Cop Car's Beat

Not quite as exciting - Charles' blue spruce bites the dust

Since moving into this house 22 years ago, I have admired the blue spruce that a neighbor across the street had next to his driveway. Below, is a photo of the tree that I took 2/21/2013 when it wore a fluffy white coat. Today, a landscaping company is taking that tree out. It has been in the process of dying for a couple of years - looking pretty scraggly.

As with our own trees that have been removed, I'll miss seeing that blue spruce out of our house's front windows (of which there are eight in the house and two in the garage). As the spruce is not as large as was our cottonwood, its removal process isn't quite as exciting. Below, is a photo of the guys starting the process.

After the tree people finished taking out the one spruce and trimming up the spruce that had been hidden behind it, they cleaned up and left. Below is a photo showing how it looks, now.

The supply chain is opening up - for some things

Finally, for the first time since COVID-19 became a "thing", I can find/order Ball canning flats. But, notice that the price is now about twice the pre-pandemic price. I'm thinking about ordering some. I do note that I can now order "off-brand" flats for about one-third of this price - 100 flats for $23.89.

Week in review

The photo, below, hit my funny bone.

I know how Carlos feels. I vividly recall in the mid-1980s being plugged into a short-term (six week) assignment by my bosses at The Little Engineering Company for lack of availability of other, more qualified, people who had been identified in the proposal for doing the work. The first time this happened, I filled in for a PhD materials expert whose Special Access Clearance (SAC) was too slow in coming. As I already had two or three such clearances, my additional SAC was granted within hours of submitting my request. To this day, I don't know how badly I screwed up "my part" of the project or whether that project ever saw the light of day.

Another time I was a "plug-in", the guy who had been identified in the proposal just flat did not wish to spend a few weeks in Seattle. (We were never notified when proposal writers identified us as principal staff in a proposal and we were required to keep detailed resumѐs on file for their use. My own resumѐ ran eight or nine pages in those archives.)

This project was a somewhat better fit; but, the timeline for accomplishment was far short of allowing adequate time for developing a good product. In order to fulfil the job, I loaned my SOCAL apartment to a coworker, and lived in a motel in Seattle for six weeks. I chose to ride the bus while in Seattle rather than using a company or rental car. It was during that stint that I was notified of a pickup truck's having rammed into my house in Albuquerque. Ah...good old days! [BTW: The above photo was stolen from Oddball Observations where it had been posted in 2013 with the comment, "Don't blame me.  This is a food truck in Houston.  The picture was sent to me by a (to be kept anonymous) friend.  Thanks, Frank."]

Hunky Husband took his car into Wichita for its annual servicing. Why is this big news? Because I did not go with him to navigate. Fortunately, there are only three changes of street in the 15-mile drive from our house to Lexus of Wichita, and HH was confident that he could get there and back. (He did!) We celebrate small victories. 😊 It helps that the car dealership is a straight shot north from one of the local golf courses, Hidden Lakes, at which HH used to play.

Early in the week I worked up the green tomatoes that I had picked before our first hard freeze. Green tomato relish is a good substitute for sweet pickle relish when one wishes a piquant touch on hot dogs or Tex-Mex chili. As one can see in the above photo, some of the tomatoes had started to turn color (and I added a bit of orange bell pepper). In all, I worked up about two gallons, only jarring four half pints and one quart. Without lid flats, their still being unavailable in our area, I decided to freeze the relish. Our downstairs freezer is pretty well stuffed with normal frozen foods and the Tex-Mex chili and baked beans that are awaiting pickup by Elder Brother. Refrigeration would be sufficient, with the sugar and vinegar included in the relish; but, the downstairs refrigerator is still packed with ripe tomatoes and sweet banana peppers that I put up in 2020 - at which time we were already lacking lid flats.

As one might guess, much of my time has been spent in keeping the new grass hydrated. The front lawn doesn't take much work. Three or four placements of the sprinkler suffices. In back, it takes more effort. At any rate, today will find me watering all the little trees in the back and between our driveway and Fred's fence. I've been negligent and we have several projected nights in the 20s (Fahrenheit) coming up.

