Riverbend Journal

This is the third growing season since I've had a completed greenhouse and a relocated garden. The first year we had both, we started our seeds in the greenhouse and had excellent luck in raising the various plants to a size big enough to transplant in our garden. The second year we had abysmal luck and after replanting everything a few different times, gave up and had to buy starts from our local plant nursery. In figuring out why, I came to the conclusion that our greenhouse, which is unheated, just got too cold at nights during the second growing season causing the soil temperatures to be too cold for the seeds to germinate. The first season, we had an early start to spring and it stayed warm. Last year it started warm but got cold for several weeks. This year has been a yoyo of temperatures. It was 73 degrees in mid February followed by a week of below 0 F temps followed by another week of nearly 80+ F degree weather followed by a few more days of below 0 F temps. Today it is g...

Although as I write this, I sit beside a plastic tote full of things yet to scan or study in depth, I was able to spend a few evenings and early mornings scanning the loose photographs that I was able to retrieve from Colorado Springs, especially the handful that were really dear to me. Above is the photograph I have showing John Kuck, my third great grandfather, at his oldest age in the three photos of him I have. My great grandfather Victor is sitting on John's lap and was born in Jan 1895 so I would guess this photo was taken sometime in late 1896 or 1897 which would make John around 60 years of age. He would live almost 20 more years but I have no photos of that time from. Until now. According to the labeling on the back of this photo, it was taken some five years later in 1901 and is a picture of John, Clara, Paul, Bertha and second wife Elizabeth. As you recall, most of this stuff in this tub belonged to Clara. His beard has definitely got a lot more gray in it and his hairli...

  Part of good land stewardship means doing the sorts of things that mother nature used to do until mankind put up barriers to prevent it from happening, in this case, setting fire to the land. In plots of prairie, native prairie grasses send roots down upwards of ten feet deep providing the black nutrient rich soil this part of the world is known for. But in the spring, cool season weeds can come up earlier and crowd out the native grasses with shade and if left that way, will eventually take over any given plot of prairie. Mother nature solved this problem by sending fires to sweep across the prairies but mankind put a stop to this by building homes and towns out there and getting upset when mother nature burnt them up. So every year on the farm, we try to burn approximately half of our patches of prairie by artificially setting them on fire in a controlled manner that we can control them. In the picture above you can see on the far right the first line of defense, a plowed strip...

  Back before we left for Colorado, the weather was just getting nice to where I could work in the garage whenever I had time and there were even a couple days where it got warm enough to glue which required a full 8 hours or so of above 50 F degree weather. So I got to cracking on the bookcase project by cutting out the various parts, all of which you can see on my workbench above. You can even see some of the beginnings of the joinery work started with the slots cut into the boards on the left.  There are different levels of woodworking like most hobbies I suppose. One can use joinery techniques that will definitely get the job done but may not hold up for hundreds of years or one can go all out and build something that might last hundreds of years but at the expense of more time. I chose the first route on this project with my choice of mostly using dominos to join things together.  By using dominos, which are wooden domino shaped pieces of wood, inserted into the slot...

  No deep dive with this post into what I am seeing in these post card pictures though I have no doubt I could spend hours doing so. I just selected these as being interesting street scenes with incredible detail and a delight for my eyes to look out when enlarged. Hopefully you might enjoy them too.