Looking Like a Gnarly Mess

Posted on 16/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

It is not even noon yet, and I am fighting off sleep. Most likely, it is because I have high blood sugar from eating too large a breakfast. Instead of falling into the urge to sleep, I am writing to keep my brain neurons firing. This morning, I awoke at 6:00 a.m. and returned to bed without falling back into a sound sleep. I finally got out of bed at 8:00 and dressed for my walk. The temperature this morning was 34 degrees, and the walk was brisk. I passed a section of shaded grass that was covered in frost. Although there was some light frost it was not what we call a killing frost. Killing frost occurs when the temp drops to 28-30 degrees. Many flowers we plant for color are tropical and will not survive that temperature. The plant stems freeze through and kill any chance of the plant recovering. Nevertheless this morning was a warning that winter is definitely on its way.

The trees on my street are finally turning colors but holding their leaves. In another two weeks, most trees and flowering shrubs will be void of foliage. There is one tree, however, which holds its leaves until mid to late November. The Bradford pear will be loaded with deep green leaves and then one day you awaken to a perfect circle of yellow leaves on the ground under a bare tree. This past summer, my pear tree suffered some serious damage when a violent gust of wind broke off two four inch branches and dropped them onto the patio. The shape of the tree is now seriously lopsided. One side is in the shade of a few mighty poplars growing to the west and there is no growth on that side of the pear leaving it flat. The opposite side has been pruned by the wind leaving ugly jagged spikes of wood jutting out of the trunk. My decision is to remove the tree and let the light back into the garden. At the same time, I’ll have an apple tree removed from the front of the house. It has outlived its prettiness. The past two springs it has not had a colorful bloom of pink flowers and the leaves were sparse all summer. The trunk and branches are rough leaving it looking like a gnarly mess of twigs suspended in mid air. The tree was planted too close to the house so I am constantly pruning branches away from the roofing shingles. This pruning has also forced the tree to form into an awkward unsightly shape. I rather like the red-pink-lavender flames coming off burning apple logs.

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Random Rant

Posted on 28/04/2024 by Grumpa Joe

It is hard to believe that the month of April is almost over. The days seem to be flying past, and it is like looking out a high-speed train window and watching the scenery blur past. Our weather here in the Midwest is finally becoming civilized. Yesterday, I actually had to turn on the air conditioner when it became an uncomfortable 79 degrees in the house. Yikes, what a creature of comfort I have become. Not to mention, what a blob of mushy muscleless fat has overtaken any muscle I had left. I should go into a discussion of weight loss here, but the subject bores me. Not only that, but thinking about weight loss only gives me a guilt trip.

Version 1.0.0

Right now, there is a fabulous race going on in nature. Who will win? The weeds or the flowers? A week ago, a friend offered me a contact who is willing to pull weeds for cash. I held up my hand saying that it was still too early to be pulling weeds. Here I am five days later ready to call him to go to work. I knew this would happen when I designed my garden which I labeled the Monet Vision. A very complicated densely planted annual garden takes a lot of maintenance. At that time, I still had the energy and flexibility to bend, kneel, and yank weeds. Today, it is a much different story. What amazes me is how quickly the body has adapted to sitting, and how quickly the muscles forget their duty. When I do finally get on my knees to do something, like pick up something that has fallen out of hand, It takes a front end loader to get me back up again. I am finally beginning to understand what my father always told us, “Don’t get old.” Mentally, I’m still twenty-five, but physically I may be around 110.