Tree Work by JoJac's

Three trees (two ash, one cottonwood) the day before work started:

First to be felled were the two ash trees. The following photo shows Louis (cutting up the trees for chipping) and Cornelio (getting the grinder into position for grinding out the stumps - when the stumps are cut off).

The two ash trees having been felled, the following photos show Cornelio (Cornello?), Corbin, & Louis (Lewis?) bringing down the cottonwood tree. This time, it was Cornelio who did the up-in-the-tree work although the guys assured me that they all did that sort of thing. Previous to this venture, it had always been Benny up there. He trained, at least, Cornelio and then moved to a different department of JoJac's to do landscaping. The strain on one's body of doing the up-in-the-tree work gets to one after a while. Besides, putting things in is not nearly as dangerous as taking them out - even if that didn't figure into Benny's decision.

Below, that's Corbin pulling the branch away from Fred's fence. Even though some of the branches grew out past that line of our property, AFAIK not a leaf touched Fred's property.

Cornelio "caught" me taking photos and "posed" for me (photo, below). I did not wish the guys to notice me and my activities while engaged in their dangerous assignment. Distraction can be deadly! Until the tree trunk was on the ground, I stayed in the house, on the back porch, in the garage, or on the driveway - well away from the danger zone so as not to distract the workers. 

When the main trunk of the tree comes down, they want the mass and strength of two guys on the guide line. That would be Corbin and Louis. Unfortunately, one of Adam's relatives (Adam lives next door to us on the other side of our yard) came over to talk to the guys about doing some work on Adam's trees, at this point - ignoring the distraction he might be causing. He could have waited for the guys to have been on break for the disruption.

Hunky Husband came out of his bedroom from his nap, having been wakened by the "thud" of the trunk's hitting the ground.

At this point, all three guys hustle getting the limbs and trunk cut into "manageable" chunks. Many of the chunks required two men to roll them onto a dolly for transport to the storage area near Fred's fence. The next day would find the guys back with a flat trailer to haul off the wood that was too large to put through the chipper (the yellow contraption toward the right edge of the photo, below). They made several trips with that trailer to get all of the wood hauled off.

Cornelio, Corbin, and Louis had put in a full day. They must eat 5,000-10,000 Kilocalories each day to maintain their body weights with the exertion their jobs require.

The diameter of the trunk at a few inches above the ground was about three feet. I don't have the skill to read the tree rings or I might have been able to guestimate the age of the cottonwood tree.

 

BTW: The JoJac's guys still had other work to do the second day - cleaning out a couple of brush piles that I had made from smaller trees and brush that I had moved since their last foray into our woods, and trimming the front lawn's gingko tree back from overhanging the eaves of the house. The first photo, below, shows the guys getting ready to chip materials from the brush piles while the second shows the gingko tree following trimming.

After the crew left on the 2nd day:

Yard work is never done

We had our first hard freeze, last night. When I arose at 3am, the outside temperature was 27° Fahrenheit - and it stayed there until about 7:30am when it crept up to 28° F. By 8:30am it was 33°. The hard freeze triggered the shedding of leaves by our goodly-sized gingko tree in the front yard. As usual, I failed to get a "before" photo. I would like to have shown the carpet of leaves that lay about the tree, this morning. As it is, I can show you the carpet of leaves that is still in the foundation planting bed. The two pipes provide access to our main sewer line that joins the city sanitary sewer line under our street.

We also have two small gingko trees in the far back yard - both of which had shed their leaves within the past three or four days. I love gingkoes. They are immune to nearly everything. Bugs don't really bother them, heat doesn't bother them, cold doesn't bother them, nor does drought or an abundance of water. Another great thing about them is their habit of shedding the vast majority of their leaves, overnight, in the fall. I can get out and rake once or twice and be done with them. Something else about their shedding habits is that, as you can probably discern in the above photo, the leaves are still hydrated when they fall. Good: they don't blow as much as would dry leaves. Bad: they are darned bulky and heavy to handle when one rakes. Below is a photo of the tree as it stood when I finished raking.

