Posts Tagged "blessings"

I’m officially ready for summer I think. Though this warm / cold spring is great for sap! I’m ready to get outside and start cutting grass and cleaning things up.  This will be the 3rd summer here and i’m finally getting to projects that are ‘nice to have’s rather than ‘need to get done’s. Part of the problem is I work from 10 to 6 during the week and we have a child, Arden of course. It effectively means that any usable day light during the week and even on weekends is spent on responsibilities inside the home. Just as well now since outside is mucky and cold. Still though, its really hard and discouraging to do stuff when there is no light, whether warm or cold. Working on lawn tractors by work light just isn’t...

The last couple of weeks I’ve been so distracted from the better things in life as I try to decide what I’m going to spend my money on this year. I have what I call ‘toy’ money. Money that is over and above my regular job that I use for my hobbies, or Mac upgrades, or games or seadoos. This year I need,. sorry, want a good number of things. Here is my list: coffee grinder OSX Lion > and then this summer Mountain Lion backup software – to complement the time machine backups (I’ve found ‘SuperDuper’, backs up nice and quick and just works, yes I’ve tried Carbon Copy and iBackup and such,… not as good, but thats for another blog) Garden tractor – I’ve busted my lawntractor transmission over...

Its well above zero right now and no sap yet. Its good and sunny too and dry as a bone. I think I need to do more research on just what actually starts the sap running. Its supposed to be below zero nights and above zero mornings / days. The temp difference creates a pressure differential within the ‘veins’ of the tree which initiate the suction / pumping effect which then draws up the sap from the roots. However, since the sap isn’t running yet, there must be other factors. The tree must have a bit more info on whether its actually spring yet, actually time to start drawing up the sap. There must be other indicators to the tree of environmental cues that it takes for that to actually start. This winter it was freezing and above zero many...

I’m writing this just after getting home from hockey. I went to the store and got myself a vitamin drink which I sometimes do, I’m usually dehydrated just normally from drinking too much coffee so its a good excuse to get a ‘gatorade’ like drink. And it disappears pretty quickly after a game. Back in ‘the day’ when I played in the KBHL (http://www.kbhl.org) we as a team, at least most of us would go to McDonalds. Usually McDonalds, sometimes other restaurants, it was basically on the way home for us so we would all find each other there after a game. We would take up 4 or 6 tables and even see other teams there. I did enjoy that, but that wasn’t exactly the memory. Often my parents would come cause my dad was coaching...

My question of the day is, why is it cheaper, healthier and generally more fun to do things the old fashioned way?   Some examples: Maple Syrup – you can tap your own trees with very basic equipment and boil it down for less then the cost of purchasing it at the grocery store. Its right there, out your window in spring time Apples – grow an apple tree and get KNOWN organic, fresh apples for FREE. You know where they were grown, from where they traveled (across your yard), how fresh they are, whether they’ve been injected with growth hormones (i hope you don’t inject your apple tree with growth hormones :S) Coffee – You can purchase your coffee ground from the store for an amount of money, or you can take one step back and buy...