As a preteen, I admired old guys like my Gramps and his buddies. They were so cool. They sat under the shade of the giant willow tree while smoking, sippng a beer, and trying to outdo themselves with tales from the ‘Old Country.’ Now, I am the old guy, but I don’t smoke, and I don’t drink beer, and my old country is this country. Even worse, my grandkids are too far away from me to be telling them tall tales. At least I have the memories. I have however recorded many of my memories in a series of books under the title of Jun-e-or. The mistake I made was assuming that these kids would like to read. In today’s world if it isn’t a video they don’t seem to be interested. I’d love to make them into videos, but there isn’t enough time in a day to learn how to do that kind of stuff. I just hope they will find the time to read these stories to their grand children. I learned how to make videos’ back in 1968. Back then they were called movies. Taking super-eight movies was my passion and I even joined a movie club to help me learn how to make interesting films. I know what it takes to make films with interest. I converted some of my films to video and posted them on my Youtube channel. Search for Joseph Rohaly on youtube to find these gems. (see list below)

My biography won’t interest anyone, not even me. That is one reason I keep doing new things and learning new skills: in the hope that one day I’ll strike oil and offer the world something of value. With my luck, by the time I strike oil, the world will have been forced to electrify, and oil will be a dirty, slippery substance that no one will know what to do with.

I look forward to global warming. All my life, I have longed to live in a warmer climate without snow, ice, and blustery cold wind. According to sleepy Joe Biden, global warming is upon us, and I may be too late to enjoy it. The reality of that happening within this century is remote at best. Maybe if Earth experiences a hundred or more volcanic eruptions within a year, the temperature will rise. Except, there will be a period of global cooling after the eruptions. Earth will warm up. again, but no one will be around to know it is warmer because we will have all starved or froze to death during the cooling period.

Well, I have succeeded in ending this fantasy with the same lack of excitement as I had at the beginning, and It’s time to change chairs and find something more interesting to do.

A list of GrumpaJoes videos on youtube

  1. Fall Campfire
  2. 2020-Monet Vision Retired
  3. One MIle HIgh
  4. The Fifth of Forty-two
  5. 2013 Memorial Day Tribute
  6. 120506 Charles and Anne’s Anniversary Waltz
  7. Nation of Laws
  8. Burning Gas San Antonio Riverwalk
  9. 1012 Monet Vision, A View From the Kitchen Window
  10. 111128-One Mile HIgh Part A
  11. Snow Palooza
  12. Under surveillance

Filed under: Aging, Biography, Garden, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

Nature’s Trick or Treat

Posted on 01/11/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Mother Nature has the Halloween mantra backward: It is Trick or Treat, not Treat or Trick. Last week the weather in Illinois was perfect. Temperatures ranged between 70 to 80 degrees F., at a time when they should have been in the fifties. Today, we have a more normal day for the end of October, it is 31 degrees and snowing. Most likely this may put a damper on kids trick or treating, but I am prepared.

Lovely’s girlfriend just stopped by to give her a couple of cabbages. I am stunned by these things. Two of them filled and strained a shopping bag. They are larger than basketballs. I have heard of giant cabbages grown in Alaska but never in Wisconsin, where these came from. In Alaska, the daylight during summer never quits, and the growth never stops. The farm must have them on steroids. I just ran a tape measure around one, and it measures 32 inches.

I’m hoping Lovely doesn’t get the idea of making stuffed cabbage rolls from them; they will be the size of a chicken. That is the treat we got from her farmer friend on Halloween Day 2023.

This post has been delayed by one day. Today is All Saints Day, not Halloween. The snow and cold definitely put a damper on the number of kids who were tough enough to come out and beg for candy. I counted 41 kids who came by between 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.

The 24 hour delay in the posting has something to do with running out of data on my phone at the end of the month. Yesterday, I couldn’t send a photo, but this morning they were here.

