THERE'S MORE OVER HERE

      Picking gooseberries the other day reminded me of my Dad. In Far Sides  last post she mentioned picking chokecherries and that brought back a lot of memories.

      My Dad was a fanatic about a few things. One thing he was nuts about was picking berries.

     Now let me set this up. I was a kid through the 1940's . Where I lived only about 50% if the land had been developed. So there was much native habitat left. Where I lived at Esk, Sask there was much brush but not many trees. Berries made up much of the shrubbery. One of the main berries was something called Saskatoons, Amelanchier alnifolia. There are many other names for this shrub.

     Now saskatoon berries were my Dad's favorite. He loved to get a groups of friends and neighbors together and go for a day of berry picking. People would bring sandwiches, cakes, cookies and sealers of tea. At some time they would stop for a picnic lunch.

     Now my Dad picked berries like there was no tomorrow. There had to be lots of berries around him. So Dad was constantly on the move and you would hear, "There's lots of berries over here." He was great for getting back in the car and going to another berry patch.

    Now I was a little guy and because slave labor was in force I had to pick berries. I hated it. I would ask Dad if I'd picked enough to stop. He would say,"No, pick until your pail is this full." I would pick some more and go crying back to Dad to see if  could quit. Finally ,I'd give up and just pick berries. 

    So we'd get home around 4 or 5 oclock and poor old  Mom would have to sort and clean the berries. Most of the berries were canned. One year she canned 98 quarts. Pies are excellent but you have to use fresh berries.

    Now my Dad had four daughter in laws. He insisted that they go picking berries with him. They all went with him at least once. Now my Dad had very little tact and sometimes none. He would look in the daughter in law's pails and loudly proclaim who had picked the most. He was a poor influence as he did not get one daughter in law to pick berries.

    Dad  was not only a berry picking fanatic but he was a fanatic about fishing. You heard the same cry, "There's more over here!" 

    Sadly most of that land has been developed and there's very little natural habitat left. Saskatoons have been domesticated and they are raised in your garden . 

SUMMER PROJECT

     This summer I had a small project which ended up being a summer project. The project started on one fine day at the end of April and lasted until one  hot day at the end of July. 

     My project was to paint 3/4 of my fence. A few good days should have been enough to complete the project. The piece of fence was 86 feet long and done both sides, It is 6 feet high. Painting fences isn't  high tech job. 

    However, weather and many other issues got in the way. When it was a good day I had something else to do. When you clean off a fence and get it ready for painting and then have to wait, you end up cleaning the fence off again. So preparation of the fence took a long time.

    I even thought of Tom Sawyer and the story Tom Sawyer and the fence. Could I talk someone into helping me? 

   So you see one project turned into a long project. 

   So here's the result.

GOOSEBERRY

     Last Sunday afternoon the Micro Manager and I began talking about our gooseberry bush. The gooseberry bush that I said that I would never pick any more gooseberries. The micro manager talked about the nice gooseberry jam she used to make . And yes, gooseberry pies? 

Gooseberry bushes are rather sprawly things with lots of very sharp thorns.

       The Micro Manager's gooseberry jam.

     Well, it didn't take very long and my cold heart melted and I was picking gooseberries. Did I say I hated picking gooseberries? Well, you would hate picking gooseberries too. Gooseberry bushes are liberally covered with thorns. The foliage is thick and you have to part it to get the berries.

     So it was agreed that I would pick a few cupfuls. I think I picked six cups. Then comes more work with gooseberries. You have to "top and tail them" So there you sit taking off the stem and flower end. So I even melted and agreed to clean up the gooseberries. The Micro Manager was in a hurry to make jam so we had jam made before supper time.

     Now the gooseberry bush has been there since we moved to the place. In the past I picked everyone of those little berries and had my hands ripped to shreds.

