Garden Chronicles Part II

After spending a week of reworking and preparing the lake house we returned to our house in Kingwood. As we drove up we both looked at each other and said…”wow how sad looking!”

Needless to say we’ve been concentrating on the lake house for so long we weren’t paying attention to how drab the plantings looked and how badly the house needed pressure washing.  Living in south Texas mold, mildew and moss can quickly creep into every corner of the yard and house.

Over the winter we hadn’t notice the needs, but when the azaleas are in bloom and the sun highlights the roof valleys full of leaves and the bed boarder are falling into the yard and a new years fresh crop of weeds….we sprang into action!

Antonio, our yard man of many years, came over and the master gardener laid out her plans.

The following morning a crew showed up and began tackling her list of renovations, pressure wash; redo the bed borders, weed, mulch, mow, edge and clean up….while she worked on repotting all the hanging baskets and plantings in the flower beds.
 

By noon of the second day they had finished…Bobbie still had a  day of potting and planting, however, by Thursday evening all was complete and we were ready for Easter….looking our finest for sure with freshly cleaned house, the aroma of fresh mulch and colorful hanging baskets adorning the patio and porch.

Now both houses look decent (won’t get complaints from the neighbors or the HOA!).

Easter was a glorious day.

Now we are ready to enjoy all the work and go back to fishing…the crappie are said to be beginning their spring run?

Garden Chronicles Part I

Four years ago we started our garden at the lake house. We started with tentative steps, more of a conceptual idea, where we would get the best sun and drainage…so we tilled.

How did that work out?

Well…first we discovered we had tilled over an existing drainage tile!  We did not till up the pipe and had sufficient soil to keep going.

Outlining the freshly tilled soil with garden timbers we began adding garden grade (compost) to enrich the soil…a never ending process I have found (enrich and re-enrich with compost…some we make ourselves).

The first summers crop was bountiful…more than we could eat and share with the neighbors…but my  “master gardener” was not happy…not enough room to plant all the different possibilities…so we dug up more yard, more landscape timber and more “enriched soil”!

Texas summers are hot and often dry, so keeping this garden watered was always and issue, as was keeping the grass watered…so we added a sprinkler system fed off the lake…free water (well not exactly).

The garden is now approaching the size of a small truck farm (just kidding!) with an increasing diversity of vegetables and herbs. Add  to this pots and hanging baskets and you have a wonderful pallet of vegetables and flowers. Oh yes and fruit trees too, peach, lemon and fig.

The master gardener tired of bending a stooping and asked for raised beds…”how high” I asked. Three feet would be fine. Quickly calculating I saw a “LARGE” investment in treated lumber and fill…can’t just  use dirt…has to be a “formulated” garden mix…well of course…silly me! So I designed a slightly raised bed with my fancy CAD program from Google and submitted for her approval.

The new raised bed were filled and planted…now we wait.
There is an old Texas saying that you shouldn't plant a garden before Easter because of a late freeze and sure enought one is forcast for later this week...will we survive?

Stay tuned for more.

Early morning flight

Thunder, wind and rain passed across the lake in the early hours of the morning. Snuggled in our bed under the covers and the dogs nestled close by I slept with no concern that our “flying deck umbrella” would chose to take wing again.

What is he talking about?

For some reason our back decks umbrella is prone to take flight when the winds are just right.  Swirling around the house during a storms, it will spin the umbrella and like a helicopter, lift off and fly over the roof before landing in the front yard.

Not early this morning as I paid attention to the weather forecast last night for “chances” of rain overnight and stowed and lashed the umbrella down for the night.

Like an early video of Igor Sikorsky’s  attempts at helicopter flight, the umbrella will begin to lift up and down, spin slowly, trying to decide at which point it will take off…and like the early helicopter flights not really sure where it would go!

But not today.

Uncle Mike

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up I am reminded of my Uncle Mike…an Irishman of good standing.

