Riverbend Journal

  A.I. Generated What follows is a timeline of what happened when I took my main vehicle in for a new fuel pump, estimated to take 5 hours to replace. To make matters worse, my wife was away at a medical conference so we were down to just my vehicle. I ended sending this timeline to management part way through the process. Day 1 I called at 8 am and got an appointment for 8:45. As part of the check-in process, I told them about the chainsaw gas and the noise. The technician standing there said that little amount of oil shouldn’t be a problem and that it was probably a coincidence. I was told to wait in the waiting room for 45 minutes while they diagnose the problem. At 10 o’clock, 75 minutes later, hearing no word, I went to check with the service department and was told it needed a new fuel pump. One would be ordered and they would install it the following morning. It would take about five hours to complete. Day 2 I called at 10:00 am having heard no word, and was informed t...

  Two years ago, we planted some sweetcorn and had an excellent stand growing. Then something started foraging among the ears and I was pretty sure it was raccoons so I used the opportunity to buy something I had always wanted, a trail camera. I installed it and soon found out indeed it was raccoons... ... with the help of their lookout, Mr. Opossum.  I'm not sure what he was doing out there. Perhaps they eat sweetcorn too. Anyway, we decided back then after we got just a few ears out of a couple hundred ears, that we would just buy our sweetcorn from then on. Many grow it around here and it is easy to find in street corners being sold off the back of pickup trucks when in season for very reasonable prices. I removed the batteries from my trail camera and stuck it in a cabinet in my office and pretty much forgot about it. Flash forward to right after I made the decision to electrify our garden fence but before I had received the charger, I thought about the trail camera and se...

A. I. Generated My apologies to reader T.B. about the above picture and part of the below post. I haven't taken pictures of the garden but do have an update of sorts. Our peas, both crops, are now up and looking well along with our lettuce. The radishes and two varieties of carrots however never came up. The strawberries were looking great until they weren't. Presumably a rabbit is getting in there and eating them down to the ground. I thought with all the hawks around, it wouldn't be a problem and I haven't seen a single rabbit, though I saw a nest with a few babies in it earlier this spring not far away. I hadn't wanted to do so but bought a fence that could be electrified. So I bought a solar fence charger to give those rabbits an incentive to eat elsewhere. That is my job this afternoon. This morning, I was at the local repair shop getting my van diagnosed for what will be an expensive repair, all thanks to my dang gas powered chainsaw that I recently replaced w...

  A. I. Generated As she read the first reading, she started listing over to her left side as if she was having trouble standing straight and even seemed to struggle with the words, having to force them out in short clipped two or three word long strands. I leaned over to my wife, a doctor, and whispered that something was wrong with her. When she finished the reading, it took her nearly a minute to lower herself backward off the single step to raise her up to the height of the microphone. But once down, she was able to walk back to the pew behind the ambo reserved for the lectors.  During the second reading, she seemed to have recovered and I started thinking that perhaps I had rushed to judgment over the first reading. Although not speaking in a fluid manner, it had been some time, perhaps years, since she had done a reading and so I wasn't familiar with her cadence and just chalked it up as just being hers.  The last duty as lector is to read the petitions or short pra...

  Last week, I finally bit the bullet and mowed the high spots in my lawn. I don't fertilize, pesticize, or weedize any of my lawn and so it doesn't always grow at the same speed especially in the spring time. That is fine by me because it is just a functional lawn and mostly keeps the weeds at bay. I don't have it for awards. While doing that, I couldn't help but check out all my fruit trees scattered here and there. Above is one of two sour cherry trees we have. Last year was our worst year since I planted those trees, producing a cup of sour cherries between them both. Well in fairness, birds got all the ones out front before I did. Still, I have higher hopes for them this year, assuming we can avoid a freeze after they bloom which is not too far out. Last summer, one of the last two trees from our original wedding orchard, blew over. For the first time in a decade, conditions were right and it had a bountiful load of peaches and when combined with the wind, proved t...

A couple weeks back, I went to our local nursery to secure some strawberries to plant in the new garden. They usually disappear quickly and so I wanted to make sure we could get enough to start a small bed that we can gradually increase in size. While there, I saw some rhubarb plants next to them. They certainly weren't on sale and my wife would have a fit if she knew the price, but the way I look at it, I can depreciate the cost of them over the next 15 or 20 years and so depreciated out, they were just a few pennies a month for the things. A steal! I brought them home but the next two nights were forecasted to be below freezing at night so I kept them in the greenhouse and then planted them the first nice day that arrived. I hope to have a mini-hedge of rhubarb growing on the south side of the greenhouse which should keep us more than amply supplied in pies, tarts and cobblers for much of the summer months. I have frozen rhubarb to use over the winter quite successfully but may h...

A. I. Generated In my younger years, I would always try just about anything that came across my path. I changed the oil in my own vehicle, I did just about any home repair task that you could name, etc. It was a good way to save money and to learn new things, both something I enjoy doing. But as I have gotten older, I have slowly stopped doing some tasks and hired others to do them. I now take my vehicles in to get their oil changed and though I still do most of my own home repair, I have hired out a few jobs that weren't very appealing to me, such as hiring an electrician to install a couple can lights in my living room so I didn't have to crawl around on my stomach in the attic in a very tight area.  When I moved to this property of 3 acres, I didn't have a lawnmower capable of mowing it and so I hired the lawnmowing outfit that was then currently mowing it to continue under my ownership. They did a fine job but didn't always mow on the same schedule I would have. For...

