Good Morning All. Clear and 54°. Calm as opposed to yesterday's gale force winds. Settled weather for the next few days with a small chance of thundershowers tomorrow. Weather people really have no clue right now after missing the past few days by a mile! Mid-70's today and tomorrow with low 90's the next two days; and then a couple of days in the upper 60's. Roller coaster indeed. I think that it's just a giant April Fool's joke on us.
I mowed parts of the "back 40" yesterday, ridding the area of all unsightly weed stalks from last year, and defining the yard versus the hayfield border. That's more important this year since the neighbor's son and grandson are taking over the farming activities now and they need to know where the border is. I certainly don't need one of them to plow into my water diversion dyke/levee. Marty
did hit my garden fence last fall, even with a red T-post marking it.
I put new cutting blades on my shredder yesterday. Took longer than expected since the factory installed Allen bolts were in pretty tight. Add to that I couldn't find the correct size metric Allen fitting so I had to go up to the neighbor's shop and have him loosen them. But it got done. I'll start shredding those piles of tree trimmings today. Still too early to tell, but I think that I have two dead trees to get cut down this spring. If they are indeed dead, they won't need as long drying before they can become usable firewood. While I am at it, I am reminded that I have two culled trees on the ground on the other side of my pond that need cutting up but it has been too marshy to deal with lately. they need to be gone before I start mowing over there. Speaking of my pond, I had a small group of migratory ducks sheltering over there last evening. I didn't notice until they decided to take off and get an extra half hour of flight time in after the dust storm stopped.
I made the new pasture a quick project yesterday, out in the train shed. I used Woodland Scenics barbed wire fence to make it quickly after doing the ground foam in the morning. Couldn't realistically fit as many cows as planned, but there's still a few, just seven instead of ten.
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That's the afternoon northbound intermodal train waiting on the siding there in front of the refinery, waiting for the last of the southbounders to go by.
Sherrel - Welcome back to our world. Glad that you're feeling better. Same for Charlie. Hopefully Foxie gets to feeling better before Kate makes it home.
Mike - So glad to read that your wife is recovering. My wife has had both knees done, one of them a second time. The new knee works perfectly well the minute that it is installed, but pain keeps most people from using it much immediately. Make sure that she does the physical therapy regardless of the pain, as it is very necessary.
Tom O - That's interesting about the pictures of spline cars taken in 2021. Were they in active use?
Curt - That spanking sequence happened in grade school a lot, not only to me but to other classmates. Someone would go home and tell their parents that little Billy got spanked by a nun, then those parents would call Billy's parents and tell them. By high school, most of my classmates didn't talk about that kind of stuff with their parents.
Todd - That is interesting that you need a burn permit. You must be closer to town than I thought you were. We have burn bans but no burn permits. If case you don't already know, Pine and Cottonwood make lousy indoor firewood. Too much creosote and barely any BTU's. It's really too bad, since I have three "volunteer" Cottonwoods near my pond that at 45'+ are the biggest trees on my property.
Everybody have a great day.
(a guilty pleasure), but back to cereal tomorrow. MOH wants to go out for Thai tonight. She leaves tomorrow and will be gone until Friday afternoon. I shot 2 videos on the layout today. One westbound and the other eastbound. The lighting in the room is horrible. I still need to do a nighttime one.
