In-Tents Weekend

Mason is in Cub Scouts (Tiger) now, and there are a zillion activities happening all the time. We went on his first camping trip over the weekend, over at Scoutland (a Scout Camp on Lake Lanier, near Gainesville).

So I started digging around, looking for all my old camping gear. The Boy had destroyed the big cabin tent, back in his Drunk and Doofus days, and I couldn’t locate anything but my old sleeping bag and my backpacking espresso maker (don’t judge… we’re talking dozens of pre-teen boys running around, wired on s’mores and trail mix, you gotta keep up somehow). Mason didn’t have a bag in any case, so the wife went out and got him a sleeping bag and us a tent.

I found The Boy’s old backpack from his scouting days, and there were a few useful items in it (most useful of all, a drawstring bag for clothes). So we gathered up food and other essentials, and loaded up the Miata—a backpack on wheels—and arrived at the camp as dusk was coming. Scoutland campsites have wooden platforms with metal pipe framework on them for a cabin-style tent, and several people pitched their tents on them. Our “four-person” tent¹ was just slightly too large to fit comfortably on the platform, so we cleared the ground of pinecones and pitched it there. I unrolled our foam pads on the tent floor, put the bags atop them, and shoved our gear to the side. There was just enough room. I hung the battery-powered lantern on the loop at the apex of the tent, and that gave us plenty of light to arrange things as it got dark. Several people were impressed by how much stuff we pulled out of the Miata, by the way. Having gone backpacking a few times turns out to be a useful skill. ;-) For some reason, the parents’ signup sheet asked for age, and I’m pretty sure I was the oldest person there. Growing older, but not up.

The forecast low was 27°F, but that wasn’t a big deal. In fact, a couple of Girl Scouts were sleeping in hammocks. (Don’t mess with Girl Scouts!) As for us, Mason’s bag was rated for those temps, and my bag is an Army surplus down mummy bag, probably good to -40° in its prime. But I learned something important that night: when I was 28, even 38, I could toss my bag onto a foam pad and sleep okay. At 58… not so much. My hip drove into the ground, and now I find the mummy bag too confining, so I guess I need to retire it. The wife suggested (after the fact) I swap bags with Mason, which isn't a bad idea. He woke up once from the cold, and was fine after I told him to just burrow down into his bag & pull it over his head. Around 2 a.m., I fished a pool float out of the trunk of the car, blew it up (which warmed me up as well), and slept well until it deflated.

So Saturday morning was cold as you-know-what. Water buckets were iced over, cars covered in frost, etc. As Mason went to sleep at his usual bedtime, he woke up at his usual 7 a.m. The camp was dead quiet, except for him talking to me… but the Girl Scout leader (who was coordinating the campout for the county troops/packs) heard the noise and got a fire going. Soon, we had bacon and eggs going, and the kids filched marshmallows. Then the boys went running all over the large campsite, leaving the adults to wander around or sit by the fire and try to get warm.

Turns out a couple of the dads in Mason’s pack are very much into these clever things called “Hot Hands.” When you expose them to air and shake them, they produce an exothermic chemical reaction. I brought gloves that were more than adequate for 27°F, and my old ski mittens that would have sufficed for much colder temps, but my feet were cold… and I hate for my feet to be cold these days. So they tossed me a packet of “Toe Warmers,” which work the same way as the Hot Hands do. You take them out of the pack, stick them to your socks, and enjoy your day. At least I did. I also zipped into Gainesville to get an air mattress. For their part, they thought my espresso maker was awesome.

Saturday night was cold, but not as cold as before. That was fortunate, because it started raining around 2 a.m. The hammock’ers, not having thought to put up rain flies, bailed for a tent. Indeed, I think I might have been the only person in the camp who expected rain—as a motorcyclist, I know when you’re outdoors, 30% chance of rain means a near-certainty. The other pack dads left everything out, and I mean everything. So when Mason woke up at 7:15 a.m., declaring “I slept great!” I decided to just load up and go home. I always keep a towel in the Miata (highly recommended for any convertible), so I wiped down the tent and the cooler I left outside, then loaded the little car while Mason had one last run-around with the kids who hadn’t gone home Saturday afternoon. Overall, he had a blast and didn’t really want to go home.

Mason ended up with three patches for the weekend: Family Camping, Leave No Trace (for helping pick up trash), and Polar Bear (for camping in below-freezing weather). The latter is on the way, but he brought the other two home…

I left a blank spot for the Polar Bear patch

We’ll sew them onto his backpack.

