Tag Archives: pear tree

2014/06/22 (N) Outside Inside

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We split our time today between outside work and inside work.  The temperature was 60 degrees F when we got up so after a light breakfast of homemade granola with fresh fruit and some coffee we resumed our tree trimming work from yesterday.  While Linda gathered up branches from yesterday’s trimming, I worked on our Norway Crimson King Maple.   This is a magnificent tree, one of the nicest on our property, but it is close to our rear deck at one end and has grown out over the deck such that low branches are at or below eye level and block access to part of the deck as well as the stairs that lead down into the northeast yard.

In the same general area as the maple tree are several large White Pine trees.  The lower limbs had grown out and down to reach sunlight, placing their extremities at or below eye level.  We want to be able to walk under these trees without getting poked in the eye and we want Keith, who cuts our grass, to be able to drive his zero-turn riding mower under these trees without getting poked or knocked out of the seat.

While I was trimming the maple and pines for clearance I also removed as many dead branches and limbs as I could reach with the pole saw.  I had noticed yesterday that our pear tree and our apple tree also had quite a bit of deadwood so I turned the pole saw on them next.  Linda continued to gather the smaller branches and pile them in manageable size bundles around the outside of the fire pit.  She also dragged the larger limbs over near the fire pit.  Once I was done pruning I used our bow saw to remove the smaller branches from these larger limbs and then cut the limbs into 3-to-4 foot lengths.

Linda was going to shovel the ash from yesterday’s fire into a plastic bag but discovered that it was still quite hot.  We stirred up the ash cone, made a big pile of small branches on top of it, and then stacked the larger pieces of wood on top of that, teepee style.  It took a while but the amount of smoke steadily increased until we finally had a small flame.  It did not take long from that point for it to develop into a good size fire.  We also recalled that ash from a burn pile is good to add to the soil for some flowering plants and decided we would use it rather than dispose of it in the trash.

We needed to work at our desks today and did not want to exhaust ourselves doing outdoor work so we quit at 1 PM and put our tools away.  We had lunch at 2 PM and then spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening doing various tasks at our desks.  Part of that time I investigated a web-based RV trip planning tool called RV Trip Wizard.  Making recommendations relative to this program is one of the things the FMCA education committee has been asked to do.  The website had a demo available, as well as a tutorial and a user’s guide, so I was able to get a good feel for what it does and its ease of use.  The Geeks On Tour also had a review available which filled in some details and highlighted a few deficiencies.

Overall I found the website well conceived and nicely implemented, having most of the features needed to plan an RV trip without a lot of unnecessary clutter.  Features included routing with: turn-by-turn directions, mileage, overnight stops (17,000 in the database and growing), points of interest, and estimated expenses.  Trips can be exported as Excel spreadsheets and as files that can be imported into a GPS.  The trip preferences section allows you to specify key parameters about our RV, travel “style”, and estimated costs.  Missing from the parameters, however, was weight and propane.  It also allows you to indicate a prioritized order for RV parks and campgrounds when looking for places to stay overnight.  When planning a trip it will alert you if your rig is incompatible with part of your route, but does not automatically route you around it.  That would be unacceptable in a GPS, but is probably OK in this case as you can drag the route around on the map or add waypoints to change it.  Finally, you can save an unlimited number of trips indefinitely, recall one, do a “save as,” and then modify it if you want to repeat a previous trip with modifications.  RV Trip Wizard is a web-based subscription service and you must have an Internet connection to use it.  You cannot save your trips to your local device, and if you do not renew your subscription all of your saved trips are gone forever.

We had fresh fruit at 7 PM (bananas, blueberries, and strawberries) and a glass of wine, after which I worked for a couple of more hours before turning in to watch season 3 episode 2 of Doc Martin.