Next is how the yard looked after raking. The demarcation between the raking I did before lunch (nearer the camera) and that which was done in mid-afternoon (farther from the camera) is evident. I only did the amount of raking that I thought my back could get away with. I'll do more tomorrow, perhaps.

Below are photos of the two bins and the garden cart of leaves that I raked up. (I take the small green bin out into the yard with me and dump the leaves from it into the blue bin - the blue bin holding twice as much as does the green.) Note that the bins were full, but have settled due to the weight of the leaves, and that the leaves in the garden cart are somewhat swaddled in plastic. I had tried to empty the little green bin of leaves into a huge plastic bag, only to discover the bag's state of deterioration. The least stress caused it to shred and crumble; thus, I rolled the whole mess into the garden cart. There for a moment it had seemed that I was going to end up with a large pile of leaves inside the garage. Whew!

It may seem that the only thing I do is yard work. It seems that way to me, too.  🥴 While we're on the subject: The first photo, below, shows how nicely the new grass had filled in in the back lawn, from its planting on 10/9/2021 until a week ago, with the largest previously-bare spot indicated by the red oval. The second photo shows the crusty frost that was still on the grass at 8:30am, today.

Jo-Jac's tree crew should be here, Monday, so there will be at least one more posting about yard work yet this fall.

My fun for the morning

Above is a photo of our two 2-gallon gasoline containers in which we obtain and keep gasoline for our lawn mower - as they appeared after I bought gasoline this morning. Notice the difference? I have zero idea where the yellow cap for the spout of the container on the right might be. It disappeared while I was inside pre-paying for the gasoline. I have a remembrance of the cap's being on the spout when I placed it on the concrete preparing to buy the gasoline; which, of course, does not mean that it was actually there. After preparing the containers for filling, however, the credit card reader on the pump had been cranky necessitating my going inside to pre-pay. When I came back to the pump, lo and behold, no cap. I checked the trunk of my car, under my car, all around on the concrete - no cap. I drove, carefully, the mile home. I checked around the garage floor and in the little red wagon (Bogie's) in which we keep the gasoline containers. Nothing.

Off to the local Ace Hardware I went...bought another 2-gallon gasoline container...got it home. As purchased, the spout was inverted into the container. 

 

The photo below shows the new can after I had struggled with it.

Notice the white lettering on a black background at the bottom of the label in the above photo. It says, "Peel Back Label For Instructions". It was a struggle peeling back that label as there was no divisible edge cut at that corner - the layer with the instructions was completely encapsulated by the label. I finally ripped the label from the can to work on it. Surely enough, eventually I was able to separate the two layers.

OMG: They've made the container so safe that it's a life's work to use it! After a lot of dark thoughts I was able to fill the container from the capless one and get the spout on, set for storage. One problem. The instructions (Step A) has one remove the dust cap for storage. Note that the arrow (Illustration B) points to nothing resembling a "dust cap". After coming inside, I emptied my pockets. Aha! The little disk that had been between the inverted spout and the black screw cap. In the photo of the new container, the dust cap can be seen as the little red disk at the discharge end of the spout.

And did I tell you? The locking tab on the black screw cap is STIFF. I nearly despaired of being able to deform/depress it enough to clear the locking stop. In my days as an aircraft mechanic in the US Navy Reserves, I thought that we had a gorilla around tightening things. Someone thinks we lawn owners are gorillas.

Never fear, something went right. As I approached the Ace Hardware counter to pay for the new container, I espied jars of Beer Nuts - among Hunky Husband's favorite snacks - since forever. He got addicted to them while working part-time at a bar while we were in school.

I used the Beer Nuts (Wikipedia) to bribe HH into saying, "There, there" and soothing me as I was telling him my sad tale of woe. He had been occupied doing the laundry during my trials.