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¹Camping equipment manufacturers love to play fast and loose with capacity. A tent measuring 6 feet by 9 feet can only be considered “four-person” if a) the people in question are children; b) they have no gear. In reality, there is barely enough room for two people and the gear you don’t want to leave outside.

Just Add Light

It’s unusually warm for the bottom of the year on Planet Georgia. Our high today was around 72°F, a good 20 degrees above normal. So, when I announced I was heading to the grocery store, Fizzle suggested I grill some fish for supper.

Good idea, thinks I, and added salmon to my list. As it turned out, the wife had a few things she wanted to get, and Christmas presents was part of it. So we got about 90% of the presents this morning.

But we neglected not the grocery run. My feet were well sore by the time we were done, as I just came off a gout flareup (the only one this year that was more than mild) this week. There were a few other things to do this afternoon, and they got done.

This time of year, it’s pretty much dark by grilling time… but I made do.

Bring on the food!

Work lights are really useful for all sorts of things. Oh, and it’s not just Planet Georgia. Not by a long shot:

a friend of mine who lives in toronto is eating his own fresh cut lettuce from his patio garden. it is december. he lives in toronto.

— ¡dadBAHHUMbodTerry! (@shortstack81) December 11, 2015

May your days be merry and warm—even if they’re not bright!

Brown Hawk Down

There’s an open field between FAR Manor and the in-laws place, with a utility line crossing the road and the field. A hawk has been perching on that line, and I’ve been trying to get a decent picture of it for a long time. Good light and a few seconds is all I need, but mostly I’ve had one or the other.

On Friday, I was heading down to the in-laws after work, and saw the hawk jumping and tumbling on the road. I hit the brakes, and he got off the road and laid in the grass. This was not the way I wanted to get a picture.

Approach with much caution

He was still breathing, so I knew “no touchy” was the way to go. I told the wife about it, and she said, “Mason saw him on the fence post yesterday, and I slowed down. Then he flew in front of me. If I hadn’t slowed down, I would have hit him then.” So I expect someone else must not have missed. She advised me to get the guy who has been helping with the farm work, which was a good idea since he’s had to handle raptors before.

He put on gloves, got in behind, and made the grab on the second attempt. I drove the cart back, with him holding the hawk. As for the hawk, he was in “chomp anything that gets close enough” mode for a minute, but settled down when we didn’t do anything. We popped him into a cage, and it was obvious he had a broken wing.

Take this broken wing, AND this cage…

The farm guy called the DNR to get a rehab specialist to pick him up the next day. That meant he wouldn’t be released back into the wild, but would spend his life making the rounds of state parks and educating people about raptors native to the region.

Unfortunately, he didn’t even get that far, and died overnight. Whoever clobbered him must have left him with internal injuries. Bummer.

The odd thing is, he could have seen the in-laws’ chickens from that perch on the utility line. I always wondered why he didn’t go nail a few of them… maybe he thought chickens were too evil to eat.

Foraging the Harvest

As yummy as they are big!

Last month saw a return to the typical summer weather we get in Sector 706—we had more 90°F days in June than we did all last summer. Combine the heat with lots of rain, and it made for a few oddities. Usually, the wild blueberries growing around the manor peak around the first week of June, and the blackberries a month later. This year, the blueberries were late and the blackberries were early, so we had lots of both all at once.

And dang, some of them are big! We usually get a few nice plump ones along with the not so plump, but this is the first year I’ve seen them get as big as the domesticated blackberries you get in the store.

Pick, eat, repeat

The weird thing is, in early June, the berries looked pretty small overall. We had a dry (and cool) May here, during the time the vines were setting fruit. So I figured they wouldn’t get much better. Fortunately, I was wrong.

This is Mason’s favorite time of year, because he can go outside and get himself a snack. He loves blackberries, even the tart ones, and it’s a hand-to-mouth situation for him.

One notion I need to disabuse him of: he likes to say, “you pick, I’ll eat.” WRONG. I do tend to pick into a container, while he just eats everything he picks… and then wanders over to snag a few out of the container. (And yes, I’ve been known to pick myself a little snack as well. But the vast majority of them go in the container for later.)

Another one of his oddities is that he’ll move on to the next vine and insist that I should be over there with him—even when I have a ton more berries on the vines that he can’t reach.

