Pinesol Postings

The spring birds are back. Hummers, rose-breasted grosbeaks (the males in their tuxedos with red cravats and the females in drab but with peachy colored wing pits) and orioles. I’ve never had such a flock. I counted 30 orioles at the feeders at one time. Amazing show of color.

We moved to Pinesol in the spring of 2000. That summer, Doug built a barn, aka run-in, aka horse hovel, on the foundations of an old 10-or-so-cow stanchion barn. The late Lowell Pierce helped him with the roof.
Well, this has been a snowy winter, probably what we’d call normal. But the last big wet snows collapsed the roof on the barn and the floor is awash with icy water.
I noticed from an upstairs house window that the roofline was strange. So I went out to check. Yep, collapsed. Luckily, the section over the hay store is intact, so the last bales of hay aren’t spoiled. Shortage of hay is another topic.

The roof will have to be repaired, but this time, I think we’ll hire a carpenter..

Our son, Joshua, his wife, Stephanie, and daughter, Billie Rose, live in a suburb of Boston. It occurred to me that they might have gone into the city by the conventient train, which stops a few blocks from their home, along with Stephanie’s sister, Valerie, borther-in-law, Bruno, and twin newphews, Simon and Samuel. Valerie and family are visiting from Stephanie’s home country of France. What would be more natural than to take the guests to a gala day in Boston? I called Josh this morning. They were in New York City. He said if they had been at home they would have been along the Boston Marathon route. I think of all the people who were there cheering each runner crossing the finish line. All the tragedy of deather, severed limbs and other horrible injuries. There they were – standing at a perfectly happy place one second and in a terrorist attack the next.
So, our family members weren’t on the scene. We grieve for those who were.

For the first seven years at Pinesol, Doug cut our firewood from a scappy woods, leaving the healthy trees to make a park-like landscape. He still harvests a few trees each year such as broken-top poplars and uprooted basswoods. But now we buy almost all our winter fuel as hardwood, seasoned logs. Seven cords usually gives enough for Doug to saw and split into furnace-sized chunks. But this year, we ran out. We ordered two more cords and our supplier kindly brought the logs over and unloaded them in the driveway. The snow is too deep to get them farther and the log yard is drifted in. Next winter’s logs are there already, seven cords.
We also invested in an efficient wood furnace after a few years here. The Charmaster is a good deal and the house stays cozy.

I have been in the newspaper business since 1987, if you don’t count the Sunday afternoons I joined my mother at the Bridgeport Post and wrote the occasional teen feature. I have always worked for dailies, but this winter, I’m helping out at the American, Blackduck’s newspaper, while the editor, Paula Bauman, is on leave.

I am looking for Blackduck-related stories, so if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I’m certainly open to them.

In the spring of 1957, my family moved to Newtown, Conn. and I attended Mary Elizabeth Hawley Elementary School, then serving students grade k-7. It was dedicated in 1930 and named for the benefactress, who also donated funds for the Cyrenius H. Booth Library named for her father. The school now serves k-4. I also taught kindergarten there while I was in college to finish a year for someone on maternity leave. When I entered eighth grade, the junior high addition to the high school was complete and my class transferred. I graduated from Newtown High School in 1964. At that time there was no Sandy Hook Elementary School, but we lived in Sandy Hook, which has a post office and shopping center now and is a part of Newtown, along with Hawleyville, Dodgingtown and a few other minor burgs. When we lived in Sandy Hook in a new development, the activity in town related to some factories – fabric fire hose, plastic molding – situated on the Pootatuck River, which originally was the water power for the factories. There was also about one block of retail – bakery, pharmacy, five and dime, etc.

This morning, Monte Draper and I traveled to Red Lake for a story assignment for the Pioneer. We didn’t play the radio because we had plenty of Pioneer personnel news to catch up on. When I arrived home, Doug was eating lunch and listening to the MPR news station. He said something about a school attack in China and suggested the Chinese attacker could have been copying Newtown.

“Newtown?” I said. (There are plenty of Newtowns in the country.) He said, “Yes, Newtown, Connecticut.”
That’s when I learned of the horror in a town I called home for nearly 10 years.

Eggs

On May 4, our day-old chicks came home from Kelly Larson’s incubator. They were little fluffballs of various colors (4 breeds). They graduated from a home in the cellar in a storage bin under a heat lamp to a makeshift pen, also under a heat lamp. Eventually they feathered and were ready for the chicken house Doug built for me.
He also built the pullet palace, four nesting boxes. Kelly suggested putting golf balls in the boxes to give the pullets a clue as to where they should lay their eggs. The gang regularly kicks the golf balls out of the boxes, playing soccer, maybe, and I regularly put the balls back in. Now the girls are starting to lay cute little pullet eggs, but so far they’ve put the in the pine shavings on the floor in little depressions they have dug.
Anyway, we had sunny side up eggs for breakfast with caraway rye toast. Very good.

Big dig

October has been a more eventful month than anyone would ever wish.

On Oct. 14, I tripped on a rumpled runner rug and lurched into the adjacent grandfather clock’s glass door panel, which shattered causing serious cuts to my face. Hosptial. Stitches. Then, the friend who volunteered so kindly to fetch me home from the hospital, was involved in a terrible vehicle crash. She remains in the hospital with multiple injuries.

I returned home, with a lift from other friends, in time to witness the excavation and rebuilding of a septic system. For the first 11-plus years we lived in Pinesol, the household effluvient was managed by a system that turned out to be antique and well off code requirements. (Hey, this is Pinesol.) It consisted of a cess pool buried in the east yard with a natural gravity trickle through the soil. No pipes or regular drain field. The laundry water went via underground pipe into the right-of-way ditch.

This summer, the sysem became a problem. The more-than-verdant drainage area became mushy, a haven for frogs during the dry weather. Then, flushing became problematical. Pumping the stuff out helped for a few months, but the tank filled up again. The verdict – the system was worn out.

So, a new system was in order. An engineer came out, made soil borings and found a nice sandy area for a new drain field, albeit upland from where the septic tank had to go. Hence, an electric pump to give stuff a boost.

Last Monday, Sparky and company arrived with a crew and major digging gear to remove to old cess pool tank, put in a new septic tank and grade and gravel a drain field. The crew accomplished the project in one day, including spreading the excess gravel on the driveway. The septic system was Doug and my 43rd anniversary present to each other – not very romantic, but something we’ll enjoy every day.

Meanwhile, I bought a new car at Dondalinger’s to replace the wrecked 2000 Dodge van. It’s a 2006 Chev. Uplander van. Very nice. The dog is still getting used to the seat configuration.

Let’s hope November is uneventful.

The droughty summer and fall have not dimmed the colors, at least not in my front yard poplars. The oaks look terribly dry. I hope I won’t lose any.

The last precip we had here in Pinesol was a snow flurry Sept. 14 in the evening. It made a snowbow.

Let’s hope we’re in the northwestern part of Minnesota where some rain is predicted for tonight.

Despite the drought, we had a very good garden. The peas were a flop – too hot too soon for them. Everything else did well.