Porch etc.

By noontime, day before yesterday, the old porch was gone, except for the roof. I showed up with my truck at about 11:00 and loaded the remains in for a trip to the dump. Normally, this trip would have taken about 10 mins, but in VT, there are only a few months during which road construction can take place.

At the intersection of Rte 2 and Rte 302, a new roundabout is being installed. This has been, so far, a 3 year project since all the water lines from there to Montpelier, about 3 miles worth, are also being replaced and all the destroyed road must be rebuilt. It takes so long since there is only a short summertime window during which construction can take place. Although we are nearing the end, there are still 20 min delays on a regular basis. Such was the case, and the 10 min ride turned into 30. I took the long way back, which was another 15 mins, making the whole journey and unloading about an hour. I then, on the return trip, had to stop and get all the porch flooring and a gallon of primer. The afternoon was spent priming the flooring on both sides while my trusty carpenters rebuilt the floor joists and beams.

Painting has to happen outdoors, where the wind was carrying ample amounts of cottonwood seed which floated gently but accurately down onto the the newly primed flooring. Primer dries fast, but not that fast, and the flooring was soon covered with little fluffy white parachutes of seed. I rationalized that when the flooring is installed, it will be covered with footprints anyway, so not to worry.

Yesterday, after finishing the foundation and, purchasing the new turned roof posts at $100 a pop, the floor was installed. I was right, it was covered with footprints. It took all day, but by 6:00PM, the construction phase of the project was finished. We cleaned up all (I hope) of the excess nails and lumber scraps, and I removed the trash to a dumpster since I didn't care to fight traffic again.

This AM, I applied the first coat of porch paint to the floor, with the second to follow this afternoon. I'm hoping that I can avoid too many new footprints before it all dries.

As Meg's Kitchen is playing on July 8th, we need to figure out a song selection and rehearse the chosen ones. Susan, the fiddler, is at her "camp" in the boondocks of Randolph, so Mike and I got a map from her and went to her place last night to play. The map turned out to be a hand drawn squiggly line with a few mile markers on it, but no road names. There were cautions like "very steep" and "red house". We only got lost 2 times before arriving. The camp has no electricity, but we managed to light the gas lamps without explosion, and had a good rehearsal. It was very quiet as the nearest noise was too far away to hear. It's on a mountain top and the view of the valley is pretty impressive. Just at the end, 2 of Susan's brothers, her sister in law and mother all arrived and we played them a couple of tunes. All in all, a nice time was had.

At my annual visit, my dermatologist has, for a few years, frozen "sun damage" on my face with liquid nitrogen. It keeps returning, however, and this year she prescribed a cream to apply 2x daily for 2 weeks. This I have done. The creme turns the mutant skin cells into a mass of crusty and sometimes bleeding crud, which then, so she says, falls off leaving smooth and beautiful skin. I have yet to experience the smooth and beautiful part, but the grungy "What'd you run into you - you shoulda seen the other guy" part is in full swing. I'm scaring little children around town and causing folks to stare, but I do think that it is slowly getting better. This summer there will be the liberal application of SPF 70 suncreen and a full brim hat. I'd rather not go through this again.

Now, I'm off to do the second porch coat, and maybe mow my lawn. The tall spikey things that proliferate in un-chemed lawns around here are becoming to tall to wade through.

All Things

All things change.

It turns out that the official Notch Hop ride was last week, so there has been a change of venue for the father's day jaunt. We wound up simply going to Burlington on the old road, Rte 2. There were only 2 of us and the other one had a son playing in a soccer tournament. I dropped him off and watched for awhile, and then I left to go visit my new grandniece and her parents for awhile.

Emmaline was asleep when I got there, but her parents were awake, so I had coffee and a piece of pie. I find that it is a rare occasion when I refuse pie. Emmaline woke up during pie consumption after sleeping for all of 15 mins. Babies do have their own irreversible and unchangeable schedule. It's amazing how fast they change at this age. She was noticeably bigger in just a week.

Apres baby and pie, I went in search of the soccer dad, but I was 45 mins later than the agreed upon time and he was gone in search of food, so I headed to home.

It has taken 3 days, though not full days, to complete trimming of the lilac. That bush better bloom like crazy next year or else! I finally raked up the remains and put them with the other organic compost down in the lower 40. Next I get out the chain saw and do some serious pruning on the other lilac, which has grown 20' tall and is seriously out of control. It should be easier and faster since I won't need to be as careful.

