EIEIO

How do you spell "Pumpkin"...
P-U-M-P-K-I-N-EIEIO! 
Dagnabit!

Grin And Bear It

Grin And Bear It

My old shotgun seemed heavier than I remembered, but it had been quite a while since I'd had any occasion to use it. I grabbed a couple of double 00 buck cartridges and squeezed through the door ahead of the dogs.

I wanted to make sure that Mister Bear, who had been stuffing himself on our Braeburn apples wouldn't try and have a little doggie desert. The dogs showed their displeasure at being left behind, whining and scratching on the door, after all, it was time for their morning pee.

We hadn't seen the bear yet, although our neighbor Charlene saw it go over the fence into our yard and called us with a “heads up”. The next morning we found several piles of bear crap under the apple tree and we saw that the fence had a big sag in it where the bear had bulled his way over it.

I broke open the ancient Western Field 12 gauge, dropped a shell into the chamber, closed it up and stepped off the deck onto the wet grass. My head lamp lit a yellow circle ahead of me and I could see my breath in the dim beam of light.

Nervously, I walked toward the apple tree where Mr. Bear had left his calling cards, and sure enough there was a fresh pile. I swiveled my head back and forth to illuminate the shadows looking for a reflection of eyes or something that looked bearish.

I walked the perimeter of the yard without seeing anything except shadows, and just as I was starting to relax, a loud racket over my head made me jump and almost leave a calling card of my own. When my heart slowed back down I realized that I had spooked a flock of birds that had been roosting in one of our willow trees. I could hear the dogs scratching on the door to get out and do their business so I let them out and watched over them while they ran around sniffing this strange new visitor's odor.

We'll have apples getting ripe on another tree up into December, so I guess I'll just have to grin and ….. ..!

The Great Pumpkin and Junior

Much to my relief the Great Pumpkin slowly started turning Orange and began looking like a respectable Pumpkin should. I tried to ignore the numerous female blossoms which seemed to be begging for a friendly Bee or me to pollinate them, but when one developed in a good location, I did my crude method of pollination and in a few days Pumpkin Junior was born! Junior grew in leaps and bounds, almost catching up in size with the Great Pumpkin in just a few weeks. Meanwhile the main plant was soaking up water at a prodigious rate, sometimes needing watering twice a day.

The tomatoes were starting to ripen and we harvested a basket full of potatoes, while the Great Pumpkin and Junior keep on growing.

The Great Pumpkin

It was a scrawny little plant, the only one left in it's section at the Walmart garden center. On a whim I picked it up and put it in the basket with Carol's selection of flowers. “What's that?” she asked.

“I thought I'd try growing a Pumpkin plant, it's only a couple of dollars!”

“It looks pretty sad,” she said, shaking her head, “Where are you going to plant it?”

“Maybe I'll try planting it in the greenhouse.”

“I don't think you can grow them in a greenhouse.”

“Well, I'm gonna try!”

When we got home I planted the wilted, sagging, little thing on the right side of the greenhouse where there was a lot of growing room. I gave it a good drink of water and sprinkled some diatomaceous earth around it to keep the slugs, snails and sow bugs off.

The next day it looked a little better, but I still had my doubts about it surviving. I carefully tied its two drooping leaves up to a small stick and gave it some more water. A few days later a small vine started creeping out of the stem and the leaves were strong enough to stand without support.

Several weeks later it was thriving, and there was a bright yellow flower blooming among the large leaves. I went to the computer and did some research on Pumpkin growing, where I found out that as usual, Carol was right; Pumpkins don't do well in a greenhouse. For one thing, they need lots of room, and even though I'd given it one whole side of our greenhouse, about 12 feet, the vines sometimes grow to over 20 feet. For another, the flowers are male and female, only last for one day, and they need Bees to pollinate them.

I found a website that showed how to hand pollinate the flowers and decided to try it. After all, if a Bee can do it by accident I should be able to do it on purpose. I learned how to tell a male flower from a female, (The female has a swelling at it's base which is the start of a Pumpkin, if the flower gets pollinated.)

Three or four male flowers bloomed and died before a female opened it's yellow petals, but by then there were no males left blooming, to furnish pollen. Pumpkin sex is difficult! Maybe I should have paid more attention when dad gave me the Birds and the Bees talk.

