Sargie's Mother's Day present finally arrived on Tuesday, a pair of pink flamingos. 

May 13, 2020 - Wednesday morning

27 degrees/clear skies/calm winds

Pentoga Road

Sargie has wanted a pair of pink flamingos for a long time. Ordered last week, they were slow in migrating this far north, but the metal birds finally arrived, via UPS, yesterday afternoon.

Sargie got her wish.

Hambone and I were working in the garden Wednesday morning when our resident hen mallard few directly over his head and landed in the garden pond.

It appears Donnadoyawanna Duck decided to call the pond her own and that's just not going to work. We're having some algae problems and I believe it's from Donna's droppings that add too much nitrogen to the water. 

 As much as we love her company, our resident duck is going to have to move on. I just don't want the mess and/or hassle of a family of mama and baby ducklings in the pond and garden. 

Donnadoyawanna will be chased to a more appropriate area lake or river.

Speaking of pond, Sargie's two herons, those that I gave her at Christmas, were set out by the pond yesterday. Once the plants, greenery, and other things that will give the pond a more natural appearance are added, the herons should look right at home.



Hambone and I worked for quite a while in the garden where he learned how to plant onion sets.

After showing him the basics, I let the boy rake the soil smooth, make the furrows, then plant the sets.

It took him a while as he had to place an onion set, roots down, exactly one hand-width from the other.

I was proud of ol' Hambone. He was very precise and proud of his work, so much so, that he demonstrated his new found gardening skills to Grandma Sargie.

That's right, one hand width away from the other.

As a reward for his good work, I gave him some leftover sets to take home and plant. 

We sure laughed later on. We were in the kitchen and Grady said he LOVED onions and wished he could eat one (meaning a set.) Figuring I'd call his bluff, I washed one, peeled it, split it open, and handed it to him. The boy popped one half in his mouth, chewed and swallowed it, then did the same with the second half. 

In talking to his daddy after, we learned the boy truly does love raw onions. It pained me to tell him that onion sets are for planting, not convenient candy-sized snacks.

Going to town later in the day, we soon discovered that you can't beat little boy sweat and breath that reeks of onions, especially when the three of us were cooped up in a small car.

Onion breath aside, we had a nice drive on Tuesday. The sun was bright and with the temperatures cool, but pleasant, we stopped by an area lake.

A good natured rock skipping contest soon developed between Grandma Sargie and Hambone.

I'm not sure who won, but there was a lot of laughing going on accompanied by huge splashes. I'd venture to guess more rocks sank straight to the bottom than actually skimmed along the surface.

Back home, Grandma Sargie did her thing, Hambone was busy pounding nails into boards in the barn, and I planted this year's crop of snap peas.

We call peas a grazing crop, one where Sargie and Hambone can reach into the rows and pluck and eat peas, pods and all, fresh from the vine.



I enjoy the violets, those tough, hardy, wild plants, that thrive in the aisles of wood chips and bloom all summer. They are the first flowers of the spring and the last to die in the fall.

One of Sargie's Christmas presents this past year was an outdoor cloth swing, complete with pillows. It was time to hang it in the large spruce tree by the front porch.

I'd just climbed the ladder and was ready to attach the rope when Sargie spotted a dead limb, quite large, dangling twenty feet overhead. The "widow maker" was large enough to cause some serious harm to an unsuspecting person who was swinging directly under.

In my younger days, that dead branch would have been no problem to remove. I'd have climbed high into the tree and freed it with a pruning saw.

Prudence and some semblance of wisdom has become prevalent in my old age. With Sargie's help from the ground, we looped a rope over the limb and tugged at it with the four wheeler. The thing simply snapped off at the end.

After several attempts, I climbed the ladder and managed to attach my catch pole, one used in trapping, to the limb. Onto the handle, I tied a heavy rope and we began to swing the limb back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Once he got into the rhythm, my shadow was a big help.

The limb finally came crashing through the tree and landed on end, firmly stuck into the ground. It truly had been a widow maker.

Finally able to secure the swing to an overhead limb, I wasn't certain how high the swing should be hung, so I tied a temporary knot, one that could easily be adjusted. I told Sargie I'd try the swing first. If it would hold my weight, it would certainly be safe for either her or Hambone.

Yeah well, that knot didn't hold very well.

The proper adjustment and a better knot ensued and before long, Grandma Sargie and Hambone were swinging away.

It's approaching 5:00 AM and I'm going to head back upstairs and crawl into bed alongside Sargie. For whatever reason, I awakened this morning around 2:30 and was unable to go back to sleep. I'm hoping to grab a couple more hours before the real day begins.

Granddaughter, Ivy, is helping her daddy with springtime chores.

We'd like to finish chipping any limbs from the winter damage in back of the barn today. I worked on the chipper early yesterday morning and it's back to running like new.

Grady loves hauling limbs to feed into the machine and hey, who am I to deny the boy one of his many joys in life? We've been unsuccessful in getting the old Cub tractor started, so no doubt, we'll continue work on that today. Otherwise, I'll let Hambone and Grandma Sargie take the lead.

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

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Today's random Alaska picture:
Another one of the many humpback whales that surfaced close to the boat while I was fishing in southeast Alaska. Curious animals, they often fed just feet from the boat.