The place where the west drive meets the road, where the Suburban sank to the hubs, has dried out enough for me to work on it. I used a hoe to level the ruts so driving over the area will pack it down. I hope it will be solid enough that I won't have to worry about getting stuck again. Saturday treat night dinner was the buffet at Pizza Ranch. This week's movie was Sinners. Set in Mississippi in 1932, it has a good cast and good production values, but the real star is the music. The zombie angle could have made the thing a ridiculous mess, but good directing and good acting made it turn out well.


Sunday, May 4, 2025

Grass growing on the banks along the road persuaded me that I need a push mower to get it under control. I was a bit shocked to see how mower prices have risen since the last time I shopped for one, but a man's got to do what a man's got to do. I ended up with the lowest priced mower at Tractor Supply, and on sale for $20 off it came to about $271. When I got the thing home I took the mower and engine manuals out of the box and studied them a little, but I didn't feel up to the project of assembling the thing. Tomorrow will be soon enough for that.


Lunes, 5 de Mayo, 2025

Done. A few years ago I might have got it done in half the time, but I did finally got the new mower assembled. I started it up and did a little mowing to try it out, and it worked OK. I'm not delighted by the clumsy design of the oil cap, but I suppose it will be good enough. I hope tomorrow will bring a good opportunity to accomplish some serious mowing. The manual says mowing across a slope is better than going up or down. Maybe that will be OK, but I'll find out how well it works when I get some actual practice at it.


Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Oh, boy. I knew it would be a big job, but I didn't realize it would be this big. I started up the new mower and began cutting grass along the bank on the south side of the road. The problem was that by the time I got to it, the grass was so tall it would bog own the mower if I didn't go really slow. One day was not enough, and I expect the whole thing will take several days. The forecast claims tomorrow will be wet, so that will interrupt this project. After that we're supposed to have over a week without rain. Can I mow the whole south bank in a week? We'll see.


Wednesday, May 7, 2025

A rainy morning made the outdoors sopping wet, and a rainy evening kept it that way. I spent way too much time playing on the internet, but I'm too feeble and lazy to let it other me. Maybe I'll be more ambitious tomorrow.


Thursday, May 8, 2025
Decent weather allowed some much-needed outside work today. April and May showers have brought a good crop of tall grass on the bank along the south side of the road, and today I attacked it with my new push mower. A riding mower or a mowing tractor is not a good choice for mowing slopes or banks, so a push mower is the safer way to go. There's too much of this job for one day. Will I get it done tomorrow? Maybe not, but I'll get a pretty good run at it. If I don't finish every job, I don't consider that a major tragedy.


Friday, May 9, 2025

More mowing. Working from east to west, I continued on the south bank. I had been at it about half an hour when a neighbor stopped and asked if I could use some help. I sure didn't refuse that. He went and got his big riding mower and took care of some level ground I was planning to mow later. I made good progress mowing the south bank, and I expect I'll finish that tomorrow. Another job done today was airing up a low front tire on the mowing tractor. There's no working compressor in the barn where the tractor sits, so I had to take off that wheel, take it to the shop building, blow the tire up to 28 psi, and take it back and put it on the tractor.


Saturday, May 10, 2025
Well, that was good. I finished mowing the south bank, then moved across the road and got started on the north bank. The bank on the north isn't as badly overgrown as the south bank was, so I'm hoping it won't take as much work. For Saturday treat night dinner was enchiladas blancas at La Fiesta. The week's movie was Fight or Flight, in which Josh Hartnett does battle with a seemingly endless stream of assassins on a plane. It's an entertaining show, better than it sounds.


Sunday, May 11, 2025

Another day of good weather allowed me to continue the project of mowing the bank along the north side of the road. As feeble and clumsy as I am now, it's mighty slow going. I suppose that's OK. As long as I can do a little of it most days, eventually I'll get it done. Tonight's TV viewing brought a rare treat. Sixty minutes came on at the scheduled time, with no delay from football or golf running overtime for half an hour or more.