I fertilized, and watered, and waited for a female and male flower to bloom on the same day and finally, Ta Daa! It happened! I nervously, gently used a q-tip to transfer pollen from the male flower to the female, and began waiting for a Pumpkin to appear

Two days later the swelling at the base of the now shriveled flower turned yellow and fell off. The vines and leaves had grown to the length of the greenhouse, turned the corner and were threatening world domination, but despite my best Bee impersonations, no Pumpkins.

I went to Google for advice on pruning Pumpkin plants, and pruned the vines back to a more manageable size. By then I was getting frustrated, and when a male and female blossom appeared one day, instead of a gentle courtship, I plucked the male flower, tore off the petals and jammed the stamen into the female flower. (I feel guilty even writing about it!)

Lo and behold, a few days later the swelling below the wilted flower began to grow! Maybe Pumpkins like rough sex, I thought.

The rapidly growing Pumpkin was at the far end of the greenhouse right on top of our compost bin. I slid some boards under it for support and kept up a steady supply of water and fertilizer. The pumpkin kept growing.

One day while I was watering the ever thirsty plant I noticed the little plastic tag that came in the original pot. Since I had never read it, I was surprised to see that from its humble beginning my little plant was going to become a “Bonnie Mega Pumpkin!” Oh-oh!

I began to have visions of a giant Pumpkin outgrowing our greenhouse, forcing me to either tear out the end of the greenhouse or saw the Pumpkin up with a chainsaw to get it out.

The Bonnie plants website calmed my worries, when I read that a Mega Pumpkin wasn't in the same league as a Giant Pumpkin. I wanted it to get big though, because I love Pumpkin Pies!

I proudly showed Carol my great green thumb accomplishment (for about the twentieth time) and she promptly took the wind out of my sails when she said, “It looks more like a Watermelon than a Pumpkin!” To my dismay, I realized that she was right, it was green with dark green stripes and yellow speckles. It didn't look anything like a pumpkin!

I began to wonder; could Bonnie have made a mistake and swapped seeds? I'm not real fond of Watermelon anyway, and Watermelon pies for Thanksgiving? Yuk!

To be continued....

R.I.P. JC

Scattering JC's Ashes

Maybe coming down here alone wasn't such a good idea after all, I thought, as I fought my way through the thorny Blackberry briars. Salmon berry bushes tore at my shirt and stinging nettles raised welts on my arms.

Where in the hell is that trail? I was brush busting through what used to be a meadow with a nice winding trail a hundred feet or so along side Drift Creek. It had become completely overgrown with thorny brush and I finally gave up and pushed and clawed my way back through to the stream.

I'd carried JC's ashes down the steep, well maintained trail in my old backpack and my legs were already turning to rubber when I reached the campsite next to the stream. The plastic bag containing his “Cremains” couldn't have weighed much more than seven or eight pounds but it felt like a lot more. He ain't heavy, he's my brother! kept running through my head.

When I finally waded up to the big old Cedar tree with the brass plaque dedicated to our son and grandson Rick and Christopher, I dumped my backpack and took a long drink of cold water. The plaque that Brad's son, David had fastened to the Cedar was still in good shape and festooned with the usual array of fishing lures.

I carried JC's ashes upstream past the large redd where he and I used to watch giant Chinook Salmon turning on their sides to beat the silt out of the gravel bed with their bodies, and then laying thousands of bright pink eggs. When they hatched, the smolt would begin a journey down to the ocean and in three or four years they would return as adults ready to start the next generation.

I spread JC's ashes in a riffle and watched as a white, ghost like cloud of ash drifted through the clear water of the spawning area and finally down to our favorite fishing hole.

Foolishly I tried to find the trail through the meadow again, and once again had to fight my way back to the stream and wade down to the campsite, which evidently is the end of the maintained trail now.

It was slow going hiking back up to the trail head, but I eventually made it, and when I got to the car I called home to let Carol know I was OK, then I opened a can of beer and made a toast;

Rest in Peace, JC!

