Stuff In My Brain: Spring

Showing posts with label Spring. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

With a Little Bit of Luck

So far this spring is starting off well for me. Lately, the weather has been nice but not nice enough for the grass to grow. That is lucky for me since the mower and snow blower haven't rotated spots in the garage yet.

The most positive thing about this spring is, I already have played nine holes of golf. With young kids at home I have been averaging about three rounds of golf per summer for the last ten years. And I never get to start before June. But this year's early start has me hopeful about increasing my average rounds per year.

Last week I was lucky enough to have a day off from work. My luck also extended to my neighbor (we'll call him Eric, mainly because that's his name) who just happened to have the day off too and was yearning to knock a few golf balls around the pasture.

The weather was perfect even if the golf course wasn't. Our dry spring has delayed the grass from growing. This actually helped my game though. Less grass meant more roll for me. And since my drive usually mostly rolls on the ground, the more roll the better. More luck for me.

The greens were a little hard and the wind was blowing against me on every hole, though. I'm sure I could come up with a few more excuses if I really wanted to.

Even though luck was on my side this day, it didn't help my score too much. That's OK though. Even the worst day of golfing is better than the best day at work. Here is our scorecard for the day.

You may notice something strange about our score card besides the futility. The score doesn't quite add up. Now, I have golfed with people with creative math skills before, but they usually would miscalculate their score to appear lower. My good friend Eric actually added extra strokes to both of our totals. And he even added more strokes to his own score than to mine. My luck is just piling up. Eric probably has some master plan involving artificially inflated handicaps to give us an advantage at the end of the year tournaments. The sorry part is that my handicap usually inflates itself naturally enough by the end of the year. Anyway, it was still nice of Eric to let me win one game this year.

Now, I can't wait for the next golf outing. I know a lot of things to not do next time. Number one on the list is, don't hit the ball as many times. Hopefully, I'll have as much luck as this time. If I do, I'll post another scorecard. If I have less luck, the scorecard will probably get lost somewhere.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Up On The Roof Again

Spring is finally springing around here. The snowhill is now only a pancake and the air smells of thawing winter fertilizer. Liberty did a good job covering the front yard with brown Easter eggs all winter. I just need to let Lady Di know she can start collecting them anytime.

I got a little bit of a start on my job, taking down the Christmas lights. Christmas lights in March!? I know I'm a little late but if you lived in Frozen Tundra, MN, you would wait until after St. Patrick's Day too.

Anyway, I got the ladder out and anchored it firmly in the soggy, slippery mud. Up on the roof, I remembered the last time I ventured to this high place. Last year, I was taking lights down on a windy day and, of course, the ladder blew down. So I was stuck on the roof alone. The windows were locked, so I politely knocked on one to get the attention of my loving family inside the house. The knocking progressed to pounding on the wall to see if anyone missed their dear old Dad. After about twenty minutes, Lady Di came out to check on me. By then I was already trying to spell S.O.S. with shingles to signal airplanes flying overhead. Once she was done teasing me, she returned my ladder. Apparently, the kids had heard me knocking and pounding but didn't think it was more important than what Spongebob was doing on TV at the time.

Luckily, this year there had no such drama. It was a little breezy but the lights had to come down. After the roof was cleaned of its lights, the trees in the yard got defrocked. Here is the result of my labors.

Now I just have to find a place to store them. Maybe it would be better to leave them out all year. Sometimes I wonder if it is worth putting so many lights out each year.

Of course it is!

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Our Garage Band

When the weather starts to soften in the springtime, there are many things I look forward to doing. I listed a few in the last post, but I forgot one important post-winter activity. Cleaning out the garage. The garage has been a catch-all for the last 5 months. Everything that didn't fit in the house got piled in the garage. Our collection of garage sale/goodwill boxes are stacked between our vehicles. Christmas lights are piled spaghetti-style in the corner, and a winter's worth of sand and gravel have crept onto the garage floor.

It is now warm enough to open the garage doors, turn on the 80's radio station, and start gutting.

The first item of business was to recruit some helpers. "Hey, Sweet Pea, would you like to help me in the garage?"

"Sorry Dad, I have a girl scout meeting today.", she sweetly replied.

"Well, how about you, Lady Di?", I inquired.

"Sorry, I have to take SP to girl scouts.", she quickly answered.

"Well, I guess it's just you and me Number One Son.", I pleaded. He cheerfully and willingly agreed to help as I dragged him away from the Boys Basketball State Tourney on TV.

In the garage, I opened the door to the attic while N1S grabbed a broom. After a few minutes of sweeping I saw him air guitaring to Bryan Adams' ,The Summer of '69. So I took a break to join him on bass snow shovel until the end of the song. Once our jam session was done we got down to serious work.

I asked N1S what he would like to do first, fill the bird feeder or set out deck chairs. He chose to play basketball. So, once again, I had to join him because you can't play basketball by yourself. Actually, you can play by yourself if you have a hoop to shoot at, but our street still has a snow pile right where our hoop goes. So we practiced our dribbling and passing until the chilly wind made our bare hands too numb to catch the ball.