Monday, May 12, 2025

Facing reality. For many years I lied to myself that someday when I had the time I would deal with things I wasn't doing because I was busy with other things. Well, now I have a lot of time I could be using to get things done, but these days I just don't have the ability or the motivation. My ability to do a lot of things has left me because I'm so clumsy and feeble, and that tends to kill the motivation that should make me do what I still can. One project that's become too much is family history. About 1970 Mom's sisters and a brother produced a booklet telling of the Parkers, Campbells, Smiths, Davises, and other relatives in previous generations. At the very least that should be updated to cover subsequent births and deaths for the most recent half century. It would be good to cover some of the occupations and adventures of the newer relatives too. Accepting the likelihood that this job will be too much for me, this evening I had Lori and Donna come see me. I passed the booklet on to them for scanning and copying, and all of us will share the job of updating. I don't know if it will be a big success, but I think it will be better than me dying with none of the job done, or even started.


Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Day Two of waiting to regain my riding mower. The Dixon quit cutting because the belt for the mower deck wore out, so yesterday I ordered a new belt which is supposed to arrive by Friday. Today I went to the hardware store and got a little piece of key stock to use on my mowing tractor. I use the Allis Chalmers  B with a Woods L-59 mower mounted on it when I have a big area to mow. It will be nice to have the Allis for wide expanses of mowing, and the Dixon for cutting around trees and edges. The question will be whether I can still climb up on the Allis and run it, or have to train the cousins to use it.

Wednesday, May 14, 2025 Oh, my back! I did some real work today, until my back told me I'd had enough for one session. I attacked the patch of weeds and small trees around my wrecked Ford runabout that sits in front of the shop with a tarp over it. This is part of a larger project, which will be moving  the old wreck into the shop and digging into it to find out how much remains usable. That will allow me to decide whether to rebuild or replace. Most likely the frame is toast, but three of the wheels look ready to use. I suspect the coils are good, and other ignition parts probably are OK too. I could speculate at length what may still be good and what may not, but I won't find the true picture until I can actually dig in and see what's what. Thursday, May 15, 2025 A little more mowing on the north bank, and some other mowing with the push mower. Too much time wasted online. I keep griping about it, but I keep doing it. Friday, May 16, 2025 Lori and Donna came and mowed the yard and whacked weeds. If not for the cousins, nothing at all would get done around here. I tried to do some mowing too, but even with a new belt installed in the Dixon I didn't get very far. It bogged down in a patch of tall grass, and I couldn't get it to run again.

Saturday, May 17, 2025 The girls and I took a day off for a bit of family history. We drove up to Chase County and found the spot where our Parker ancestors homesteaded when they came to Kansas in 1867. Elisha B. Parker and family were in Wisconsin, and after his wife and oldest boy had pneumonia again the doctor told him if he wanted them to survive another winter, he had better move south. Kansas was as far south as they could move and not be in a Confederate state. In the photo to the right Donna and Lori are standing at the west boundary of the 1867 Parker claim of 160 acres. These photos show the perfectly flat bottom land beside Diamond Creek, an ideal situation for serious flooding. That's the likely reason the Parkers moved south in 1869 and established the present farm in Cowley County on land with better drainage. The field of stubble in the second picture is most of the 1867 Parker claim by Diamond Creek, which is marked by the trees on the left.

      


Sunday, May 18, 2025

Not much done, but a few loose ends tied up. I finished making and installing a gas pedal in the truck. The original pedal had achieved a state of total uselessness. The replacement is an eight-inch piece of wood. It looks ridiculous, but so far it works. I also worked on the Allis B mowing tractor, finishing installation of the mower belt. I started the tractor and tried the mower, which seemed to work OK. Actually mowing with it will be the real test. I moved the push mower into the garage out of the weather, and put a tarp over the Dixon in case of rain.


Monday, May 19, 2025

I took a little inspection walk down in the wood lot and found the road definitely in need of mowing. I came back up to the barn and started the Allis mowing tractor, and drove it over by the shop, where I found it in need of maintenance. I removed dead grass off the mower deck and started greasing joints. i'll finish that tomorrow.


Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Still no mowing. Few things are as aggravating as trying to make a stubborn grease gun work. I wasted a couple of hours trying to make two f the silly things function. Finally i quit that game and went to town and bought a new one. When I got it working I resumed work on the tractor, then hit the next obstacle. When I tried to pull the gun off a zerk, the zerk pulled off the tractor. The reason for that is incredible. Normally zerks are threaded and screwed into their holes, but this one was perfectly smooth (unthreaded) and pressed in! Now I'm trying to figure out how I can replace it and make it stay.