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EEEEK a Spy

Posted on 28/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Yesterday, I wrote about my love for spy novels and stories about spy agencies. Today, my house has been infiltrated by a spy. Fortunately, I tracked him/her down and deported him/her to another environment. That is the second infiltration in the past two weeks. The first is a sadder story than the second. Yesterday, my home was overwhelmed by a terrible odor which I immediately sensed was something dead. Whenever I am infiltrated by a mouse, and he finds all the yummy poisonous food I put out for him, he eventually dies, and my nose leads me right to his corpse. Yesterday, the odor was much the same, but much stronger so much so that it permeated the upper living area. Currently, there are four of us living here, two women and two men. Guess who wouldn’t sit still until the odor was eliminated? Yes, the two women were very nervous, agitated, pacing, and scared. Not to worry, the two men immediately knew where the stink emanated from. A week and a half ago, my step-grandson came to me with this message, “Grandpa, there is a baby rabbit stuck in the window well downstairs; what should I do?” The window well is four feet deep, and covered by a sheet of plywood; how in the devil did he get in there, I asked myself. I gave him a couple of options: 1. Open the window well window and place a box over the opening. Then, nudge him into the box, and let him loose in the wetlands behind the house. 2. Do nothing; he will die in place, and we will take care of his bones in the springtime. He chose the latter. The rabbit died, leaving an odor strong enough to enter the house through a window. I never thought that would happen, I was thinking mouse stink, not this rabbit stink. I truly thought the stink would stay outside.

Upon examination of the cover over the offending window well, it was moved out of place. Then I remembered that I tried to remove the rotting cover during the warm months to replace it. The board got jammed between the window above and the metal well casing, and I stopped thinking I’d get back to it later. With the board partially removed, it left an opening into the well. Peter Rabbit found the opening and fell into the hole, never to find his way out until the step-grandson fished him out with a long handle hoe and disposed of the remains by flinging them into the wetland.

Getting back to the second spy that did infiltrate is a mystery I have yet to solve, and it is now eighteen years old. This is the third time in eighteen years that a garter snake spy has found a way past the house’s defenses to enter and violate our personal space. This time, the spy was a mere baby, only twelve inches long and smaller than a pencil in diameter, but he scared the hell out of the ladies. I swept him into a box and walked him back to the wetland. The outside temperature today is a cool 48F/11/C. I figure that by the time he figures out how to escape he will be cold enough to slow down to snuggle up under a log for the winter.

In the meantime, I continue to search for the point of entry. There is one possibility that I believe to be the one. There is a drain tile that circumnavigates the house’s foundation, and it terminates into a sump. The purpose is to remove rainwater from entering the basement by catching it in the drain tile and pumping it into the wetland. During dry spells, the soil around the foundation shrinks, allowing skinny critters to find a way into the tile and basement. Another way is for the skinny critters to fall into a window well. They are piped to drain into the tiles. A third way is that we leave a door open, and the skinny thing just slithers into the house.

My final solution to the skinny slithering things getting in is statistical. I have lived in this house for eighteen years and have had three slim, slithering creatures visit my basement. That is one intrusion every six years, so the likelihood of another sneaky creature intrusion will not happen until 2029, and I’ll be too old to deal with it.

Filed under: Biography, Garden, Pond | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Libre Released

Posted on 12/08/2023 by Grumpa Joe

This week I had the distinct honor to set my American Bald Eagle free to the world. After laboring for seven months cutting shaping, fitting, sanding, finishing, and framing I finally completed an intarsia project that I call Libre. In Spanish that means free. Since the Bald Eagle is the national bird of the United States of America, and freedom is the name of the game I found Libre a fitting title for this piece.

The work is based on a calendar photograph in the Heritage Foundation yearly calendar for 2023. It struck me when I saw it and immediately stopped, and set aside the eagle I was then working on in favor of this one. Libre is more animated than the work I abandoned which was a soaring bird at level flight. Libre is an action bird. One can vision him as in the act of landing, trying to gain altitude, or getting ready to pounce on prey.

As I cut the pieces and began to see the bird come to fruition, I was disappointed by the colors of the wood I selected. I felt they were not as accurate as I would like them to be. It wasn’t until I began to apply the finish that the true colors of the wood and the direction of the wood grains popped into view. Another disappointment came when I lifted the weights off the final feathers that I glued on. One of them was out of place by a millimeter. I lost sleep over that defect while mentally developing fixes to cure the problem. I decided to wait, and to hang the piece “as is” before attempting to disassemble the work to make a correction. Thank God I did that because the defect is barely perceptible from a few feet and only another intarsia artist would find it from up close. Since I’m the only intarsia artist I know I think I am safe to leave Libre alone to remain “free”.

Filed under: Arts, Biography, Birds, Government | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

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