Went to the concert at Lamb Abby last night and as expected, it was wonderful. There were about 30 people there. There should have been 200, but that only made it better for those of us who were smart enough to show up. It was almost like being in someone's living room, only with strange decorations. They played a good variety of music from Irish to Old Time, interspersed with a few songs and good stage banter. Afterwards, we all sat around and played a few tunes for about 45 mins. There were about 10-12 of us just sitting, playing, talking and having a good time. It's pretty nice when the artists are willing to just hang around and play music with the audience, and they had a good time doing it as well.

Today, we start on the side porch, tearing off the old floor, replacing the floor beams and joists and replacing new flooring. I hope there is enough good weather to get the paint down before the new tenant moves in. The reconstruction should only take about 2 days, so I've got a pretty good window.

I need to go work on this, so see ya later. ( I wish someone would come up with a system which would automatically type out these unorganized thoughts so that I didn't have to struggle through imparting my high school typing skills manually. Trying to correct the huge error rate is so time consuming--)

I Won!

Well - I suppose there is really no winner or looser. Winning or loosing implies that there has been an ending. When you are dealing with bugs, no such thing exists. How about I survived?

The lilac is snipped, and the bugs are still hungry, for the most part. Once it started to rain again, the black flies came out in force, so I left the remaining dead buds for today, and they are now gone.

Here's a hint. When you are painting directly above your head, make sure your mouth is closed. Nuff said there.

There is a healthy wild grape vine growing up a trellis on the back of our garage. The vine just appeared there one year, so I put up the trellis for it to grow on and it's been quite happy ever since. Fortunately, we don't require it to provide actual grapes. That might be asking too much. But, there is always hope. It has blossomed profusely this year, and maybe something will come of it. I don't hold a lot of hope though. I don't know of any other vines in the immediate area and I suspect that two are required. The blossoms look like this:

When they falloff, they look like this

They cover everything underneath the vine with a green haze

It's kind of pretty, and it gives my little buddy a nice soft surface to run around on.

Oh yeah - the new buddy. It seems that I have one. He's been around watching me and scolding if I get too close.

This guy has been frantically stuffing his cheeks with whatever he is finding in the yard and depositing these treasures somewhere under the back porch

I'm hoping that he's not filling a big space with anything that will grow huge in the spring. I envision an orchard of apple trees belching up through the bricks next June.

This weekend, a local fiddler named Sarah Blair is performing at a local venue called the Lamb Abby ( more about Lamb Abby at: http://www.timesargus.com/article/20090306/FEATURES02/903060302/1011/FEATURES02

She will be accompanied by Mark Roberts and Flynn Cohen. I'm going. Sarah is a wonderful fiddler and this promises to be a great musical event. There is going to be an Irish session afterwards, so I'll bring the guitar. Just in case I want to join in, it'll be waiting in the car. I've played with Sarah before and it's a real treat.

Tomorrow, some of us bikers are going on a notch hop. We'll likely start in Bristol, VT and travel south, crisscrossing back over Middlebury, Brandon and Lincoln gaps. There is a fireman's BBQ in Lincoln which is free to us since we are in the BMW Motorcycles of Vermont club. It sounds like a great way to spend a Sunday, and maybe I will get some bug revenge on the way. If all goes well, I'll publish a few pics of the tour.

How The Heck?

I am such a total neophyte! It's taken me about 15 mins to figure out how the heck to get back into this blog so that I can make another post. Now, all I can do is hope that tomorrow won't be a repeat. I'm just such a fast learner!

Oh Yeah - it's been raining again, or still, depending on your outlook. It's at the point that I'm afraid to walk on the grass for fear that I'll sink out of sight in the VT clay muck. There's so much clay around here that I could throw pots for 20 years from the contents of my back yard without changing the topography one iota.

I own a couple of apartments in town. These are old buildings from the late 1800 to early 1900 era and, therefore, require lots of care and attention. This morning's affair was to assess the condition, and expense to fix, one of the attendant porches. The flooring has deteriorated to the point of too much rot, too little support, and it needs to be replaced along with the carrying beam at the front side.

As always, the first glance "This is easy." assessment was sorely inadequate. Rot loves to sneak around under otherwise nice looking facial coverage and the application of a small pry bar provided a grossly different point of view. I also neglected to look up, wherein I would have found the broken fascia and crown moulding along the porch eve. This, of course, is indicative of further damage under the metal roofing which has been beaten half to death by ice chunks falling off the main house.