Wednesday, May 21, 2025

I loathe and despise grease guns. I struggle to make them work. Just looking at one, it's easy to understand how it's supposed to work. But it doesn't. Getting grease to come out when you pump the handle is always a struggle. Sometimes I can make it work for awhile, but it always fails. Add the hour of finding the parts and tools it takes to do a half-hour job, and not much gets done. Eventually I got the mowing tractor ready to do some work. I took it down to the wood lot road and made a pass with the mower raised, then went back over the same track with it down. More remains to be mowed, but that will have to wait until I can remove the collapsed tree that's blocking some of the road. With that project sidelined, I mowed along the road to the west end of the place. Some of that will have to wait until I have the Dixon running again, and can mow closely around mail boxes.


Thursday, May 22, 2025

Today I enlisted Donna and her trailer to haul the Dixon into town and leave it with Dave, the small engine repair guy. He said it would be ready later in the week, but then he remembered what today is, and amended that to next week. Whenever it's done, there will be mowing waiting for it.


Friday, May 23, 2025

Weather didn't cooperate all day, but I did start an outdoor job that will be an ongoing project. In the back yard are two big branches brought down by strong wind, and today I started trimming off small twigs and branches and bagging the little pieces to be part of next winter's heat. I have a stack of 45 pound dog food bags, and I want to work on filling a good many of them this spring and summer so the contents will be thoroughly dry when burning season arrives.


Saturday, May 24, 2025

Today's project took a visit to Parker Cemetery.  To help Lori's work on family history I made a list of all the relatives I could find there. That includes several generations, going back to 1803. We have a little booklet printed about 1970, but a lot of changes have happened since then, and a lot of the young cousins don't know about the earlier generations. For Saturday treat night dinner was at the Pizza Ranch buffet. This week's movie was The Last Rodeo, in which a retired bull rider makes a comeback to pay for his grandson's life-saving surgery. The story, cast, and production are above average. This reviewer gives it a thumbs up.


Sunday, May 25, 2025

More wet weather denied any chance for working outside. The TV gods allowed a bit of relief from recent downers. Sixty Minutes started on time this week, undelayed by sports dragging into overtime. The normally scheduled one-hour program was followed by a bonus program that ran for a second hour. We'll see if next Sunday brings more relief from sports dragging into overtime. I did actually accomplish something today, getting my prescriptions for the next three weeks organized. I ran short on two kinds of pills, and went to the pharmacy for more.


Monday, May 26, 2025

I spent a lot of the actual Memorial Day online, combatting the usual anti-American baloney from Trumpers. Most of them are so distracted by the irrelevant red/blue tribal culture war that they don't care about the Constitution, which The Leader considers an inconvenient impediment to his doing whatever he dreams up.


Tuesday, May27, 2025

I had a reason to leave home today, an appointment to sit with a psychologist and bend her ear with my blather for an hour. I've been going since last summer, first every couple of weeks and now monthly. I don't know if it's doing me any good, beyond the entertainment of hearing myself talk, but I expect I'll keep going for awhile.


Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Today I had a real reason to go somewhere. I drove up to Wichita for a dermatology appointment. The last time I went I had a sore on my right ear, on both front and back, and was prescribed  a medical cream to slather on it a couple of times a day for three weeks. That stuff did its job, and now the sore is gone. Today's session, as usual, included having a few spots on my head frozen to prevent them from becoming anything serious. Before coming home from Wichita I went to the Toyota dealership and made an appointment to take my Camry there tomorrow and have the trunk fixed so it will stay shut when I shut it. Currently I'm using a nylon cord and a rubber bungee to keep it closed.


Thursday, May 29, 2025

Mission accomplished. This morning we went to the Toyota agency in Wichita to see if they could fix my trunk which wouldn't stay shut. It turned out to be such a simple fix that there was no charge. You can't beat that. Now the question is whether it will stay fixed, and for how long. On the way home I got in a bit of grocery shopping. I stocked up on frozen vegetables — peas, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, spinach, etc. I think I now have enough in my freezer to last for a month.


Friday, May 30, 2025

It was a good day to take advantage of nice weather. The first chore was burning trash. Wood burning season is over, so I used the burn barrel in the back yard. Second was emptying the garbage pail from the back porch. That's where food scraps go — apple cores, banana peels, left over pickle juice, etc. I dump it way out back for any wild critters who may be interested. The next job was mixing up almost five gallons of weed killer and spraying johnson grass. That was enough to spray all I missed last time across the road, plus the uninvited weeds at the southwest corner of the place. The fight against johnson grass and other weeds is never completely over, but you can control most of it if you keep working at it. Today's work ended with a visit to the co-op to buy another big jug of weed killer.