Penny pinching through sewing

There are some things that I learned to do as a child because we were, in a word, poor! In addition, things were rationed as part of the WWII war effort when I was ages three to seven, making it prudent/necessary for us to "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without". One of the things that I learned to do was to re-make clothing (usually to fit a different person, physically and to their liking) and/or to repair it. This became such an ingrained habit that, though I dislike sewing, I still do it. I was wandering down memory lane in this vein because of a comment string in which Bogie and I engaged on her blog about jeans, wearing jeans out, and the fashion that people have been following of buying pre-torn/shredded jeans at outrageous prices.

1940s

In this photo of me and my brothers from 1943, I am wearing a fetching creation made from sacks in which our flour had come. Although my mother did not sew (Dad's mom taught me how in about 1943-1946), she always found a woman who was clever with a needle to make my dresses and gym suits. Nearly all of my dresses were made from flour sack or feed sack materials until I entered 8th grade, at which time Mom bought me three store-bought dresses.

The above photo was taken at the time my parents bought their first home, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Behind us kids you can see our brand new home with a truck parked in the driveway. That was the truck in which Elder Brother (EB), our parents, and I had lived through the winter as Dad worked as an electrician in construction at various Army Air bases throughout Texas. Younger Brother (YB) was too young to travel with us and stayed with our maternal grandparents on their farm in southwestern Missouri. EB attended 1st grade in at least five schools in Texas before enrolling in a Tulsa school. But I digress.

In addition to wearing feed sack dresses, I took custody of EB's outgrown overalls - which I hated. 

One saving trick in which most of us females, young and old, indulged was adding a ruffle of (usually, cotton) lace to the bottoms of our skirts, making it appear that our petticoats were peaking from beneath our skirts. We got another year's wear from a dress or skirt, that way - more than one year for adult women.

I still use a pillowcase that the late Expert Seamstress made out of a flour sack for my mother, using fabric from Mom's collection, in 1993. I gave the rest of Mom's collection to a friend for use in quilts some years later.

1950s

I was fortunate that one of my mother's five aunts had a daughter a few years older than me. When we visited them in Arkansas in about 1951, the daughter gifted me with some of her outgrown dresses - and my first pair of heels (which gave me a corn that dogged me until I retired in 2004!) These hand-me-downs, I really liked and I felt so stylish when wearing them. Unfortunately, as far as I know, no photos of me were taken wearing any of those clothes.

During the 1950s, my own sewing spanned from making my own school clothes to making baby clothes for Dudette (born 1959). At one point, I used the same chiffon fabric three times in making myself "formal" gowns to wear to dances in 1955 (age 17), 1956 (nearly age 18), and 1958 (age 20). I have no photo of the original dress - a one-shouldered style that I made to wear to a dance at my old high school's winter dance when I was "home for the holidays" in 1955. I do remember that my date was still a junior in high school, but we had been friends for years and ours was a date of convenience. A few months later, I tore that dress apart and used left-over fabric to make a full-skirted, strapless dress for a college dance.

In the winter of 1958, I tore the above dress apart to make the final iteration for that fabric into a halter-style dress to wear to the Military Ball. I had talked dance-shy Hunky Husband into attending and had even made a trip to St Louis to pick up his Air Guard uniform. That was a ball to remember!

We lived in the downstairs apartment of a two-apartment "house" (that would, today, be condemned). It included zero insulation and water pipes that readily froze in winter temperatures. The morning of the dance, we arose to a temperature of 8 degrees Fahrenheit. We couldn't draw fresh water nor could we flush the commode. This at a time when I was still experiencing "morning sickness" during my pregnancy with Dudette. It was dreadful! 

I don't recall how in the world we managed to clean up for the dance; but, I suspect that we walked to the campus and used the facilities in the camera club's darkroom. The darkroom was in the basement with, and across the hall from, the amateur radio club's "shack". At best, I found no way of washing my hair. In the photos, taken in the "shack", one can see that I was not at my prime. Expert Seamstress had helped me do the beading on the midriff of the dress.