There is a new tenant moving in on the first of July. Fortunately the contractor is a good biker buddy friend and the floor, at least, will be done by then. Doncha just love it when a plan comes together?

My profile indicates that music is an important part of my life. No surprise, therefore, that this is true. There are three of us itinerant musicians who have been consistently meeting every Tuesday night for a jam session, two of us for 10 years, one for about 8. Anyone is welcome, but we three are there almost every Tuesday. Over the years, we have more or less informally evolved into a "band", if you will. We even have a name - Meg's Kitchen. We call ourselves this since the place we play on Tuesdays is, in fact, Meg's kitchen. We are so clever.

Every once and awhile, we play out. Farmers Market, weddings, First Night, that kind of thing. We don't advertise or anything. It's all just word of mouth.

It's a lot of fun, playing out. People really enjoy having a little background noise and we really enjoy their reactions.

There's a summer folk concert series in South Strafford VT, and we are going to play on July 8th. This is unusual because it's an actual concert, not just background noise. Suddenly, the pressure is on. There's no room for silly mistakes since people will, we hope, actually be listening. It's really pretty exciting and we are looking forward to it. Over the next two weeks, there will be sessions similar to rehearsals and a program of pre determined tunes will be developed. Fortunately for our audiences, we don't sing, so that's one aspect we don't have to deal with. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

It's stopped raining for long enough that I think I will chance it and go trim dead flower stalks off the lilac bushes. This is an annual adventure where I get to share space with the remaining starving black flies and hordes of new, young, eager-to-eat deer flies. For some reason, Mother Nature saw fit to extend the horror of these flying apparitions by allowing them to hatch consecutively instead of concurrently. But, there is the overlap period during which we mere humans must contend with them both at once, and during which the lilacs must be trimmed. Oh joy!

If I don't get sucked dry by the experience, I'll be back.

Day One

It's Raining.

I was just sitting here at the Computer thinking that email is becoming a thing of the past. My wife is really the one who brought this up, but I think she's right. Technology progresses at such an amazing speed - almost as fast as the electrical power that makes it possible in the first place.

This thought process eventually brought me to the point of communication possibilities with the rest of the world. Why not a blog, I thought. I'm not yet ready for Facebook, too many people and too little time, but maybe I can just start blogging whatever comes to mind and see where it goes.

It all seems simple enough. All I need do is go to Google, sign up for Blogger, and start typing. How easy is that?

Pretty easy, it seems - after all, here I am posting my random thoughts after only a few minutes of simple choices.

It's still raining. It has been all day, and will for awhile.

I was mowing the lawn yesterday when I discovered, or I think I did, that some of the Spruce trees I have planted over the years are infected with a Spruce bud worm infestation. According to the information I can find, this is more likely to happen when there is a hot dry spring. We have not had a hot dry spring. I guess the worms don't really care.

When one finds such a problem, one begins to notice it wherever it occurs. It's like a new car; when you buy a red Subaru, suddenly there they are all over the place.

Anyway, I've now noticed that my next door neighbor's trees are seriously infected. Much of the foliage on the bottom of her trees is gone and they are looking pretty bare. This is going to require research, since I don't want to use chemical warfare against bugs who are happily munching on trees next to the river.

My nephew and niece (niece in law?) had their first baby on June 1, 2009. A girl. They live a few miles down the road and this is a very happy occasion for them, and us. She is a beautiful little girl with a swath of dark hair that everyone thinks will turn blond before long. I'm not convinced, but what do I know. We rounded up all of our remaining old leftover grandchild baby toys, cooked some chicken, and took it all to meet her last Saturday. What a treat! She didn't eat any chicken though, but the dog sure tried.

There is such promise for the coming generation, and such a huge amount of work for them to do. I am both sorry that we and previous generations have left them with such a mess, and hopeful that they will be up to the task of righting our mishaps.

I have to go and figure out what to have for supper. We've been eating leftovers for 3 or 4 days now, and they are all about gone, 'cept for a little spaghetti. The need for more cooking of the real sort has arisen, so it's off to slaving away over the hot stove again. If I can shovel my way through the freezer, maybe I can find something younger than me for the evening repast.

I'll be back!

Oh, P.S. If any of the group to which I am sending posts automatically don't want me to do so, just say no.