  A.I. Generated It is that time of year again and our town is prepping for it's huge book sale to raise funds for our local library. People donate unwanted books, we sort them into categories and haul literally, tons of them to our local event center where we fill the entire events floor with tables full of books for people to buy at insanely cheap prices. During the sorting phase, we have people that unbox the books and put them on tables, those like me who read a lot then go and sort those books into relevant categories to help people find something easier on sale day, and other people to box up those categorized books and label them so on the day before the event, it is easier to stage the books in the right locations on the event floor.  I like this job because it isn't very mentally taxing. I like to muse about the owner of a box of books and their taste in literature. Many times I'm glad I don't know the owner of the box of books or I might judge them harshly for...

  A.I. Generated After years of pondering and taking some initial steps earlier this year, I finally cut the proverbial cord. Actually, I mostly traded cords but gained more freedom. I think. Yesterday was the day and fiber optic cables were run up to the side of my house, inserted through a hole drilled in the foundation, and run into my office where instead of a black box, I now have a gray box. My speeds are probably 50 times faster than they were previously though sadly, my typing speed never improved. All this was done to reduce my bill by nearly 2/3rds of what it was and to get away from bundled services. It wasn't without it's problems though. The technician cleared a hole among the many electronic devices and cables that had previously gave me internet, television and phone services, plunked down his box and hooked up the cable he had run into my house. He then declared everything good, picked up his bag and was looking for my acknowledgement so he could leave. Having w...

  Somewhere in Texas as seen from my television screen My neck of the woods was never in the path of totality but I was excited to see the eclipse anyway. It will be my third partial or failed full eclipse that I can remember. My first partial eclipse was as a young boy. My failed bid for a full eclipse was in 2017 when clouds overtook the final stages. Who knows where I'll be in another 20 years when the next one rolls around. Above was how it looked when I first started looking up at the sky. Note, all my pictures are taken with the glasses held over the lens of my iPhone.  Getting closer... Above was peak totality for us at about 89%. That remaining 11% was still plenty powerful though as it was still not even at dusk feeling stage. But the air has a strange quality about it, an eerie feeling that doesn't quite sit right.   Above is my view of the garden at peak totality. As a picture on the screen, it doesn't look much different than ones I have taken under 100% ...

  Back in fifth grade, my teacher assigned us to read stories out of the above book as part of our Iowa History section of Social Studies. I no longer remember what stories were assigned, but I do know that I was one of the few in class who just read the entire book regardless of what was assigned. Besides some more ancient history (relative to the age of Iowa anyway), it also told some tales of modern mysteries, some solved and some unsolved. One of those were the Villisca axe murders in 1912. I forgot about the book for many years until I was into my adulthood and started getting interested in Iowa history and thought back about that book. I was able to track down a copy on eBay I think and purchased it and read it through a second time. I was as hooked then as I was in 5th grade. I put it on my bookshelf downstairs where I keep all my dearest books and it should still be there right now. I haven't checked but will just as soon as I finish typing up this post. Flash forward today...

  Although this picture is only taken two weeks ago during the last week of March, our garden actually officially got started three weeks before that, days before we left for Greece. With a spate of warm weather and rain in the forecast, we planted some early crops such as radishes, lettuce and peas. We hope the forecasted rain would provide the necessary moisture and indeed according to my electronic rain gauge, we received 1.3 inches of rain while we were in Greece.  The first week after we got back was very cold and so not a lot happened but by the following weekend, it was threatening to get a little warmer. Snow was still in the forecast for a bit further north of here but none predicted for our area. After that passes, it is supposed to warm up again. In an effort to encourage spring, we decided to work in the greenhouse and task number one was using my newly refurbished hose reel to fill up the water barrel which it did quite easily compared to the lugging of many bucke...

Written on Back: Uncle Ralph Baker, Charles Baker, Curtis? Awhile ago, I received a mailer in the mail containing these two pictures with the noted writing on the back of them in blue ink. They sat on my desk for a few months before I picked them up again and started looking at them more carefully.  My 2nd great grandfather was John Henry Baker and he had four sons and three daughters though his first marriage. His eldest son Charles Baker, middle guy in the photo above was my great grandfather. His youngest brother Ralph was 14 years younger and the man on the left in both of the above pictures. My 2nd great grandfather's first wife Blanche would die shortly after the birth of son Ralph due to birthing complications and with seven children from age 18 to newborn in the house, I suspect my 2nd great grandfather was keen to get another woman back in the house. That is why he went to the courthouse not long after to get a marriage license to marry second wife Katie Stevens only to fi...

Before leaving for Greece, I had a couple warm days to work with and so I worked underneath the deck stacking the ten year old firewood into my firewood rack and wadding up the tarp. I put it in the planter box to the left for now until a week with light trash when I can fit it in with our normal trash. I shoveled all the leaves and debris left underneath the woodpile and hauled that down to the compost pile. It makes it look more inviting when it doesn't look like a dump site. I was surprised at how much firewood I still have, probably enough for two more winters, like this last one. If we ever get a real winter back, then that probably is a year's worth for us. It is nice that we burn wood only for soul therapy and not for heat.  On a roll, I fired up the tiller and worked the entire garden. It worked up nice but is pretty dry. I was kicking up dust and at that time, we were only two days into March. In a normal year, it is raining every other day here throughout most of Marc...