We had a great time at the dance. HH was so nervous that he burned a hole in my skirt with his cigarette. To follow up on that act, he promptly spilled his soda on the dress. In later years, we did a fair amount of dancing - but only when he was fortified with libation! (One exception HH made: He would dance with our daughters in our living room during their school days.) That dress found its final assignment as a dress (repaired, of course) worn by the daughter of our babysitter after we moved to Derby KS.

ADDITION of 11/8/2021 - A real seamstress

In her younger years, HH's sister Helen intended to become a fashion designer. She had the talents for it; but, life intervened. She became a professional chef and business owner instead of a fashion designer. At any rate, below are two of the ball gowns that Helen designed, made, and wore when she was 18 and 19.

The week in review

Wind - This has been a week of rain & blow - not to the extent that others have had, but enough for us. We received nearly three inches of rain driven by winds from 10-60+ miles/hour. The only damage done was that trash from our across-the-street neighbor's overturned trash bin blew all over our yard, some of it ending up against the house (by the back porch), some up against the dense parts of our woods, and some that I caught early enough to stop it in our front yard; sticks & limbs were taken off of our tree and strewn about the back yard and the edge of our woods, and the aforementioned neighbor's trees (along with those of other neighbors across the street from us) were forced to give up their leaves to the wind, being deposited in our front yard and curb guttering.

The photo, below shows the leaves in the front yard. There aren't as many leaves as we've had deposited most years; but I really can't rake them for fear of uprooting the newly sprouted grass. Note the blue bin at the top, center of the photo. It is the trash bin that had previously been deprived of its trash. Today was recycle & trash pickup day for our street.

The bin is frequently overturned by wind; but, the neighbor rarely catches it since he cannot see it from inside his house. I gathered up the trash (mostly, large plastic bags from lawn dirt, but also some trimmings from his shrubbery), placed it into the bin (leaving the bin parallel to the ground), closed the bin, turned the bin around 180 degrees about the vertical , and placed it snuggly up against the side of the garage to keep the wind from causing more mischief.

Garage Door - Early in the week, as the wind and rain were just getting started, Jeff came by to install our new overhead garage door for Hunky Husband's car's bay. I don't recall whether I had mentioned HH's misfortune of opening the wrong door, one day, then backing into his bay's door. Only his lightning-fast reaction and fine coordination allowed him to stop his car before it became a full-blown "thing".

I seem to have failed to take a photo of the damaged door; but, the casual observer might not even have noticed the slight widening of the space between sections, center span of the door. Even so, the door was damaged beyond repair (doesn't take that much damage). The door allowed normal operation; so, we didn't even need to make a temporary repair. 

The new door is, supposedly, a slightly different design from our old door(s); but, tell me if you can see much difference between the new door (on the right) and my car bay's old door (in the center), by looking at the photo below. A coat of paint and it should fit in nicely. (We had told the sales person who came by on 9/2/2021 that we would live with the new door for a while before deciding if we needed to replace the remaining two doors to match it. I'm thinking "no".)

HH's Ears - Today, HH had his every-three-months checkup with the audiologist. All that was required was for her to clean impacted wax from his "better" ear and turn the gain down on both hearing aids. I would have guessed that the gain would need to be turned down by about 10 dB, which I did not share with Dr Combs; but, she turned them down only 2 dB. He can try them for three months to see if they need turning down more. 

New Grass - I took some photos to show the green fuzz that we now have in most of the previously bare spots. They may be compared to photos in The seeds are sown, that were taken just before and just after planting.

There are still a couple of noticeably bare spots that are next to the fence beyond the little tree. It shows that we're not getting full coverage with our sprinkler heads. That's not surprising since the sprinkler head is a few feet from the fence (there was a planting bed full of trees and shrubs between it and the fence when the sprinkler head was installed) and is adjusted to clear the fence. The photo, below, of the largest bare spot that we had after the invasion of the Army Worms also shows a bare strip toward the camera from the bluebird house. Again, water wasn't getting there. Again, not surprising since all of that patch is beyond the real lawn and in the drainage easement.