Small but sweet

The blueberries always run small (the wife insists they’re actually huckleberries, and I have no reason to doubt her). But, they’re a lot more plentiful than they’ve been in most years. The wife thinks the birds will clean them off immediately, but I’ve not found that to be a problem. We’ve been picking for nearly a month, and getting small handfuls. The good thing is, they’re easily as sweet as commercial ones.

But I think after this week, the berries will pretty much be done. Just in time for the garden to start producing. I leave you with a line from a UNIX fortune cookie:

Faith is what lets you eat blackberry jam on a picnic, without looking to see if the seeds are moving.

Planter… planted

I started this project last fall, but only now have I finished it.

As you may recall, there was a steep slope between the driveway and the back yard. A couple summers ago, I dug out the eroded pathway and replaced it with concrete-block steps (hosing my left shoulder in the process). I haven’t quite gotten around to filling in the holes just yet, but now I’m a step (pun intended) closer.

Between the steps and the garage was a steep bank about four feet high. It was clay and gravelly rock, supporting nothing but weeds and debris. I long fantasized about digging it out and putting in a planter, and decided to dedicate it to strawberries because Mason does love to pick himself a snack. So last fall, I dug out the bank, throwing the dirt into large (20 gallon?) buckets that once held mineral lick for the in-laws’ cattle and covering them. I poured a concrete footing and built up the sidewalls with concrete blocks. And that’s pretty much where it remained through winter and early spring, because cold weather and mortar mix don’t play well together.

The top really isn’t that uneven… the driveway slopes.

But the weather finally warmed up, and it stopped raining for a little while, and I tackled what I thought was the final step: building the front wall with all the rocks I’d picked up and saved for the job. Trowel, bucket, mortar mix, water, rocks… I spent a pleasant afternoon finding stones that fit the next mark, slathering them with mortar, trying to remember why I thought it fit that way, repeat. I used some shale I’d dug up to make the top a little flatter. I used some old bricks to cover the tops of the concrete blocks. Ta-daaaa!

Now we have a hole!

Done! Or so I thought. The Boy pulled up just as I finished. “Looks nice,” he said, which was good because he’s been doing similar work lately. “But you need to put some bricks behind the rock wall with some rebar so the dirt doesn’t push the wall out.” Fortunately, I had some extra concrete blocks handy, and two 8-foot lengths of rebar laying around. I stacked the bricks, drove the rebar through the holes to hold them in place, and left it all there so the mortar could finish setting up.

The rebar that sticks up gets pounded down…

After a week of warm weather (and rain on the back end), I figured it was time to fill it in. I dragged the buckets over and started shoveling until they were light enough to lift, then dumped the rest in. To my surprise, I had just enough dirt to fill the thing about 6 inches below the top—I thought I’d have plenty of dirt left over. I left it this way for another week to allow the incoming rains to settle the dirt.

Just before dumping the garden soil in. Plants ho!

Another surprise: the dirt didn’t settle all that much. Three huge bags of garden soil topped it off nicely. It’s ready for the strawberry plants!

Winter on the Patio

As always, winter on Planet Georgia is confused: it’s warmest out when it’s cloudy. After a couple chilly nights during the week, temperatures recovered to roughly normal for the long weekend. Mrs. Fetched’s mom said she had some play sand a while back, and I finally brought it up to the manor. We put a coat and “boggin” (wooly cap) on Mason, the same on me, and we went out to the patio.

This worked out fairly well, except that Mason wanted to treat the sand the same way he treated the water during warmer weather: something to fling in all directions. I was only partially successful in dissuading him. Otherwise, I sat back and played with my phone — and found that the wifi carried all the way out to the patio… sweeeeet. The sand was much warmer on bare hands than water could be, a major plus.

Then Mrs. Fetched brought Skylar up. Mason was not happy about this at first, but they shortly worked things out and started flinging sand everywhere. sigh I built a fire in the table and kept my feet warm while watching the kids play. Except for one or two brief shouting matches, they played pretty well together.

Naturally, it wasn’t all that long before they decided to explore a little. This was mostly wading through where I’d piled the leaves from the back yard, and they came right back when I told them to (it’s a miracle, I tell you!).

Finally, lunch called and we all went inside. With rain coming tomorrow, I put the covers on things and left the spilled sand where it lie. It’ll likely wash in between the tiles, where it will possibly do some good.

Backyard Retreat: Part 2, the Big Dig

I was amazingly allowed all day yesterday to deal with what I wanted to deal with, and I decided this would be a good time to tackle the patio project.