2014/06/21 (S) Happy Birthday

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Today was my dad’s 89th birthday and I called to wish him a happy one.  He was 18 years old on D-Day when he landed at Omaha Beach on the Normandy coast of France; June 6th, 1944.  His unit suffered 90% casualties during the invasion, but he survived to celebrate his 19th birthday in a foxhole in France.  Not long after that he was wounded during the push inland and spent 6 months recovering in a hospital in England before returning to duty.  He was awarded a Purple Heart for is injuries.  Only a few years ago his unit also received medals of commendation, most of them posthumously.

For all of my youth and most of my adulthood he has not discussed the events of June, 1944.  He tried to see Saving Private Ryan but had to leave the theater.  He said the invasion scene was the most realistic he had ever seen in a movie, too close to the truth for him to watch, but that the real thing was far more horrible than any film could capture.  He still doesn’t talk about his combat experiences, but in his later years he has found a great sense of pride in his former military service.

He was recalled to active duty during the Korean Conflict, but did not serve in the Korean theater.  He had finished his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and was assigned to an Army Corps of Engineers unit where he taught soldiers how to construct various kinds of bridges and other structures in the field.

When I talked to him today he said he had come across some interesting statistics recently regarding World War II.  During the course of the war, which I took to mean from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the global end of hostilities, 16 million American men and women served on active duty.  Of those 16 million, slightly less than one (1) million are still alive today, and the youngest of them, like my dad, are in their late 80’s.  Millions more worked on the civilian side of the war effort, and I suspect the statistics for that group are very similar.

———-

We went to breakfast in South Lyon with our ham radio club friends as we do most Saturday’s.  The group varies in size from week to week; sometimes it’s as small as eight and sometimes, like today, over 20.  Our club was holding a volunteer examiner (VE) testing session at 9 AM, as we do on the 4th Saturday of most months, so a few folks had to leave early to run the session.  After breakfast five of us went to the Field Day site at the Lyon Township Atchison Memorial Park.  We helped Steve (N8AR) unload his riding lawn mower and four of us moved heavy metal picnic tables out of the way so he could mow the field where the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) will set up on Friday for the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day event.

Field Day is a 24 hour operating event to showcase the capabilities of amateur (ham) radio nationwide.  It starts at 2 PM EDT on the last Saturday in June and ends at 2 PM EDT the next day.  This is the second year in a row that we will miss Field Day, so we wanted to at least help with some of the site preparations

We finally had a day without rain and decided to work in the yard.  We have a lot of trees and bushes on our property that are in need of serious trimming, including the removal of dead limbs and branches.  We also have a lot of organic debris from previous trimmings lying around the yard in various places.

While Linda made a run to the recycling center I started trimming a red honeysuckle bush in front of our living room that was badly overgrown and blocked our view of the driveway from one of the windows.  When she got back from the recycling center we worked on a tree that had grown out into our pull-through driveway and down towards the ground, making it difficult-to-impossible for Keith to mow the lawn under and around the tree.

While we were working on this tree Linda found a Painted Turtle resting in the shade under one of the branches that almost reached the ground.  We wondered if it was the same one we had rescued a month ago as it tried to cross the road in front of our house.  I had relocated that turtle to the northeast corner of our yard near our neighbor’s pond.  We worked around the turtle for a while and enjoyed observing it, but once I was done with the trimming I relocated it to the northeast corner of the yard by the pond.  I then worked on another, smaller tree near the driveway that had a lot of dead branches.  We had several other trees on that same side of the house that had low hanging branches so I trimmed those as well.  I then moved to the area just northwest of the house and did the same for a couple of trees there.

We gathered up all of the trimmings and separated them by green (with leaves) and dead (dry and able to burn).  We hauled the dry trimmings back to our recently constructed fire pit where Linda made a pile of kindling from the smallest/driest material and started the fire.  I kept trimming trees and cutting up larger limbs into smaller pieces for the burn pile while Linda hauled them to the fire pit.  It was almost 5 PM by the time we quit working.  We were tired and a bit sore, but it felt good to have accomplished tasks that needed to be done.  There is a lot more to do, of course; we are learning just how much land five acres really is, especially with as many trees as we have.  It will take more than one summer to fully prune our arbor, but that’s OK, we have time.