Doctor O

A Trip to the Vet

Every couple of months we make the trip upriver about 16 miles, to see Dr. Occhipinti, or Doctor “O” for those who can't properly pronounce his name, (which is almost everyone.)

Taz and Squeak seem to know ahead of time what's coming, and all of a sudden they get hard to find. Taz usually tucks in under the computer desk and Squeak slides down behind a cushion on the couch.

It's a lot like when Carol starts drawing water in the bathtub or even thinks the word “Bath,” Taz can magically transform his 19 pounds into 91 pounds and it's all I can do to pick him up. Squeak just starts quivering like she's on a vibrator. Once Carol's through bathing them it's straight for the back door and out into the backyard to find something stinky to roll around in, their favorite odor being, “Eau De Bird Poop.”

Doctor O neutered Taz and Squeak when they were puppies and they've never forgiven him. Now he just checks them out, trims their nails and gives them whatever shots they need, but you'd think they were getting major surgery done. As soon as we start slowing down at Dr. O's driveway they start objecting and the only way to get them through the doorway into the office is to carry them. I tried dragging Taz inside by his leash once and he left claw marks all the way and then pooped in front of the door just to make his point.

Dr. O's wife Linda and their daughter have a WWE professional wrestling hold they put on Taz, it's kind of a cross between a full nelson and a sleeper hold that keeps him still while Dr. O trims his nails and does whatever he does to Taz's butt. I notice Taz's eyes get big for a few seconds while he's doing it, though. Squeak just makes a lot of noise and vibrates.

It usually only takes a few minutes per dog and before you know it we're on our way home, sighs of relief coming from the back seat, until next time.

Plumbing

I've found that being “retired” doesn't mean that I'm retired from fixing things around the house.

The other day I noticed a dripping sound coming from the bathroom faucet, so I told myself, Self, one of these days, you've got to fix that! I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but then nothing is these days.

After putting it off as long as I could, I gathered some tools and tried to shut off the water to the sink. I laid down on the floor, reached up, turned the handle on the cold water shutoff valve and was rewarded with a spray of water, most of which went down the sleeve of my shirt into my armpit. I frantically opened the valve back up and the spray stopped. I realized that the packing had dried out over the years and the packing nut had to be tightened, so I slowly creaked up to my feet, ( laying down is pretty easy, it's getting up that's hard!) and went out to the shop for an adjustable wrench.

I finally got the packing nuts tightened on both valves and shut them off. I intended to replace the washers or O rings, or whatever it took to stop the faucet from dripping. I removed the handle and tried to loosen the screw underneath. It was badly corroded and wouldn't turn. The whole faucet was in pretty bad shape, so instead of taking the chance of breaking something important, and spraying water all over the bathroom, I decided to get a whole new faucet set.

I went to see the friendly hardware man at Ace hardware and found that their faucets were pretty 'pricey' or 'spendy' as some of the locals say, so I ordered one from Amazon dot com on the Internet, (You can get almost anything from them!) We would just have to put up with the drip for a while longer.

Unfortunately for me, the new faucet arrived in just a few days and I no longer had any excuse for delaying what I knew from experience was going to be a bitch.

You see, I had done the same job twice before; It seems like every ten years or so I'm destined to crawl under the bathroom or kitchen sink and pretend, painfully, to be a plumber. I didn't like doing it twenty years ago, and I still don't like doing it, especially now, with tremors and loss of dexterity lending me a hand.

I unhooked and unscrewed the fittings, pipes and lines, lifted the sink off of the pedestal and put it on the floor, where I removed the old faucet and drain. It looked like it was time for another trip to Ace hardware, where I bought a tube of silicone sealer to make the new drain assembly water tight. When I read the instructions on the tube, (the printing was so small that I had to use my reading glasses and a magnifying glass,) I found that it had a 3 hour drying time, so after installing the new faucet and drain, it was time for a break, or actually another trip to Ace for new supply line hoses because the old ones appeared to be too short.

The friendly hardware man recognized me and led me to the supply line department on aisle four, where a myriad of hoses hung, all of different lengths and sizes. He helped me search through them and it seemed as though they had every size made except the ones I wanted. I finally settled for a couple that were too long, but better too long than too short. As I was checking out, the cashier asked me, “How is your day going, sir?” In reply I held up the supply lines. A pitying look crossed her face and she said, “I feel your pain!” I doubt it, I thought.