There is no level spot in the back yard, so I had to make one. I selected a place near the woods, partly for shade and mainly because it was the least steep. I placed corner markers then borrowed a tractor with a front-end loader bucket from the in-laws. I should point out I’ve never done any grading before, so I kind of made it up as I went along. There are no pictures of me in action here, because no one was there to wield the camera. I started by scooping out the high end and dumping the dirt in the low end — I didn’t have to dig more than a foot. The scooped-out end was tilted, because the tractor itself wasn’t level, so I dragged some of the dirt backwards and that helped.

In the end, I decided I’d gone as far as I could with the power tools and got out the shovel. This is when I started hitting some large rocks, some nearly two feet long. I had to use a crowbar to loosen up two of them that were together. You can see some of the rocks along the right side of the photo below; I’ll use them to face the banks.

With the area smoothed out, I jumped on the tractor once more and carried the rubber tiles over. The bucket wasn’t quite big enough to hold them all, but a little overstacking and some care in driving back kept them all on the tractor until I actually got back. Then three slipped off, no problem.

I thought the surface looked pretty smooth, but when I started laying the tiles I realized it wasn’t exactly optically flat. It might have been less obvious had I used rock, but there would have been a lot more heavy lifting and I probably would have worn out before I finished. As it was, I smoothed out the dirt, put clips on tiles, laid them out, and made myself keep going until I had as many down as I could get. In retrospect, I should have dug out a little farther to the right, but I was already hitting roots from a tree just outside the frame in the above shot. Fortunately, the tree to the left was getting its roots covered more rather than dug out. You can see at bottom left where I have to fill in a little more dirt; I had planned for one more row of tiles but the length ran short. I can always fill it in later.

With a nice rubbery surface on the ground, I opened the first big box of furniture and got the chairs out. To prevent scratching, they were wrapped pretty well around just about every surface; I cut and pulled and pulled and cut and finally had four iron frames. I strapped the cushions in (they use Velcro™ or some substitute), and The Boy and Lobster hiked them down to the patio. And immediately started smoking there, not five minutes after I told them “no smoking.” Grrrr. At this point, I’d run out of daylight and decided the table could wait.

This afternoon, I attacked the table. Somewhere along the line, someone cut into the blister pack holding the hardware and took two nuts/bolts out of it. Fortunately, I had some hardware with the proper thread and (in the case of the bolts) length, so I got the job done.

Then I sat down in one of the chairs, put one foot on the table, and called Mom for Mother’s Day.

There’s plenty more to do: lay the rocks along the dug-out sides, get up all the big wood chips from when I had the tree-cutting party out there and toss them in the firepit (built into the table), then run the lawn mower over the weeds. Oh, and fill in that corner. Sheesh.

Backyard Retreat: Part 1, the Gathering

Our tax refund was pretty large… and so begins a new project at FAR Manor. Like many projects, this is one I had in mind for a good long while, but only now is it beginning to take root. With Mason loving to get outside and play, this is another good incentive.

I’ve been wanting a patio for a while. Actually, what I want is a complete outdoor kitchen, so we can cook through the summer without heating up the house, but it can start with the patio. Mrs. Fetched is somewhat leery of being outside much, because the bugs eat her — which is odd, because she grew up on a farm. You’d think she would be used to the great outdoors, huh? To make life easier on her, I have a screened-in gazebo thing (actually a permanent screen tent) as part of the project.

But first comes the patio. I had planned at first to go with the traditional paving stone, but then I saw these Envirotile things. They’re made of recycled tires, but compared to stone they’re relatively soft. If Mason (or anyone else) were to faceplant on this, it would hurt a lot less than a faceplant on stone. They clip together, which makes installation fairly simple, and then they dropped in price by a couple bucks between the time I found them and when I was ready to buy them. WIN!

We also need a place to sit, and this is what we settled on. Both of us wanted a firepit table, and this one has a cover so we can use the entire surface when we don’t have a fire. It should extend the “hanging out on the patio” season well into the fall.

OK, we have the rubber “stones,” we have something to park our butts in, now we just have to level out a spot for the patio. I think we’re going to put it behind the shrub at left center, next to the bird bath. That end of the house has a small flight of steps coming out of Sprite’s porch down to the ground. Very few plants are fond of that area, so we won’t have to worry about weeds too much.

Stay tuned for Part 2, which will likely get us near completion!