If the weather holds we will likely work in the yard again tomorrow.  Keith will probably be here on Monday to mow the grass and we need to make sure all of the larger trimmings have been picked up before he arrives.  I also want to prune our pear tree and apple tree before we get any deeper into summer.  They both produced abundant and usable fruit last fall, but we were unable to reach most of it because the trees are badly shaped with too much tall, vertical growth in the center.  But that is for another day; tonight we finished season 2 of Doc Martin and started season 3.

 

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

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There is always lots to do around the house when we return from an RV rally, more so since we are still getting moved in to our new (to us) house and trying to get it ready for an open house / house warming.  We decided about a month ago to have the house warming as a way to “force” us to accelerate the moving-in process and so far that seems to be working.

Arriving home yesterday we were able to pull in to our pull-through driveway with the car attached, which was very nice.  With the added “fines” (sandy silt) material mixed in with the 21aa road gravel, the driveway is now packing together very tightly and easily supporting the weight of the bus.  The planned driveway geometry has worked out well allowing us to pull in and out with the car attached.  That means we cook hook/unhook the car in the driveway rather than in the street.

Linda babysat for Madeline on Monday while I worked around the house, unloaded the clothes and bedding from the bus, and started doing laundry; not very interesting, perhaps, but satisfying work in its own way.  We both spent a fair amount of time on our computers this week, Linda with household accounting chores and RV park research and me with some CEPI work, our website/blog, and websites for several other organizations.  Using WordPress to create/manage websites and blogs has really grabbed my interest.  I’m not very proficient yet, but I’m leaning.

We hung the last few pieces of artwork for now and spent part of the week opening and moving boxes.  Linda was looking for papers we could take to a shredding company and managed to accumulate quite a few boxes of them.  At this point we’ve run out of time to open boxes and sort through the contents, so we turned our attention to finding places to “hide” them until after the open house.  We’re not there yet, but we are comfortable that the house will be presentable enough by the time it needs to be.

We decided to harvest some of the apples from our apple tree and discovered that a large branch (3-4” diameter) had peeled loose in three places, probably due to the copious amount of fruit on it, the age of the tree, and the fact that it had not been pruned properly (or at all) for years.  We don’t know much about fruit trees, but we know that this is not the time of year to prune them.  With the tree obviously damaged, however, we decided to cut the branch off and let nature take its course.  We took it off in three pieces to make sure we could handle them.  The branches of an apple tree tend to get intertwined, especially if it isn’t pruned, so we really had to pull to get the pieces down.  That brought lots of apples to the ground besides the ones on the damaged branch.  We left the branches and their apples on the ground for the deer and other animals that frequent our backyard.

We collected a large bag of apples and Linda spent time during the rest of the week peeling them, dipping them in lemon, and freezing them.  She also made apple sauce and apple bread (both of which were outstanding).  She commented at one point that “I am starting to understand why farm wives never got out of the kitchen.”  Cooking real food with real ingredients (whole-food, plant-based) is a lot of work.  Linda finds the work satisfying, however, now that she has the time to do it, and I certainly find the results satisfying as well.  Yummy.

Ed and Betty Burns arrived on Thursday afternoon in their Tiffin Phaeton motorhome and stayed until late Friday morning.  This was their second visit in about a month and we really enjoyed having them here again.  They have been working at the Middleton Berry Farm and finished their tour of duty on Thursday.  I moved our motorhome out of the pull-through driveway so they could pull in and park in a level spot with power.

They got here in time for dinner and Linda put out a nice meal.  She served a nice Waldorf style green salad using some of our fresh-picked apples with homemade apple bread.  The main course was a lentil loaf with a baked potato and homemade applesauce on the side.  I chose the Blueberry Wine from Forestedge Winery in LaPorte, Minnesota to go with the meal.  (It only occurred to us later than we had an apple wine from the same winery, which would have really completed our apple-themed meal.)  Forestedge Winery is owned by Paul and Sharon Shuster, who are members of our FMCA Freethinkers associate chapter as are Ed and Betty.