By then it was time to take a break from working. N1S had a juice box. I had a Dr Pepper.

After our break, I decided that the Christmas lights were too big a job for today. We also couldn't do anything with the Goodwill boxes until we were ready to take them in. And the sand and gravel on the garage floor didn't look as bad as I had earlier thought.

So we went inside to watch some more of the State Basketball Tournament on television. We must have worked pretty hard because we both fell asleep on the couch until Lady Di and Sweet Pea returned from girl scouts.

With a bundle of energy, SP, danced into the room and asked, "Daddy, can I help you sweep the garage?"

"It's your lucky day, SP. I saved that job just for you."

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Unwelcome Winter

I'm glad to see that the weather is changing from frozen nose hairs and painful breathing to something more civilized, but it is sure taking its sweet time doing so. Lady Di saw her first robin of the season, so real Spring weather can't be far. Since the big thaw is still about a week away, I have had time to anxiously anticipate the benefits of suffering through a long winter. Winter sure does a good job preparing you for the joys of Spring.

One fun Springtime tradition for Lady Di and myself, is to go on our second Easter Egg hunt of the year. This yearly ritual starts as soon as the snow melts in the yard, exposing a bounty of brown 'Liberty eggs' hidden there, throughout the winter, by our family dog. Timing is important in that you want to start the collecting after the snow has melted, but before the 'eggs' start to dissolve. Rubber gloves, a bucket and a clothespin are required equipment.

Now, on to more pleasant Springtime bonuses.

I love the smell of Springtime. After, the 'egg' collecting, of course. When the ground softens it lets loose an earthy smell that tells you that winter is over.

I can also look forward to the trees and bushes budding. The lilac bushes already have swollen buds and need just one really warm day to start leafing. The cranberry bushes and maple trees are also ready to go. Pretty soon the oak and pine trees will follow suit.

It is amazing how much you miss hearing songbirds chirping outside, until you welcome all of the migrating species back to your backyard in the spring.

Another Spring smell is the smell of backyard grilling. Lighter fluid and thick steaks tell you outdoor fun can now be started.

Other things, like sidewalk chalk, kids on bikes and sunshine in the morning and evening also help to break the winter chill.

Finally, the best part about Spring and warm weather is.......getting the mower ready for lawn season. Once Liberty's free fertilizer is cleared, I can put down some real lawn food and grass seed to fix the spots Liberty killed this winter. Soon, the vibrant color of green appears for the first time in five months. In a typical Minnesota winter, the dominant colors of the landscape are white, gray and dirty white. So green is a pretty important color for our sanity. Once enough green grows, the first smell of fresh lawn clippings soon follows. I seem to use my nose quite a bit in Springtime. It must be because my nose has been abused all winter by Kleenex and Vick's.

So there you have it. The calendar and the seed catalogs in the mail both tell me that Spring is here. The snow that is left on the ground is putting up an argument to the contrary. I sure hope the thermometer settles this disagreement and lets Spring do what is it supposed to do.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Spring cleaning

Today the kids were bored so they wanted a job to do. I said, "You can clean something." So Ethan got a broom and started sweeping the deck. Of course, Emery always wants to do what her big brother is doing. So Ethan let her have a turn at the broom while he went to get a rag. He started wiping down the patio furniture. When Emery saw that, she wanted to use the rag. So Ethan had an idea to solve the whole problem.
He said, "Emery, let's pretend to be butlers. You can be the butler that does all of the raggin'. And I'll be the butler that does everything else".

That sounds a lot like the situation with Lady Di and myself. I'm not sure which one of us does more of the raggin' though.

"Honey! What are you doing with that rolling pin?!"

I don't have a story to go with this picture. I just thought it looked nice. This tree is in our front yard. We don't remember what kind of tree it is, but it's blooms are sure perty.

Here's a close up of a bloom.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Workin' for the Weekend

Spring is finally here, and I finally have time at home to enjoy it. I had to work during that unseasonably warm weekend we had, when temps reached eighty. I am off this weekend so now it is my time take care of my to do list.
First item on the list- Take Christmas lights down from the roof.
Yeah, Yeah, I know it's April already. At least I turn them off after Jan. 1st. I just had a few weather issues with the ladder this winter. Besides, I asked Lady Di to do it and she refused.

Second item on the list- Get materials to finish the deck.
Last summer, I started building our deck. I got everything done, except for the railings, before it got cold last fall. So I decided to finish it the following Spring. Then we had unexpected warm Autumn weather. I was in a quandry. Should I finish? Will the weather last?
I decided to put up Christmas lights.

Third item on the list- Get the summer stuff out, put the winter stuff away.
This means getting the basketball hoop, porch chairs and grill out of the garage. Get the snow blower summer-ized and put in the garage. Time to polish up the lawn flamingos and arrange.
I hope I am not trying to do too much this weekend. I don't want to finish everything on Saturday and have nothing to do the rest of the summer.

Oh wait! I have Ethan's piano recital to see on Sunday. I don't want to be too tired for that. All that other stuff can wait for another weekend.

Stuff In My Brain