Bernard Michael Shea was my mother’s brother.  “Uncle Mike” drifted in and out of your lives as I grew up. It was always an exciting time when he arrived as he brought with him smiles and laughter, a wealth of stories, friends and good humor. His stories were what I always waited for. They were always told with great flourish, I believe he may have shared a “nip” or two with my father that added embellishment to the story being told, but after all he was a true Irishman and had no doubt kissed the Blarney Stone.

Serving in WWII and a pilot in the Korean War he had a variety of flying jobs before hiring on with American Airlines. These were filled with experiences that made excellent material for some of his magical stories.

Here are two examples:

One, while flying in Korea, involved flying a very nervous General. On a flight from Korea to Japan, with an extended crew, the pilots, one by one, went back to use the head (bathroom). The General, taking count, soon deduced that no one was still in the cockpit. Stopping the last pilot (Uncle Mike) he, with panic in his voice, said “whose flying the airplane…seems the crews are all back here?” Without hesitation, and a twinkle in his eyes, Uncle Mike assured him the autopilot was flying, “and doing a dam fine job of it too”. There was actually one pilot still at the controls. Needless to say the General was not impressed and ordered the pilots back up front where they belonged. I’ve often wondered what story the General told about that flight?

Another I also recall told of flying a load of chickens out of a hot and dusty Mexican airport nestled deep in a valley. The surrounding mountains and the overweight load of chickens prevented the tired old DC-3’s engines from producing enough power to climb out of the valley.  Uncle Mike speculated that if the co-pilot would run up and down the aisle and get all the chickens flying it might lighten the load enough to fly over the mountains. Fact or fiction…many have debated this improbable scenario.

As a young boy I was mesmerized by these stories. I could almost hear the roar of the radial engines, smell the fuel and oil and maybe even the chickens. I believed many of them possible, everything is possible, “right?”, until I got into aviation (inspired to do so by Uncle Mike) and questioned a few. I may have even tried a few of them on unsuspecting young co-pilots.

Uncle Mike, pilot, sailor and raconteur went on to a great career with American, where I am sure he regaled many with his stories…though gone now will never be forgotten:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

So on St. Patrick’s day I’ll be lifting a pint and be wishing an Irish blessing for Uncle Mike.

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

 

“Adh mor ort” … Good luck to you!"

Sunrise over the cove

Occasionally you wake up to truly beautiful sunrise. Yesterday’s sunrise was one of those! As I walked out on the back deck, coffee in hand, I was treated to a red and purple horizon, the reflections mirrored off the cove waters and through the boat houses. The chilled morning air heightened the effect, along with my steaming cup of coffee it was truly a pleasure…no a blessing to behold.

Empty Halls

Once on one of my photo forums was posted a series of haunting photos of a decades old crumbling medical facility. Much of the equipment was still there, dust covered and wasting away.

Picture if you will that old hospital waiting to be demolished.

Footsteps echo of days gone by, of lives saved and lost that reverberate off the walls. Once bustling with doctors and nurses, scurrying around ministering to the sick, now are dark, cold and foreboding.

As the saying goes; “if the walls could talk”, certainly applies. Once shinny floors are now covered with dust, foot prints showing the few who frequent these halls forgot by time. The glare of florescent lights, casting their reflective glare off the walls, and various medical carts are gone, replaced by a few emergency lights, casting a foreboding shaft of light down these long empty halls.

All the emptiness plays on the mind, conjuring images and echoes from another time. Dimly lit and eerily quiet they sit, waiting, waiting on a future that will never come.

Standing quietly you can almost hear the voices and see the wispy vaporous shadows of the past. The noises heard from the old building sound like groans, a moaning if you will, of a glory lost and resistance to an inevitable future. 

  

Like our bodies, aging and worn, the building too knows it’s time is limited, soon to be cast aside and replaced by a newer building, one that has yet to create it’s memories and become a part of history.

Empty halls, pierced with shafts of light and reverberating echoes are all that remain.

 

A Day on the Lake

We were told by our puppy trainer to expos our dogs to at least one new experience weekly (yes you can introduce puppies to the element of behavioral training, and introduce we did) and that we had no problem with as we traveled, and back and forth to our lake house.  All we have to do is jingle the car keys and they are ready to go.

