Scott: Three small Pine trees

Memorial weekend is three day weekend and the beginning of summer for most folks in Minnesota. We took an additional day off and made it a 4 day weekend leaving the cities on Thursday night early before traffic so we would be at the lake Friday morning. Of course we had a load of stuff in the jeep headed for the north woods. ( Margaret likes to carry stuff!)

So the first thing Friday morning after a trip to town for miscellaneous supplies (read “supplies” as: Out of Beer!) Margaret’s out in the yard planting her flowers for the year.

While I supervise from the deck with the newly purchased supplies. Oh! and check out my new socks they were a bargain! 2 dollars! Margaret loves my new socks!

Speaking of footwear I also got some cool new red thingies for 4 dollars and this orange shirt free from an avid reader of our blogs. I’m a regular bargain hunter! They almost match by orange shirt! Besides being thrifty I’m color coordinated. Who knew?

After consuming the supplies it was time to get the boat out of winter hibernation and put it in the water for the year. I suspected that the battery might be dead, but after charging it for a couple of hours while I cleaned the boat it started right up!

After hooking the boat to the new jeep for the first time and grabbing Margaret for the ride to the boat launch I snapped a picture of the Rig. Nice! its color coordinated too!

Putting this boat in the water is easy. Margaret drove the jeep back to the lot and I took the boat for the short trip across the lake to boat lift I put in last weekend.

Now if I can just get the canopy on the lift we will be in great shape for the summer.

Last weekend when we put in the dock and lift the humming birds were buzzing around looking for food. Unfortunately I had forgotten hummingbird food so I couldn’t put up the feeder. So on one of our supply runs to Walker this weekend we stopped in the Ace hardware store where they sell humming bird food to get some, but they were sold out. Not to be deterred I read the label on the Baltimore Oriole food box label and low and behold its made of sucrose dextrose! (sugar for the chemically disinclined) This will work!

So that explains why our humming bird feeder is orange. But guess what? the Hummers don’t care! They like orange sucrose dextrose just as well as red sucrose dextrose. (See the little bird sitting on the feeder slurping away!)

After that menu change for the hummers its off to move one of the water spigots to the big post in the yard.

The next morning when I got up as I was stumbling to the breakfast table I looked out the from coach window to see this bird on the branch outside the window. A little out of focus, I haven’t had my coffee yet, but cool!) Its a Baltimore Oriole.

You suppose this has anything to do with the orange Baltimore Oriole food in the Hummers feeder? Well now I’ll have to go back to town to get a Baltimore Oriole feeder!

Here you see the Orange sucrose dextrose being carefully transferred to the appropriate Bird feeding hardware that the orange color requires. While we ere getting the Baltimore Oriole feeder we found the right colored Humming bird feed as well. Not that those greedy little hummers cared about the color!

Now we have both a humming bird feeder and a Baltimore Oriole feeder. Lets just hope we don’t have 2 squirrel feeders.

My that was a lot of work. Time to rest in the sunbeam and plan our next adventure!

After an exhausting hour of planning I came up with a good idea! Lets have happy hour! We made big plans we moved the lawn chairs out into the sun made drinks and invited the neighbors for snacks!

Snacks with the neighbors is kind of a one way conversation and they don’t stay around long so we decided to have dinner. Steaks and bake potatoes.

The next morning Margaret promised me she would be happy if I would just moved 1 little pine tree for her. Knowing how these things work I wanted to know how long she would be happy for if I moved only 1 small pine tree? She didn’t tell me so I figure 7 years sounds like a good amount of time for 1 small pine tree.

So I moved 3 small pine trees just to be sure she would be happy. Now Margaret has to be happy for 21 consecutives years. I figure I’ve gotten it covered!