NATIONAL SIBLINGS DAY

     Today is National Siblings day in Canada and in some parts of the United States. It's a day for siblings to say publicly that they care  for each other. 

     I have three living siblings who are brothers. I have always lived away from my brothers but I still enjoy their companionship and when we get together we have a good time. We've been known as Emil's boys and I think the photo was taken at Dad's 80th birthday. 

   I also have a sibling who left us far too soon. Doreen passed away in February of 1953. She is still missed. One wonders what the family would have been like if she had lived . Doreen has been gone for 70 years and one wonders what the family would have been like with her presence. 

SPEEDING

      Everybody likes a good speeding ticket! NOT!

      I confess to being a life long speeder. It's a record that I'm not proud of. I realize that it is very dangerous. I realize that it's against the law. I realize that it puts others in danger. 

      I started driving illegally when I was 11. We lived in the country. There weren't very many people living in the area and very little traffic on any road. I drove my Dad' new 1951 chevy truck. He would need somebody to pick him up out of the field or bring something out to the field so I was given the job. He also had a 1929 chev car which I also drive for him. I didn't have any accidents but it was very risky. 

    As I got a little older speeding became a very interesting objective. All the little farm boys had stories and we seemed to have to out do one another. I was also sent to town to deliver grain to the elevator. All these things were considered normal. I thought I was a good driver and I probably was. 

     As farm kids we took Dad's car to the neighbors. Sometimes we went a lot further than the neighbors. Sometimes we got home at 4:00 AM. To be honest , we were up to no good. 

    When I got my own car the pattern of speeding had been set. As I got older I slowed down a bit. Did I get speeding tickets? Well, no. Not until I was 75! 

     I got my first speeding ticket from photo radar. Most people dislike this type of enforcement as you don't know that you've got a ticket for about 8 to 10 weeks when you get a letter in the mail. Well, okay pay the ticket. It also doesn't go on your record. 

   A couple of years later I got another photo radar  ticket but got off. They have a limited time to give you the ticket. They were late so my ticket was cancelled. 

   Well, I didn't learn. I got my third photo radar ticket when I was 82 years old! Worse than that it was in the local school zone. 

    I know I'm going to get some lectures here and so I should. I don't have any excuse whatsoever to speed. I certainly hope that I do not get any more speeding tickets. 

SPRING YARD CARE BEGINS

        Yesterday I started my spring yard work. No, I'm not stiff and sore today. 

        Here the first order of business is to clean off the lawn from winter debris. About the end of October the grass has been frozen so many times that it's  not green any more ,  just brown. Yardwork is finished for the season except for some shrub and tree pruning. Through the winter dust, dirt, leaves and assorted junk finds it's way on the grass.

       So as soon as it's ready we begin cleaning up the grass. There are four choices of how to do this job. You can ignore it and not do anything. You can hire a contractor who cleans yards. You can attach a dethatcher to your lawn mower and this acts like a rake. Or you can get out your grass rake and rake by hand!

      Well, of these four , you know the one I choose. Yes, rake the whole thing by hand. It usually involves three or four times over the grass. 

      We can't get started at this job until things dry up. I rake the parts that dry up first. Work on flower beds won't start until later as the soil is far too wet. 

     The photos show that there are areas of the yard that are still snow covered.  I rake the dry areas first and then the other areas will be dry by the time I'm finished. 

     It's late before our snow has melted but the days are long and plants soon grow very  quickly. 

FIRST SPRING OUTING

      Today was the first time I went birding with the group since Nov. of 2020. We had 13 birders. It was a treat to get out with people and bird together.

      We went to a site that is very good bird habitat. Half of it is old growth never been logged forest. With so many old trees we find many woodpeckers and one day saw four species.  The black backed woodpecker is very hard to see but we've seen them in this area. The brown creeper is also hard to spot but we were lucky enough to see a pair in breeding season and watch them chase each other around the tree. 

      Today we saw 19 species and 4 other species that we could not identify. A real treat was to have two flocks of swans fly over. Another treat was to see an owl on the nest with owlets. 

     Many species are just beginning to return to the north. Water species like swans, geese and ducks are here. Crows are also back but the song birds have not arrived. We saw one tree sparrow today but they are early migrants. 

     It's good to be birding after two years. So you say, "Where are the photos?" I alternate between field glasses and camera as I don't like to carry very much. So maybe next week end I'll have a few photos. 

QUICK CHANGE

        Our weather changed very quickly in the last 24 hours. 

        Yesterday Mar. 30 was a bright warm sunny 15 C day. I was able to just wear a T shirt. As you can se by the following mural photos it was bright. 

 

     So this morning I woke up to snow on the ground. there were high winds and driving snow in the night. 

CLOUDY SKIES

       Robin , from The New Dharma Bums wrote this morning about a shape her brother had seen in the clouds. Kind of cool that he saw a robin shape in the clouds for his twin Robin.

       Well, this reminded me about an incident where children were looking for shapes in the clouds.

      I was hitch hiking back to my school in mid November of my first teaching year. I was picked up about 2:00 PM  by a young family that was on a long road trip. I was in the back seat with two young kids around five years old. They were super little kids. One thing their parents did to keep the kids amused was to look for shapes made by clouds. They were occupied with this activity for an hour until it became completely overcast and they couldn't see cloud shapes. Then they looked at books they had. 

     I was with these people for about 100 miles when I had to take a different road. By now it was around 4:00 PM . I had to walk for about 45 min before I could start hitch hiking again. A couple of famers picked me up in their truck and gave me a ride of 20 miles before they turned off in the country They had taken a load of pigs to town. By now it was completely dark. It might have been a highway but it was rural and very little traffic after dark. One car passed me and that was it. I could see a village about 5 miles away so I started walking.

     The village was quiet. No one was on the streets. The businesses were all closed . But wait there was one place with dim lights on. The Chinese Cafe was open. This cafe did not even have electricity but it did have a phone booth. I phoned one of the farmers in my school district to  come and get me. About an hour later he showed up and I got to my land lady's house about 11:00 PM. 

     It was an afternoon that I'll never forget. 

   

HANDIMAN

      I have pictured myself, incorrectly, as a handyman. I've written about it on a few posts.  I've done simple plumbing and electrical. Rough carpentry, like fences. Fixed appliances. I get some satisfaction from doing these jobs but a couple of years ago I wrote that I would quit. 

     Well, I didn't quit. 

     I've still repaired some things but it's difficult to see with trifocals. It's also difficult to bend to get in the right position. Fingers don't work like they used to. 

   Well I was dumb enough to try "a very simple" procedure the other day. 

   Our house is old enough to have a storm door. The space between the two doors is now not enough for the lock sets they sell today. 

    So I didn't have a lock on my storm  door. I wanted to be able to leave the main door open at night so that in hot weather a breeze could blow through the screen in the door and cool the house over night. So a simple fix would be to put a small dead bolt on my storm door with the screen. Now I've put many of these bolts on . They're the kind you use to put on gates and shed doors.

    Well, this one was to be a little different. I was modifying it's use. So needless to say it was difficult to measure and get things to line up. I couldn't close the door to measure. I had to keep the door open and "eye ball it. " The first time it didn't work so drill all those holes a little further back.

   So one of those little jobs that should have taken 45 min. took me all afternoon.

    When will I ever learn?