Irrigation System - We had some ill luck and then a stroke of good luck. I had asked the lawn service people to service our irrigation system for the winter, this week - pushed forward from our original schedule (of having it done last week) by the pushing forward also of the planting date. (It rained on the originally scheduled date, which I had considered late; but, what can one do when they are hurting for employees?) When I hadn't heard from the lawn service by Wednesday, I called them. Oops! That change in their schedule had not been accomplished. They couldn't get us this week - perhaps next week, they hoped.

This is where the good luck came in. Yesterday, as I was striking out on my morning walk, I noticed that a neighbor who lives a couple of blocks from us was having his irrigation system winterized. I waited for the lawn service guys (not the same company as our lawn service) and the home owner to return from the back yard and asked if they would have time to do our system. (I did ask a "by your leave" of my neighbor, of course.) Fortunately, the answer was "Yes".

I turned around, came home, and unpacked the backflow prevention valve assembly. They arrived as  promised and perhaps 20 minutes later had our system ready for the 24-26 degree (F) weather that we are expecting early next week. Below are photos of the unpacked valve assembly of the eight bags of mulch that I had packed around it. (No photo of the sheets of heavy plastic, old bed sheet, old drapery, and wastepaper basket that had been in the mix of insulation.)

More publicity for sister-in-law

Several weeks ago, in She has done it again!, I announced publication of Hunky Husband's sister Helen's second book on cooking. Later, The St Louis Post-Dispatch writer Daniel Neman interviewed Helen. An excerpt from Neman's resulting newspaper article appears below.

Daniel Neman: Tony's pastry chef does it her way in new cook(ie)book

Daniel Neman, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Oct 18, 2021

Published in Variety Menu

 

To the baking world, it’s an unthinkable suggestion bordering on blasphemy: When making certain desserts, it’s just fine to use imitation vanilla extract.

So says Helen S. Fletcher, the author of “Craving Cookies: The Quintessential American Cookie Book.” It may be the best cookie cookbook you will ever see.

Fletcher is the pastry chef at Tony’s, one of the highest-rated fine-dining establishments in St. Louis. For more than 20 years, she owned Truffes in University City, a bakery that catered to restaurants, hotels and caterers, and also did a lot of work with weddings. So she knows about baking, even when it comes to imitation vanilla.

“At work, at Tony’s… I use vanilla that costs $400 a gallon,” she said, demonstrating in one short sentence the difference between professional bakers and hobbyists.

Even small bottles of what she considers the best tasting, most aromatic vanilla, Tahitian vanilla, can cost $35. And she doesn’t want to price anyone out of the joy of baking.

“My whole mantra is: I want people to bake. I want people to enjoy baking. I want people who have never baked to bake,” she said.

And that means using imitation vanilla when the vanilla flavor doesn’t stand on its own, such as in recipes that also use a lot of spice or chocolate. She usually uses professional imitation vanilla herself, but she also recommends McCormick’s.

Fletcher, 81, has had no formal training as a baker. So she has developed her own way of doing things, tips and tricks and hacks that work wonders but that other bakers don’t use.

“Sometimes, when you are trained, you get stuck on the way you are taught or the way the book taught you. Well, I wasn’t trained and I didn’t have the book,” she said.

Her new cookbook, which is self-published, has tricks for baking the way she bakes.

Answer to the small puzzle

The image in A small puzzle was a part of a page scanned from Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, Volume 4; F.E. Compton & Company, Chicago IL, Printed in 1923. Below is a different cropping of that scan, providing the answer. (The article from which it comes is about inventions.)

Below is a scan (both sides) of the receipt given my grandfather when he bought the set of encyclopedias.

As children, my brothers and I browsed through Grandmother's encyclopedias, frequently. For the past 20+ years, they have been at my fingertips when seated in my reading chair. After all, much of what I look up has not changed since 1923. BTW: The purchase of the encyclopedias predated electrification of their house by about 10 years. Grandfather died in 1933 and I believe that Dad wired that house (and the wash house) shortly thereafter.