Month: April 2024

Highlights of the past couple weeks included a trip to our favorite greenhouse and an outing to the Le Sueur swap meet. I have a lot of photos to view. Hope you enjoy them!

Our favorite greenhouse is located a few miles south of us, west of Alta Vista, and is named Zimmerman’s. They have an amazing range of flowers and plants. Here are a few photos taken of this outing.

When we returned home, Pam planted the new geraniums, adding red mulch around the base.

I will finish this section with a view of the Mary Lynn Memorial flower bed, filled with tulips and daffodils, which is along the east side of the house. This year the bed is more colorful than it has ever been. A dozen or so new bulbs are added to refresh the bed every year.

Last year I had attended the annual swap meet held in Le Sueur, Minnesota, and had planned this year’s return. This meet features mostly old engines, equipment, and parts but does have a few other collectible items.

The one YouTube channel I subscribe to is run by a guy who restores old equipment, and he attends this show. I was able to meet him and introduce myself, and we had a short discussion about his channel and projects. This meeting was the high point of the trip for me. If interested, look up “Squatch 253” on your YouTube search.

There is always something new at this meet. The following photos show an early motor addition to a bicycle resulting in a “motor bike” from 1917.

I am including a few other photos taken around the swap meet grounds.

I do enjoy getting out to meets like this and had a pleasant day wandering the grounds and looking at all the antiques and parts.

Along the same lines of old things, here is a list of hits for 1972 courtesy of a FaceBook post. If you are anywhere my age you will remember these!

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Flowerbed prep continues. Seed planting next week.

Happy Trails.

There were no major events occuring over the last couple of weeks, just a series of smaller things the arrival of spring made possible. Although the upcoming forecast has a couple of below-freezing nights, we are in spring mode. Here are a few of our activities of the past week or so.

Pam put a new coat of stain on the decorative garden bridge that spans an area under a pair of our oak trees. The bridge was elevated to about knee height for easier stain application. She also planted some new seedlings that arrived in the mail. It will soon be time to visit a greenhouse to pick out this year’s annuals.

One new yard addition will be a flower pot hanger I picked up at a local antique store. With bends that resemble a heart, the hanger will occupy a spot near the front steps. I will have another photo of this in a later post once the hanger, with flowers, is in place.

Daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips began to bloom on the east side flower bed. Hostas are beginning to poke up out of the ground and trees are sprouting tiny green leaves. Hoses were taken out of storage and put in place on the west and east sides of the house. Spring has arrived!

I cleaned out the curb and gutter on the Main Street side of the house as part of a larger spring lawn cleaning. (The city does not clean streets or curbs.) Using the lawn vacuum with the hose attachment, I was able to clear fence lines and flower beds of leaves that had blown in over the winter and during some spring storms. A new home-made handle on the hose made this task much easier by eliminating the need to bend down to the ground as much.

The lawn vac needed some repairs as one of the wheel brackets had been cracking over the last few years. I had ordered a new spool of welding wire for my small wire-feed welder and stitched up the crack, then ground down the repair and added coat of red spray paint. It is an ugly repair as I am not a practiced welder but the bracket will not break, which is all I wanted.

Previously I had mentioned an issue with the equipment trailer suspension. During the warm spell I was able to remove a pair of old (loose) shackles and replace them with new ones. In this photo, the old hangers are at the top. Note the “spacers” made of old and mismatched nuts. One new hanger is at the bottom for comparison.

Installing a new wiring pigtail for one of the lights completed the trailer repairs and it is now road-worthy again.

A national story last week was the eclipse. It was cloudy here and we were not able to see any of the action. Pam did, however, come across this cartoon:

Anyone with more than one cat will understand…

I am going to wrap up this post with another home video. This one is titled “Winter in Colorado” and features footage of us in late 1979 (I think). We took a trip on the Gold Camp Road, an old railroad grade that runs between Victor and Colorado Springs. Another outing was to get our Christmas Tree using a National Forest permit which allowed us to cut or top any tree that seemed appropriate. I hope you enjoy it. Run time is 4:45.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Almost Mennonite greenhouse time! I really look forward to that first visit. A blast of color, fragrance and humidity will do my spirit a world of good.

Happy Trails

I left a couple of loose ends in my last post. I will try to tidy up with a few more details this time around, and have a video of our East Coast trip. Have at it!

First, going through a couple of old journals, I found the Datsun truck was a 1971 model. If you view the video later in this post you will see it as it was in 1976.

Second, I went through my converted Super-8 files and found the east coast trip footage. I did a new re-mix, adding more subtitles and editing out some of the poorer sections. Run time is 4:19 with the Bromley Alpine Slide coming on at about 3:30.

A couple other notes are in order. Some of the video “jitters” are from the conversion process, as the old film occasionally jumped a bit when feeding through the conversion projector. Also, there is something a bit surreal about watching a large vessel floating across the plains of upstate New York, hence the footage of the Old Welland Canal. The water wheel and covered bridge were on the grounds of Old Sturbridge Village.

At the end of my last post I mentioned hose cart races. Man-pulled hose carts were common fire-fighting systems used in many early towns before the advent of steam, and later, gas-powered fire trucks. Men would pull a hose cart to a fire, unroll the hose, attach it to a hydrant, add a nozzle, and spray the fire in an attempt to put it out.

Idaho Springs, west of Denver, hosted an annual Fire-Fighter’s Day which featured hose cart races. We drove into the mountains one August to watch the festivities. Several teams competed in this timed event; it was an enjoyable outing, visiting this Colorado town. Run time is 0:34.

I have other videos, mostly of interest to family and friends. Some of the events captured include a day at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, riding the Cripple Creek and Victor Railroad, Pam and her mother feeding chipmunks on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, a trip to Yellowstone, and other events dating to our “before children” days in Colorado. I will include a few of these clips in future posts.

In family news, daughter Felicity and partner Peter are in the process of buying a fixer-upper home in central New York. Located between Rochester and Watkins Glen (Finger Lakes area of upstate New York), the 1,600 square foot home, on about 2 acres of land with a small stream on one border, appears to be in a good location. I have seen the listing photos and the place needs a lot of work (bathroom not functional at this point) but the price is reasonable at around $83K. Property includes an old (small) barn and shed, both in need of repair, but are something to get started.

My hope is that Felicity and Peter are up to the difficult and several-year project of turning the home into a comfortable, attractive, and energy efficient abode. Chances are pretty high that I will be helping them move and possibly adding some labor to help get the place into functioning order. Here is an aerial view of the property from the listing:

Felicity and Peter have long talked about living in New York and having a place where they can develop their homesteading skills and crafts. I hope they can make their dream a reality.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

I wonder if I’d have been susceptible to “old house renovation disease” if I hadn’t spent my adolescence in a < 900 square foot, ugly, rectangular builder box house, squished into tiny rooms with five other family members. Of course tall ceilings, spacious rooms and big porches would seem to be an amazing step up in the housing world after that experience. And, although her childhood was not spent in such confined spaces as mine was, I think Felicity is also susceptible to “old house renovation disease.” (Toby seems to be immune — maybe it’s passed along genetically on the female line.)

Felicity can look forward to: the cat playing with a bat on the floor at 2:00 a.m., a mouse springing out of the silverware drawer, the ladder [she’s standing on] plunging through rotten floor boards while she’s hanging those attractive holiday items on the porch. And so much more. There will be tons and tons of cleaning and painting, and visits to the lumber and hardware stores. Cold drafty winters and hot humid summers – indoors as well as out. Enjoy!

Happy Trails.