Wednesday Photo-Wibbles

I took Mason out for a little walk this afternoon and shot up a few things I’ve been meaning to shoot. But first, the weekly shout to the new follower:

• Jerry Moore (couldn’t find your blog, Jerry — drop a comment and I’ll update)

Spring has come to FAR Manor, and it seems like it just snuck up on us. The dogwood over by the studio opened up its blooms this morning — this is what it looks like (post from 2 springs ago).

Mason was along for the walk. Mrs. Fetched and M.A.E. had him and Moptop outside, blowing bubbles earlier in the afternoon, and he wanted to do some more. There was a pretty good breeze, so I took the lazy way out and held the wand up in the wind. It did quite well that way.

Wild violets run rampant in our lawn this time of year. I’ve decided that monochromatic green is boring, and we’ll get that anyway once the violets go dormant again.

I cleaned up the bank near the road, and this was my reward — a sprinkling of wildflowers I either never had before, or had but never saw for the undergrowth.

One or both of the previous owners of FAR Manor were fond of aggressively invasive plants, judging from what’s been running riot around here. This is some kind of vine-y plant in the corners of a decorative fence in front of the manor — very pretty, but is trying to take over in every direction. After the blooms get done, I’m going to hack this sucker to the ground. It’ll be back next year.


This is FAR Manor in the spring. Pretty stuff all over the place, but it will engulf you if left to its own devices. Kind of like the in-laws.

Saturday in the Park

No way I’d mistake it for the Fourth of July, but it was an awesome day for February. That’s a little ironic, since the upcoming episode of White Pickups is set right at this time of year and deals with a very similar day (weather-wise).

Everyone else ran off to the chicken houses, after lunch, leaving Mason and me alone at the manor. I’d made plans for this contingency, and so we were shortly off to the park.

We started with a stroll around the perimeter path, just over a mile. Mason enjoyed all the stuff going on, especially the kids playing soccer in the practice fields next to the path. I enjoyed the moms jogging or strolling with their kids. We both enjoyed some fresh air and sunshine.

The playground is just off the path, almost all the way around from where we started, and I found a spot to park the stroller and turned him loose. He has no trouble going up stairs, and I found that with the generous handholds offered on the jungle gym, he also had no problem going down them.

I did get a little nervous when he climbed to the next platform and got out of reach. As I was trying to get him to come down the nearby slide, a little black-haired girl poked her head out of the adjacent tunnel and stared at me. I stared back.

“Moptop? Is that you?” I asked after a second.

“Are you FARf?” she responded. Sure enough, that big guy stalking around the edges of the jungle gym was Moptop’s grandpa. We chatted for a minute, me with one eye on Mason, and Moptop slipped off to hit the swing set. Mason and Moptop saw each other, said hi, then went on with their own pursuits.

After a little running, climbing, sliding, a diaper change (atomic), and watching the other kids, Mason got a little overloaded. He stopped, stood and watched the chaos, occasionally stooping to pick up a handful of wood shavings and toss them. Finally, he walked over to the fence and looked at the path. “That!” he said, several times, until I realized he was ready to get in the stroller and continue our walk.

We disposed of the nuclear waste dump he’d left in his diaper in a nearby bathroom, and I got nervous about where the car was until I realized I hadn’t gone quite all the way around, and we returned and headed on back.

He was asleep a few miles before we got home, and barely stirred when I got him out of the car seat. He only napped for 45 minutes, but he’d had a good morning nap so I wasn’t concerned.

Spring #4 is being very good to us on Planet Georgia, and Winter #5 hasn’t shown up in the extended forecast just yet. But hey, there’s still March to get through.

Fall Colors of FAR Manor

Aha — Picasaweb does have a way to embed a slideshow!

This is what things look like around FAR Manor right now. If it wasn’t for all the crazy stuff going on, it would be my favorite time of year…



Sorry about the Flash trash, but you can click on the pic to see the full-size shots. Oh, and Tumblr has a nice slideshow, but no way to embed it.

Call the Volunteers! Autumn Edition

Same thing happens every year, at least since we routed the kitchen/laundry drains to the back yard: tomato seeds get washed down the drain, they find their way into the yard, they sprout. This year’s a little different: they got started early enough that we might actually get some tomatoes off them this year. I don’t see any frost in the extended forecast — these days, first frost ends up being in November often as not — so that helps too.

As you can see, I’ve put some cages up for support. What you don’t see is the few shovels of compost I’ve thrown around the roots. Funny how the directions with potted tomatoes say “bury ’em deep!” when they have no trouble at all putting down roots from the surface.

I guess I really need to put a bed out here for next year, and see what happens when drain water gets to work with a planned garden bed for a change.