Linda made apple crisp for dessert, but none of us had room, so we saved it for breakfast the next day.  In addition to the apple crisp, breakfast included Linda’s homemade granola cereal with fresh blueberries, fresh banana slices, and raspberries that we had personally picked at the Middleton Berry Farm a few weeks ago and frozen.  A little orange juice and a 50/50 blend of Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe and Kona coffee rounded out the meal.

We decided earlier in the week that we would try Florida for our first snowbird experience.  (Snowbird is a term used to describe folks who live in northern climates where it snows and head south for the winter to get away from same.  If there is a corresponding term for folks who live in the south and travel north in the summer to avoid heat and humidity, I don’t know what it is, other than perhaps Bridwons.  Think about it.)  Our decision was motivated by the desire to attend a large converted bus rally in Arcadia, Florida that is held each year from December 26 to January 1st.  (The actual rally is Dec 29, 30, 31, but you can arrive as early as the 26th and departure is the 1st.)  The rally was started by Jack and Paula Conrad, who ran it for the first ten years.

Ed and Betty used to live in Florida so we were eager to draw on their knowledge and experience before trying to book a place or places to stay.  Earlier in the week we called the Low-Key Hideaway RV Park and Motel in Cedar Key, but they were not able to accommodate us.  We knew about Low-Key Hideaway Cherie Ve Ard’s Technomadia blog postings, and it appears that the place has developed quite a clientele, perhaps in part as a result of Technomadia’s publicity.

At the last two GLCC rallies we had talked at length with Pat and Vicky, who winter in Florida.  I also had an in-depth conversation this week with two other fellow RVers (Ed and Al) who winter in Florida and got their thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations.  Our friends and fellow H3-40 owners, Chuck and Barbara, have spent the last seven winters in Florida and the last several at Pelican Lake Motorcoach Resort in Naples, Florida.  We delayed our return home following the Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise in March so we could drive over from Ft. Lauderdale to see the resort and have dinner with them.  It was very nice, as you would expect.

We learned a number of things as a result of this quick “research”.  Some of it was stuff we knew, or assumed as a form of common sense, but some of it we did not:

