August 2021

So I decided to remodel the basement. What the hell.
Originally, this was going to be last winter’s project, so even though I haven’t even started, I’m already behind schedule. Based on old photos, I came up with a plan. I cut 2 holes in the concrete, and found that … there’s a 2″ pipe where a 3″ pipe shoulda been. Damn.
Back to the drawing board, but this time, I already knew where the toilet wasn’t going to go. I decided to use the toilet hole for a tub, fill the 2nd hole back in, and cut a new hole for the toilet.  I’ll smooth it all flat, and no one will ever know.

It’s blueberry season. Mary picked berries and made a very fine blueberry crumble out of them. Two days later, we picked more berries, and Mary made a berry galette. I am still munching my way through the galette, and the bushes need picking again.
I like blueberries, but I’m going to be sick of them soon.

We took a vacation. Mary made space in the Green House guest schedule, and told me we’re going to Newport.
Rhode Island, that is.  South.
One last good time before Delta shuts down interstate travel.
Now I’m not saying it was a disaster, but …
Apparently, Newport is the place to be in August. (I didn’t know that!) Hotels are hard to come by. Reservations are hard to make. The surf beckons, and the fish give fishermen that come hither look. Who, I wonder, is reeling in who?
Newport is the America’s Cup. The Vanderbilts. The oyster capital of the world. The whole nine yards.
The day before we left, my processor broke. My backup processor works a lot like a toilet: sometimes you gotta jiggle the handle to make it work right. All the fuckin’ time.
We stayed in the historic district, in a building built in 17 thirty something, a couple blocks from the shore. We got there tired and hungry, and we walked the whole length of Thames Street to a seafood spot on the wharf, where we sat at a patio table. As the sun set over the ocean, the waiter told us there were no table candles or lighting of any kind, and we read our menus using our iPhone flashlight apps. The food was good, but when Mary ordered a Jack on the Rocks, they charged us 2 bucks for the rocks. If you’re ever in Newport, steer clear of The Reef.
Old Money. The Gilded Age. The Vanderbilts built a 20-bedroom summer cottage in Newport, and all their friends did too. Bellevue St was quite the tony address in it’s day, and we toured 3 mansions. They are unbelievable, of course, but I was slightly revolted. To build these buildings today would probably cost about as much as it’s cost Bezos to rocket into space, and I gotta wonder if it was money well spent. The mansions, that is.
We did a lot of walking. The plan was to see the sights and then to catch a fish. We didn’t want to book a boat unless the weather was going to be good and, by then, all the boats were booked. Lesson learned. So I’m putting ‘catch a fish bigger than me’ back on my bucket list.
Instead, we took the ferry to Block Island, where we rented a Moped and put 28 miles on it at 25 miles per hour. There was only one road, so GPS was redundant. We got back with just enough time for an ice cream cone and a bathroom break, and I dripped it all over myself. The ice cream, that is.
We googled ‘fried oysters near a light house’ and headed for Point Judith. Turns out the clam shack was out of oysters, and the light house was protected by Homeland Security, so we googled ‘beach near me,’ only to find the entire coastline protected by cliffs, cars, membership fees, or back yards. We finally copped a squat on a rocky dock and got our feet wet in the water. Cross that one off the list!
On my trip West and back, I made it a point to take a walk every night after dinner. In Newport, I took a walk every morning. Walking is the way to go. You get a whole different vibe when you’re experiencing the world in it’s own element.
In the end, we never went fishing, the food mostly sucked, I didn’t buy a tee shirt, and Mary didn’t eat a single oyster. It was still a good time, though.

We got back and, while we were gone, the birds had eaten every last blueberry on the 2nd-to-last bush. I should be pissed, but I’m giving the birds a pass.

I put the concrete slab in the basement back together nice and tidy, and I went downstairs the other night to admire my work, only to find that my brand new toilet hole had belched gray water all over the slab. WTF !?! I cleaned it up and pondered the problem. Maybe it was just a fluke, I told myself. Maybe it won’t happen again. That would be nice!
Two days later, there was a fresh puddle.
What are the odds that the sewer would back up for the first time ever, just a week after I dug up the drain pipes? I was pissed.
For once, it was something simple – and unrelated to my digging! The filter in the septic tank was clogged, and I just gotta clean it more often. Yuck.

Apple season is coming up. Apples ‘happen’ every other year and, from the looks of the trees, this year is a happening year. The easy thing to do would be to watch the apples ripen, watch the apples fall, and watch the deer get fat. It’s not too late to do exactly that, but what are the odds?
Let me think …  I solved ‘picking’ with the boom, and ‘crushing’ goes quick. ‘Pressing’ the juice out takes forever, though, and holds everything up. I’m going to need a better apple press if I want to press apples better.
And I need it soon, so I better get busy.

One thing led to another. In the span of a week, the mowing deck broke and I fixed it (belt). It broke again, and I fixed it (idler). The blades were beyond gone, and it took me 3 hours to get them off. The gear box oil seal was bad and, when I topped it off, all the oil leaked out during the first mow. All over the belt and the sheaves. It was a slippery mess, but at least the high-pitched noise went away!
Then I fired up the boom, but it had 2 flats and, when I took off the tires, there was a broken leaf spring, too. Sigh.  I fixed them.
The mower backed over a rough spot and broke a weld. Then another tire blew out.
No wonder I never get anything done around here.

Maggie and the girls came over for dinner and, by acclamation, they decided I should cook meatloaf. I like to cook (once in awhile), and I make a pretty good meatloaf, so I chopped all my vegetables, got them going in the pan, and then got distracted. The vegetables burned badly.
”Fuck it,” I said, and I put them in the meatloaf.
And since I was making 2 meatloafs, I made the other one ‘right’, and then wrote on top of them, in ketchup, ‘#1’ and “#2’ and gave everyone a piece of each. The verdict was … ‘No difference.’

And, speaking of meatloaf …
Mary grows herbs, and I went out to gather some parsley and oregano, which I chopped up into the meatloaf. I mentioned it to Mary, and she made me show her where I got it from, because … she’s not growing any oregano! Uh oh. Turns out I picked parsley and lavender! And it’s already mixed into the meatloaf!
Quick! What do we do? Do we cook it anyway, or order out?
We googled it, and lavender is safe in small doses, though too much will give you constipation.
No problem, we decided. The meatloaf’s already got that covered.

The apples seem to be ripening about 3 weeks early this year, and I’ve been scrambling to get my cidering system put together. The thing about apples is that, when they are ready, they are ready: They don’t wait for you, and once they fall off the trees, it’s too late. Everything has to work. And it it doesn’t, you’re fucked, so there is a fair amount of pressure to think it through and get it right. This will be the first time I’ve used my new press and sanitizer, and something is bound to go wrong. So today, we did a ‘pipe cleaner’ run to see what’s broke. All things considered, it went well, and we got about 10 gallons of juice. You can’t imagine how many problems I had to fix to pull this off, and I feel pretty good about it.

Remember that near-dead onion I rescued last month? The one I re-planted in the garden, to see if I could kill it with kindness?
It died.