I’m Back!

Did’ja miss me?

While you count the turtles on the dock next door to Dad’s place, enjoying one of the last warm days this side of spring, I’ll ask an age-old question: what’s worse than dialup? Obviously: no Internet at all. Or perhaps Internet on a not-iPhone with a tiny screen. I actually picked up a wifi signal from a friend of Mom’s across the lake, but they wisely had it locked. I tried tethering to my new phone, but that didn’t work out either (still working on that for later needs). I was mostly able to keep up with Twitter, but that’s about it.

Anyway, we had a pretty good time visiting with Dad. We went golfing several times, until a tendon in Solar’s arm decided it had enough. I guess that’s the advantage of dealing with a baby; all the lifting kept me in good form (and I actually started getting off the tee fairly well once I slowed down my swing). We had a small party for his 80th birthday… for the things he complains about, I just hope I’m doing as well when I’m 80. We ate out (a LOT) and ate well when we ate in, too. I got more pictures, some of which will end up on Picasaweb and maybe here sooner or later.

I got home last night around 11:30 p.m. and Mason was asleep (whew!). Of course, we were getting rapidly re-acquainted at an earlier hour than I would have liked. Mrs. Fetched and M.A.E. said he called down the hall for me for a couple days after I left. He changed quite a bit in five days: his hair is a little longer and a lot thicker, and he’s gotten tall enough to reach the tabletops from the floor (eep!). He had his one-year checkup last week, and he’s still 20 lbs. — not much weight gain in the last four months, but the doc says it’s not a concern. He just runs off what he eats, and has minimal baby fat. He’s been trying to talk for a while, and hit on saying ahhhh for a drink before I left. Of course, he’s getting into anything he gets a chance to get into, often looking over his shoulder to make sure we him him doing it… then running away and laughing when he grabs something he shouldn’t.

But I digress. My first day home, I get a call from the sheriff’s office, asking me if I can pick up my car. What has The Boy done THIS time??? The dispatcher couldn’t get any info from the state trooper, who was making the bust almost right on her doorstep, but took my number and called me back when she got the info: speeding and suspended license. Turns out the second charge was bogus — he had paperwork showing he’d done what he had to do to avoid that, and the DMV agreed this afternoon — but 64 in a 45 zone is going to leave a mark… on his wallet. The Boy, of course, is in high dudgeon about it, and is ready to sue anyone he can find who’s attached to the situation. (I told him to look up “sovereign immunity” but, like Mrs. Fetched, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear so he dismissed it.)

Vacation in general was pretty nice. The week at the resort is almost like a distant memory, and don’t even ask about work (although I’ve peeked at email a few times). But today’s event was a reminder that I really need to start looking forward to my daily escape from the free-range insane asylum.

Pictures, Food and Fights…

…but not pictures of food fights. We’ll start off with the pictures…

Mom and Mason


Golf carts on parade…


Mason meets his first clown. He did quite well.


After contemplating the daisy for a few moments, he attempted to eat it (of course).


And, now to the fights. For an evening there, I thought M.A.E. was going to go back to her cheating a-hole of a boyfriend. Well, that now seems to be inoperative. He doesn’t seem to think he’s done anything w0rNg, and thinks that M.A.E. is the one with the problem. But now he’s pulling the control-freak card, threatening to take Moptop (fat chance with a felony drug conviction there, d00d) and making veiled threats (“you’re about to have a very bad week”) and a not-so-veiled threat to get her fired from her job. So she just got her smellphone number changed and who knows what will happen next there? Stay tuned… soap operas aren’t this weird.

Finally, food. Mrs. Fetched said “After I’m done at the chicken houses, I’ll bring some chicken up from Mom’s and we’ll do something with it for lunch.” This is code for, “I’m going to run way overtime, so you might want to fix something if you don’t want everyone here to starve to death.” There were a couple of steaks from last week’s grillin’ in the fridge, and I found some other stuff to make…

Steak Parmesan Pasta Salad

1 16oz box macaroni
8 oz grilled steak, sliced thin
1 cucumber, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 med. onion, sliced thin
1 20oz can corn, drained
1/2 c parmesan cheese (grated)
1/2 c vinaigrette

Prepare macaroni according to package directions. Rinse in cold water and drain well. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Cover and chill for 3 hours (preferred) or serve right away.

Everybody liked it — but they were hungry.

Wood Spill

I finally got serious about cleaning up the wood spill behind the manor.

