was often forced to ride many miles in an attempt to find a way across, only to encounter another, then yet another after that. There were days I put a hundred or more miles on the snowmobile, but traveled twenty or less towards my destination.