Our town home has a small back yard that backs on miles of “green belts”. When in town we walk these daily, working mainly on “stop”, “stay” and “go” these for approaching street crossings.

The lake house is a totally different story. Here they have the run (under our supervision) of three yards and a community of rolling hills and roads, ponds, creeks and woods…a “doggy heaven”.

One particular favorite of theirs is a small beach. Most of the homes have bulkheads along the water, however, just past or neighbor is an undeveloped lot with a small beach. This they check out daily on their “routes”…it’s amazing to follow them around and note their patterns. Digging, barking at the ducks, or wading in the water they make this a daily stop.

These are two very fit dogs…they “walk me” two miles daily, they romp and play for most of the day. This romping through the garden beds, rolling in the grass and dips in the lake make for some really dirty dogs! So a daily “hosing down” and brushing is required.

Then their all pretty again…until they go out again and the cycle begins again.

A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

An often used line for a good adventure story goes…”It was a dark and stormy night!” And so does this story about such a night.

After too many years I was recently reunited with a pilot that shared that “dark and stormy night” forty eight years ago. Our bond was built around that harrowing night in Viet Nam.

Turning back the pages of time our story begins in the late afternoon hours when our entire helicopter company was called out to support an emergency situation, the details of which have escaped me. The flight, some twenty plus helicopters, “slicks” (transports) and their “guns” (armed support) escort launched into gathering storm clouds and headed north. 
 

It quickly became apparent that we were headed directly into a wall of thunderstorms!

I will have to stop the story here for a little background information. First, few helicopter pilots at that time were instrument rated (able to fly on instruments only in bad weather). Second our helicopters were not really equipped to fly “instruments”.

Fortunately CWO Driggers, our company training pilot, diligently worked on preparing his young pilots, many of us in our late teens or early twenties, for “inadvertent flight into IMC” (Instrument Meteorological Conditions). This training was conducted “under the hood” or a shield fitted over our helmets that only allowed a view of our “instruments”.

Ok now the stage has been set. On this evening, as we approached the line of thunderstorms we blindly followed our leader into the storm. Almost instantly the “dark and stormy night” wrapped around us and hurled us into its churning cauldron of heavy rain, buffeting winds and intense lightening. What we thought we were doing has puzzled me for all these years. However, we took the training Mr. Driggers had given us a plowed ahead.

The radio was a cacophony of urgent messages from the other helicopter as they realized their predicament and elected to divert to a number of different alternates. Darkness rapidly enveloped the entire flight. Our door gunner and crew chief gunner silently closed the doors and prepared for the worst and were surely praying the two young pilots up front knew what they were doing.

The helicopter pitched and rolled as we fought the weather and an even worse enemy, vertigo. With the interior lights reflecting off the windscreen and the outside flashes of lightening we quickly became disorientated and wracked by vertigo. Vertigo is like being sea sick, a stomach churning off balance situation. Fortunately I had a bout of vertigo on one of Mr. Driggers training flights and remembered him quietly saying….”believe your instruments and not your brain trying to tell you what’s up and down”. Each of us were overcome as we flew onward. Each spelling the other until caught up in their vertigo.

How much time went by I have no idea…we just dialed up the nearest Non-Directional Beacon (NDB) radio beacon and plunged onward until we passed over the beacon then made successive turns back to the beacon and started descending until we broke out over the airfield. Did we call for permission? I don’t remember…I do remember the tower telling us to stay where we had landed until the monsoonal rains let up enough for further instructions…this we did!

Thanks to our training from Mr. Driggers, our own practice when returning from flights and confidence in each other we survived. Others were not so fortunate on that “dark and stormy night”.

Wow!

It's been a long time since I last posted....seems I've been posting all my stories over on Facebook.

Well here is what I am going to try...keep posting the "short" version on FB and a longer version with pictures over here.

I am working on one now....so stand by.