After dispersing the spill with power and hand tools, there ’s still a couple major plumes of wood…





Nature is lending a hand at eating the spill, although it would take a long time…



Some of the smaller wood particles have drifted into the woods, where they won’t cause any problems…



Some of the spill has been recovered and stored…



Still lots of work to do, but I’m hoping to have the spill cleaned up in the next week or so. It would go a lot faster if I could get The Boy in on the action.

Friday Picture-Rama

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, this would be a looooong blog post.

We keep getting cool snaps, and I keep thinking “this one must be Blackberry Winter,” but they just keep coming. It warms up, then we get a line of thunderstorms, and it cools off, lather rinse repeat. Well, rinse anyway.

The blooms look pretty good this year, and I’ve noticed several stands in a nearby pasture. We still have plenty of jelly and jam though, so I’m sure sure I’ll do much picking come Fourth of July or not.


Upsize the vines, the thorns, and especially the flowers… and this is what you get. The vining roses are really kicking this year — much better than last. We have a dogwood that blooms twice, since there’s one of these vines crawling all through it.

But seriously, I need to get the shears a hold of the rose vines — they’re doing a fair imitation of kudzu, but with teeth!


I was going to say something like “moving from flowers to weeds,” but Big V isn’t here to defend herself. Oh well, I’m still gonna talk about her, that’s the price she pays for dragging me out of bed last weekend and driving her to Tractor Supply. She has her “permanent” prosthetic, the one that’s custom-fit for her, and she can get around on it reasonably well now. That day, she was still working on her balance, and was doing fine pushing the cart around. That is, until she had them drop about 350 pounds of horse and dog feed on it.

She gave the laden cart a push, and said, “I can’t get that going. You’ll have to push.” Then she climbed on top of it. I was a little worried about the cart’s rated maximum load, but it didn’t come apart on us. Of course, that meant I had to push her and the feed up to the cash registers and then out to the car. She hopped down and got in the seat before I had a chance to tell the guy to throw her in the trunk with the rest of it. ;-)


Of course, what would one of these photo-posts be without the World’s Cutest Grandkid? This pretty much sums things up for Mason these days. He’s crawling all over the place, pulling himself up on anything that will stand still long enough to support him, trying to free-stand, and chewing on things.

We started giving him teething biscuits this week — they’re a really hard cookie-like thing that is supposed to be hard to bite through. Mason’s beaver-chompers make pretty quick work of them, though; they don’t last more than a few minutes before he’s bit the end off and working on the loose piece. He likes some regular (i.e. not-baby) food, but definitely not fish or guacamole. He made the most hilarious face after Mrs. Fetched gave him a little home-made guacamole last night… then ejected it quick. I think he was expecting peas, which he does like. Next time, I’ll have the camera at hand and on speed-shoot mode.

Stupid gout is running at a low level at the moment. I’ve temporarily stopped drinking… when the foot is good for an entire week, I’ll resume the occasional nip at the rum bottle.

Unplanned Dim-itude

I’d planned to have at least two posts up this week, but life (as usual) got in the way. Here’s one of the things that kept me busy this week:



Oh well… while I’m getting tomorrow’s White Pickups episode queued up — and this is one you won’t want to miss — you can watch Mason getting on his feet (click for full-size and then some):



His balance is improving rapidly. Last weekend, when he first started pulling up solo, he had to have both hands firmly on some kind of support. This morning, after working at it all week, he succeeded in reaching down and grabbing something off the floor of his playpen while holding on with the other hand. Panda said one morning he turned loose and free-stood for all of two seconds before lunging for the rail.

Maybe I’ll get some more blog-related stuff done next week.

The Week in Pictures

Just a few of the things, normal and not-so-normal, going on around the manor this week…

The dogwoods shook off their yellow early in the week, and are now their usual blazing white. The blooms aren’t as plentiful this year as they have been at least some years past.

This particular shot is the dogwood at the corner of the driveway, with a gigantic cypress in the background. I’ve joked about renting a bucket truck to string Christmas lights on that sucker.


Mason loves being outside, and loves getting a bath. He got too big for the bathroom sink, so now he gets his dunk time in the kitchen sink.

I didn’t have any pix from the various baby food showers he administered to his grandparents this week, unfortunately. On the other hand, I don’t have to worry about cleaning off the camera lens if one of those sneezes got directed that way either.