By then I'd been up and down off of the bathroom floor enough times that my elbows, hips and knees were getting sore, but I was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully it wasn't a train! Everything started falling into place and with the help of my reading glasses, my computer glasses and my head lamp, I got the supply and drain lines hooked up and tightened. Holding my breath I opened the water valves and much to my amazement there wasn't one leak!

Maybe ten years from now, if I'm still around, I'll call a plumber.

For years my normal weight was around 155 to 160 pounds, depending mostly on my Pabst Blue Ribbon and Budweiser intake. My height was a tad over 5' 8 ”, but I could stretch another half an inch if there were any tall girls around.

Last year at the doctor's office the nurse weighed and measured me. I was shocked when she told me “135 pounds and 5 feet 6 inches!”

What in the hell happened, I wondered. I don't remember going through any radioactive clouds in my kayak or accidentally taking any of Carol's diet pills.

When I asked the doctor, he told me that some Parkinson's patients lose weight and some don't. Thanks a lot, Doc! He suggested drinking a bottle of “Ensure” between meals. I doubted that would help me get my height back but decided to give it a try anyway.

Mmm, Strawberry flavored Ensure! If you want to kill your appetite for the rest of the day, drink a bottle of that gunk. It sits in your stomach like a puddle of mud.

Since then I've been steadily shrinking. This morning I weighed in at a hefty 126! I haven't measured my height lately, I'm almost afraid to. The tension that I have to keep on my suspenders to hold my pants up has probably compressed my spine another inch or two.

If this keeps up I'm afraid one of our little dogs will confuse one of my skinny legs for a dog bone some night and I'll wake up missing a few more pounds.

There are countless web sites and TV ads on how to lose weight but not much on how to pack it on. I guess I could try steroids but I'd probably end up looking like Popeye.

Almost all of my clothing is too large, I'm real close to buying small instead of medium in mens size and if this keeps up I'll probably be in boys size before long.

Oh well, I guess I can always live in a doll house like the guy in the movie.........

The Wind Chime

Almost every afternoon for eight years I walked the mile to my brother's house and we would sit at the table on his deck, drinking wine and talking. Sometimes we'd talk about computers, sometimes we'd talk about books we'd read, or tell fishing stories, and sometimes we didn't talk much at all.

“There's a spider hanging from the bill of your cap,” he said one day.

“Yeah I see it,” I said crossing my eyes.

“Maybe that means you're not moving enough.”

“Well, I'm comfortable,”I said, as the spider lowered himself down to my leg and scurried off.

“Hey, where did you get that wind chime that hangs on your apple tree?”

“I made it,” I told him, “If you want, I'll make one for you.”

“Yeah, I liked the sounds it made when we were having our barby at your house the other day.”

The next morning I went out to the shop and sawed some aluminum conduit into various lengths, drilled holes to hang them with yellow cord and tapped on them with a hammer. A couple of them sounded sour so I sawed a little more off until they sounded sweeter. I hung them from a round scrap of wood I'd saved from another project, and in the center I hung a heavy nut and a big washer to bang against the pipes. Below that I tied an old Windows 95 CD to catch the wind. It wasn't pretty, but it sounded good.

I put the contraption in a grocery bag and carried it up to John's that afternoon.

“That was fast!” He said,” Let's hang it up and see how it sounds!”

We hung it from the awning over the center of the table and sat back, sipping our wine and waiting for the wind to blow.

“Sure is calm today, isn't it!”

“Yeah the wind usually picks up about this time, though!”

We sat, sipping and waiting for at least a slight breeze to move things and make some noise but there was no wind at all. We poked it and wiggled it and it sounded good, but it was supposed to be a wind chime.

Finally, a few days later the wind from an incoming storm got it working and it was so loud we had to move it to the end of the deck. It survived year after year through rain and wind, chiming away.

A few weeks after John died I went out on the deck. The table and chairs were stacked for the winter and the deck seemed abandoned and empty. The wind chime was hanging there, weathered, beat up and ugly, but still dinging, bonging and chiming the same old tune.

Taz

There's nothing more fun than a puppy!