  1. The cost per day generally goes down the longer you stay in one place.  The usual breakpoints are week, month, 2-month, 3-month, 4-month, 6-month, and year.  (You can also purchase lots, but probably don’t want to calculate the per day cost for that.)
  2. The farther south you go, the more expensive it gets.
  3. The reason for the previous point is the average daily temperate range.  In northern Florida it is not unusual for temperatures to drop into the upper 30’s at night, and record lows have been recorded in the teens.  That doesn’t happen in Key West, and money tends to follow the pleasant climate.
  4. The closer you are to one of the coasts, the more expensive it gets.  You pay a price for beaches and sunrises/sunsets.
  5. No-See-Ums, however, can be a real problem near the coasts, and some folks have very bad reactions to their bites.
  6. If the RV park has “resort” in the name, it will be more expensive, with “motorcoach resort” costing even more, and “luxury motorcoach resort” costing even more than that.
  7. Most of Florida is swampy; being inland or staying at a “luxury” resort does not guarantee that you are not camped in or next to a swamp.  Think bugs, snakes, and alligators.
  8. You can almost always rent a deeded site at a higher-end park directly from the owners much cheaper than you can rent it through the park management office.  Check the classifieds in the back of FMC Magazine.
  9. Moving every week is expensive and tiring, but gets you access to more of the state.
  10. Staying more than one month at the same place can get a bit boring, but that’s a personal thing.
  11. Some parks are in dense urban areas, others are near small towns, and some are in the middle of nowhere.  It’s a shopping convenience versus solitude thing.  You can end up having to drive 20 miles or more for groceries if you are not paying attention when you choose an RV park.
  12. Not all parks are “big rig friendly” (even though they will claim they are).
  13. Most parks have punitive refunds polices, so be sure before you know what they are before you book.
  14. Make sure your park of choice is located near things you want to do (hike, bike, kayak, fish, watch sunrises and/or sunsets, or have access to highways so you can visit natural and historic sites in your car, etc.)  Tallahassee is not a good base camp for visiting Key West.
  15. Many RV parks are adjacent to a major freeway, railroad track, or airport; sometimes all three.  If you don’t think the noise will bother you, you’re wrong.
  16. Some RV parks are gated (if you care).
  17. Whether the residents in a park or nice or not seems to have little to due with the physical appearance and amenities of the place.
  18. There are a lot of older parks with mixed use, i.e., year-round “Park Models” in addition to sites for vacationers and snowbirds.
  19. Check the type/quality of the interior roads and parking pads (concrete, gravel, grass, hard dirt, or sand), it might matter with a big, heavy coach.
  20. The spacing of the sites varies greatly; some parks have sites that are small and close together (but they will tell you they are very spacious).
  21. Find out whether there is any landscaping, especially shade trees around the sites.
  22. Find out whether the roads and sites have trees trimmed up and back sufficiently to not scratch your RV.
  23. Check to see if “lakes” on the property actually have water in them (seriously).
  24. Check on the availability and cleanliness of onsite bath/shower facilities and Laundromats.
  25. Check the availability of onsite activities (which could be a plus or a minus) and facilities such as swimming pools, tennis courts, etc.  If you don’t want them, why pay for them?
  26. Find out if the park has pet restrictions, and if so, what they are.
  27. Some parks are 55+ operations, others allow/encourage/cater to families with children.  Know which type you are signing up for and make sure it’s what you want.
  28. The photos on the website always look beautiful, but somehow manage to avoid showing you views of the parking sites from a vantage point that allows you to assess all of the factors mentioned above.
  29. Google Earth and other satellite image websites/apps are your best friend and ultimate research tool.

Our goal was to book a park or parks for January and February by the end of the day Friday, but we didn’t make it; too much to ponder and no time to make phone calls.  We will get back to it early next week as Tuesday is October 1st, and January 1st will only be three months away.

Tom and Tom from TOMTEK HVAC were back on Friday afternoon to finish up repairs on our hydronic heating system.  They did not have one of the parts they were going to replace but it didn’t matter as they discovered some additional issues that will require a return visit.

The first thing they discovered was that the propane shut off valve didn’t shut off the propane.  We had to turn off the supply at the tank so they could replace the valve before doing anything else.  When they removed the propane diffuser cone to clean it and replace the gasket they discovered that the end of the cone had large holes in it.  These holes were preventing the propane from burning as efficiently as it should, and if they got bigger could prevent the furnace from working at all.  Parts like this for a Weil-McLain GV Gold Series hydronic heating system are not common, i.e., they don’t carry them on their truck or even stock them at their office, so they had to special order it.

As long as they had the combustion chamber open, they went ahead and vacuumed it out.  They had me look at it, and it had what appeared to be a couple of inches of rusty debris lying in the bottom, the result of a lack of proper (professional) service over a very long period of time (or perhaps any service at all).  They put it all back together and will replace the diffuser cone, gasket, and igniter (along with the part they forgot to bring) when they return next week.

I don’t know if this qualifies as serendipity in the usual sense, but we are lucky that we decided to have the system “serviced” in advance of the start of the heating season.  If not, we would not have discovered defects that could have led to a wintertime failure of the furnace with serious consequences for the house.

As I was working at my computer Friday evening an e-mail showed up with the PDF version of the October 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine.  The article I wrote on the mid-August Back-To-The-Bricks rally in Clio, Michigan was the cover/centerfold article, the fifth one I have had published in BCM.  (See the BCM page of the website for the complete list and information about Bus Conversions Magazine.)  That was a nice end to nice week.