The husband’s brother and nephew stopped by yesterday to check out the man cave. (They hadn’t been in the barn in years and were suitably impressed.) Of course we heard them coming from half a mile away because they drove in with the nephew’s new toy.
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His favorite past time is buying and restoring old cars and this one is looking pretty good so far.
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Although I can’t say the same for the nephew. Pre Covid pandemic? He looked like this…
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Now?
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He’s sporting a Grizzly Adams type beard. But he brought us a jar of homemade maple syrup….
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So I guess I can overlook a little ( lot! ) of facial hair.
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He and his family do it the old fashioned way, tapping 32 trees with metal buckets.
He even built an honest to God sap house.
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Where he boils. And boils. And boils…
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In case you’re wondering, it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. No wonder it’s so bloody expensive. ( Good stuff can go for $100 a gallon )
So I walked in on my husband the other day, and this was what he was watching….
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I knew it was going to be good.
Or bad.
Or so bad, it’s good.
I wasn’t disappointed.
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A walking tree stump reincarnation?
I was in!
Having missed the first third of the movie I can’t give you the background story, but I knew something was going to go wrong when the visiting doctors dug up a tree with a face and a knife in it’s… chest?
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Back at the lab, the lady doctor/heroine whipped out her stethoscope to check its vitals.
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The diagnosis? None. They were stumped… (pun intended) and left the room to confer with colleagues.
Bad idea.
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Very bad.
The rampaging evil spirit tree, which we learned is named Tobanga, ran amok and captured a South Sea native girl.
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And hurled her in the quicksand.
She begged for her life…
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But Tobanga was merciless.
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Bye bye scantily clad native girl.
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Her death stirred up the villagers and they vowed to track the malevolent creature.
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But you know that didn’t go as planned.
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This fellow was tossed into a ravine and impaled….
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Which pissed off the guy in the stunning headband to no end.
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He gathered more natives to dig a pit… and used himself as bait to lure the creature.
Edge of your seat drama. Yessiree.
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Success! We shall stab the beast with our spears..
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Light him on fire and make charcoal briquettes!
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But alas, that didn’t turn out well either.
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Headband guy was doomed.
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And chucked off the side of a mountain.
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And as you know it had to..
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Tobanga then captured our heroine.
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Her fellow doctors armed themselves and were in hot pursuit, willing to lay down their lives for the fair haired damsel in distress.
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(Except for the guy on the right who knows that bitch Karen deserved it for digging up the cursed thing in the first place.)
Bam!
Our hero saved the day with an expertly placed shot to Tobanga’s … heart?
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And into the quicksand he went….
Bye bye Stumpy.
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The natives were so grateful they asked our hero if he would be their village witch doctor.
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And though flattered, he refused… and moved back to Burbank with Karen.
(And not to my husband, though I want to. I really want to!)
Planting apple trees in excessive summer heat, during a drought?
Not a good idea.
A week afterwards?
Most of them look like this…. and I simply have to say it before I burst.
I told you so!
It’s been crazy hot and dry. Our lawn is turning brown and crunching underfoot.
Not exactly prime transplanting conditions.
But he wouldn’t listen… so now we have 9 almost dead twigs.
And before you say it, I have watered them.
I purchased three 100′ foot expandable hoses strictly for that purpose.
I added them to my original 100′ foot hose and have repeatedly hauled the four 100′ foot hoses out to the far corners of our property watering the damned things.
This week’s harvest from our neighbor’s CSA yielded scallions, cabbage, beets, Swiss chard, basil, parsley, garlic scapes, a tomato, a zucchini and raspberries.
Needless to say the raspberries were demolished with ice cream the first night and since we craved more, we headed across the road to their farm stand.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen a tractor trailer box renovated into a turquoise and gold farm stand…
But hey, it works.
Fairy tale eggplant?
There are so many off color jokes I could make right now my brain is threatening to explode.
And in case you’re wondering how the veggies don’t bake in the heat?
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Just as we were about to leave, our neighbor’s daughters showed us all of her father’s left over apple trees. He’d planted as many as he could for his new orchard and didn’t want the rest.
You know where this is going…. right?
Free trees?
Yeah.
It’s been 100 degrees in the shade, the ground is solid concrete because we haven’t had any rain for weeks… and my husband wants to plant more trees.
Remember the tree planting miracle I posted about a while ago? When the husband dug up and transplanted 3 maple trees to the far corners of our backyard?
Yes, the ones I had to water everyday because we were entering drought conditions.
Well, that stopped when I broke my toe and I told the other half he’d have to take over the job if he wanted his trees to survive.
Water every day I told him.
Which is what I did, religiously, with his little patch of grass seed next to the baby barn.
Under my watchful eye the seed sprouted…
And is now green…
Thick and lush.
The trees?
That the husband didn’t bother to water because of course I don’t know what I’m talking about…..
