Riverbend Journal

  Hopefully you can enlarge the above photo enough to see the morel mushrooms hidden like easter eggs everywhere. It is what I call a mushroom machine and I probably picked over 30 large yellow mushrooms within the frame of this picture. It is not something I find every year but when I do, I am thankful. This one tree alone filled up both the bags we had brought with us so I had to carry those two bags back to the car about a half mile away and bring to more bags which we filled maybe half way. It was my best year in a LONG time for morel mushroom hunting. It is hard to show scale of our haul but this is the largest mixing bowl we own and it is full to the top of morel mushrooms, mostly yellow ones this time around. They are soaking for a bit right now and later tonight I'll cut them in half to check for bugs but seeing that it is still a week or before I normally find them, we saw very few bugs and absolutely no ticks which in a typical year can coincide with the latter parts of m...

  Above is a photo in my "box of stuff" and on the back is written: Feb 22, 1901 Room W, Gridley Inmates - Wright and Kuck. I'm not sure how to decipher what is written other than it likely has something to do with John Kuck. I have looked a bit and haven't found any Gridley that lived in Charles City, Iowa in 1901. Curiously though there is definitely a comma after the "W" and before the "Gridley" which makes me want to interpret as "Room W" and "Gridley".  But three things capture my attention that make me think I know exactly where this room is despite what it written on the back. If you embiggen the photo, look at the pictures on the top of the drop leaf secretary desk and you will see one that is quite familiar. I will post it below for you so so you can see it in more detail. Mine didn't come in a large cardboard frame but this is definitely the picture and is of my 3rd great grandfather John Kuck on the left, his wife...

  Just do to everything else going on, I haven't posted much on this year's garden so here is a picture that is hot off the press and maybe only two days old. We try to rotate out garden somewhat so last year we started planting from the right and worked left. This year we started left and are planting right, mostly. My wife did stick some sweet potatoes up next to the strawberries and garlic beds on the right so the vines don't compete with the peas which were the last row we planted on the left.  Last night we were under a freeze warning but I think we were fortunate and it didn't quite get to us. My low was 34 degrees F. Our cherry blossoms had already been blooming for a week and winds have blown most of them off so I'm hoping we snuck our cherry crop pollination in if it did get colder than what I saw on my thermometer when I got up in the morning.  Here are some of our warmer weather stuff growing in the greenhouse. The tomatoes and peppers on the left are act...

  Since I have moved away from film finishes and staining, finished is a lot easier and less daunting process than it once was. My go to finish these days is Osmo Polyx Hard Wax Oil. I think it came about as a durable finish for wood flooring until wood workers discovered that it would also work well in furniture finishes. It is simply a wipe on followed by wiping off any excess after a few minutes so there aren't any worries about runs or drips like I always did with film finishes. Also, because is not a stain, it is incredibly easy to touch up or to apply on any missed areas because you don't have to match colors. If something were to happen, I just have to sand out any imperfection and apply some more hard wax oil on that spot and it will blend in perfectly. After two coats and eight hours, I'm left with an incredibly durable finish that I can touch up years from now if needed without much effort. Above is a photo of the underside of the top of the bookcase showing off a...

  The above picture was the ship on which Clara Kuck sailed home at the end of her stay in Europe. She spent several days looking for her trunk which had been sent from Berlin to the port of Hamburg before she finally found it and could arrange for it to join her on the President Lincoln. She also had troubles cashing a check and had to make a trip to the dentist.