    We had some slave labor in those days. The kids were set up to get the berries ready for cooking. One of the slaves wasn't keen about his job so he would clean up one berry and throw two over the fence until the micro manager became suspicious of something and found the berries that were thrown over the fence. ( This is one of those family stories that won't go away but now everybody laughs,

     So how many of you like gooseberry jam? How many of you have had the pleasure of  picking gooseberries?

    So there you have it. We have gooseberry jam one more time.

GARDENS

       I like gardening. But when I think of gardening it only means vegetables not flowers. Now I know that in most cases when garden is used it's to include a whole yard and how it's landscaped. Here, for some reason garden refers to vegetables.

     So this year for some reason or other I have a very good vegetable garden . It will have something to do with the weather. We've had lots of rainfall. Now I don't have a huge vegetable garden. I just have enough so that I can experience the freshness of vegetables that come directly from the soil.

An overgrown raspberry bush 

                  I do grow some perennials. Could someone tell me what this one is?

                 I have an excellent crop of onions.

                   Peas are just about ready

                   I love beets  

A black current

MY LAWN MOWER WORKS

      Some people wanted to know how my lawn mower  repair job ended. I immediately saw that as a topic for another post!

      So my repair job was to simply replace a rewind spring on my lawn mower.

     Okay I'll back up. In pioneer days , to start a small engine, you would wind a rope around a pulley and pull. If the engine started great! If the engine didn't start you wound the rope around the pulley and pulled again. Sometimes you had to pull 10 times for the engine to start.

     So some wise guy thought, "Why don't we have something to rewind the cord automatically and make things easier?" Well the gizmo was invented and was part of small engines. 

     Now I know some people's eyes are starting to glaze over and look for the end of this post. My eyes are glazing over too. 

     Okay back to my repair. The "unit" consists of a housing to hold the spring, a pulley with a rope, a worm gear and small plastic gear. The housing and pulley are on a shaft. The housing doesn't turn but the pulley does turn.

     Much of this you can't see because it's enclosed. Much of it you can't see because it's underneath whatever. Your hands have to feel things to put them back together. 

    The spring is a challenge to wind. First discover which way to wind it. It is wound opposite to the pulley with the rope. The rope is to turn the pulley counter clockwise. Too complicated for me. It took me four tries to get this right, but I did get it. I'm not going to tell about my dumb mistakes. 

     I'm not going to give details because who cares? Today most lawn mowers start by turning a switch!

CLOUDS

    We had a few thunder showers go through around 6 Pm and they left some towering clouds...my favorite.

       On some of the blogger chatter someone complained about putting pictures on the new blog so I decided to try putting photos on the blog tonight. It was a bit of a run around. I will probably not remember next time so I'll do the whole thing over again.

    Finding labels was also a bit of experimentation.

JUNKYARD DOG

      I have a lawn mower that is 50 years old. Every once in a while it needs to be repaired. I've written about this before and even showed photos.

     Now it's very hard to find parts for something that is that old. I needed  rewind spring. That's the spring that pulls the cord back in and winds it so that you can pull again if the motor doesn't start.

     So to find parts one has to do some searching. I found the part but they wanted 50 bucks. Well what do you do? You can't just run out and buy a 50 year old mower! Well, he said he would order the spring in a week or two so that gave me time to shop around some more. We did find one guy who said he could make us an air filter filament.

    We went to see about the air filter. What a junkyard! The guy had about 100 old mowers. There were many roto tillers, snow blowers and  other small engine machines. These were spread over the whole yard.The guy had a shirt that hadn't been washed for a week and pants to match. He thought he was God's gift to comedy. He had a dozen vehicles stored there and I knew who owned them. .He took me back to see if a mower like mine was there. I had been expecting a place with new things.

    I asked if he had the spring I was looking for. He went to look for one and told me not to go in his shop. Five minutes later he came out with a new spring in the original package! How much did he want for it? 10 bucks! I took it in a heartbeat. So the Micro Manager only had a twenty. So he says I'll take the ten for a tip!  What a card!

     Every once in a while you stumble into a very odd place. This was a very different business practise.

     So this was the typical junk yard without the mean dog.