Ordinary Adventures

   Brad mowed the lawn in an hour this week.  That piece of info is just for you, Lisl. (Do you remember being frustrated that he took so long last summer?)  He sang loudly while he mowed.  I remember singing/harmonizing with the sweeper and the lawn mower. I even sang with the tractor while disking for corn planting.  He sings while he runs the wood splitter and the lawn mower.  I also remember singing in the milk house while washing the huge stainless steel bulk tank. I would lean way in to the big open tank where sound would bounce all over the place and try to sing all three part: soprano, alto, and high tenor.  I got the tank cleaned for the next installment of Daddy’s hard won "ton of milk a day", but I made a lot of noise, too.  I should have gone in for “voice” at that time of my life. Woulda been all primed.
The living room stove began to puff this week.  We had a horrid time getting any kind of fire to develop in it and when we did, there would be these occasional blue clouds come puffing, streaming, and billowing out from between the shut doors.  It was horrifying. (It’s good we haven’t done the spring cleaning yet.)  So Elv took the indoor pipe length outside while I put a half sheet pan over the opening on the top of the stove and shook out some ash.  But not enough to cause puffing.  So then he went up and took off the top length and cleaned it slick as a whistle, and they took the cleanout plate off as well, and removed more creosote and ashes.  Now the fire burns nicely with no clouds of blue.
I needed to go to Rice Lake and pick up Brad’s new glasses. They had two pairs of new glasses for Brad! Nobody could figure out how that happened. “That was the Lord,” said Susan. Amen. I bought fertilizer for the strawberry bed, and bedding plants for the patio flower beds.  Decided on petunias for a change.  Red and white in remembrance of my moms flowerbeds at home long ago.  She always planted red petunias and white alyssum. Walmart didn’t have alyssum so I just bought white petunias instead.