The Boy takes Mason outside in the stroller; sometimes he sits and plays guitar for him. Mason is fascinated by the guitar and the sound it makes… but most of all he enjoys his “dad time” (what little he gets). He also met Buster T. Butthead, who is officially the first dog he’s petted (stroke, stroke, grab handful of hair). When he’s running around in a few months, I expect Buster will be his best buddy. We’ll probably need to give the dog a bath, now that I think about it…


I spent much of yesterday cutting up a poplar tree with Mr. Sunshine. This was not my plan for the day — I was going to do the Bakin’ Fool thing and hot up the kitchen all day. But they’d dropped it in the area in front of the chicken house, where feed trucks will soon need to go, so it needed to be taken care of. It took us most of the day, cutting off the smaller branches to clear the work area then feeding them to my chipper-shredder… once the work area was clear, the rest of it went fairly quickly. Everything is stacked or piled up here at the manor except for the trunk pieces. We moved them out of the way and Mrs. Fetched said she’ll get the splitter down there and finish that up this week.

Now that’s not even beginning to address what’s waiting for me behind the manor — the above picture tells that particular tale (left side morning, right side evening). Mrs. Fetched has complained for a while about several oak trees close to the house out back; one does make a bad habit of dropping limbs on the roof above our bedroom. Since the renters requested removal of a similarly-positioned tree at the old place, she decided to deal with both jobs at once. So now I have quite a bit of raw firewood to process, and I won’t have to go far to get to it. I’ll have to see if The Boy is interested in getting started on it. I think we’ll miss that extra shade in the evenings, but what do I know?

But even though my day got spent cutting trees instead of kneading, what I wanted to get done yesterday actually happened. Instead of making bread, we bought a loaf. DoubleRed made cookies. And after supper and a brief rest, I made some cinnamon rolls. I took a few to Daughter Dearest, since her Spring Concert was today. Still plenty left, come by the manor and grab one!

A bad sign becomes a good sign…

Some longer-time readers may remember when the developers got too close, about a month before I posted the first episode of FAR Future. What a difference 2-½ years and a housing crash makes, right? Then and now…

The developer put up a sign, mowed down some trees, cut a few roads into the land… and went Tango Uniform. The banks are trying to get their money — all their money — from a prospective buyer. I got two words: Fat. Chance. I suppose if they hold on long enough, they’ll get it… but in the meantime, they’ll be on the hook for the property taxes. Meanwhile, it’s an attractive nuisance of sorts: people hunt the place, and I’ve been sorely tempted to ride the motorcycle in and spin a few doughnuts. Last year, the cops busted some Gwinnett County folks who had started farming the former farmland… unfortunately, their crop was “a green leafy substance” aka The Evil Weed. Seems like most of the drug and gang issues we have here involve a Gwinnett County connection, although that didn’t cross my mind at all when I set the action (at least the early action) of White Pickups there.

Speaking of plants and weeds, the fall wildflowers/weeds are doing their thing now:



I took these during a walk yesterday afternoon, as well as the overgrown sign, using the new 100-300mm lens. A couple little girls bouncing on a trampoline in the front yard stopped to talk to me and ask me what I was doing. I figured a parental type would be shortly outside, wondering what strange man was talking to their kids, but I was spared a potential grilling and went on my way.

Mason had his first-month checkup yesterday. He’s gained nearly 3 pounds, and is pretty healthy beyond the usual infantile afflictions. He has thrush, which looks like some milk got stuck to his tongue, but it’s already responding to the medication and right now his biggest problem is constipation. That’s pretty miserable for everyone within earshot, but fortunately it’s starting to (ahem) pass. He’s one of the most enthusiastic babies I’ve ever fed… I recorded some of the noises he makes when he’s chowing on the bottle. Have a listen…



And right now, he’s “sound” asleep. I hope he forgives me for this when he’s older.

Crazy Rhodo and the Flower Power

Sounds like a good name for a rock band, huh?



She has her accompanists…

Like Sage.



Sage adds a little spice to the music. She's pretty strong, and likes to spread out. She’s been around for a while.

Then there's the wild child of the band, "Mountain" Laurel:



Laurel’s a big girl, which is how she got her nickname. But she sure dresses up nice…

Then there’s Rose:



Rose is a thorny one, and has an attitude. She pretty much takes over wherever she’s planted. Pull her up and she comes right back.

Finally, there’s Iris:



Iris is a thin, shy girl. But she’s pretty and all the fans wish they could be her.

Meanwhile, in real life, The Boy and his band were here playing their own music today. Mrs. Fetched is cooking sausage for a breakfast casserole tomorrow, and the aroma is somewhat distracting…