Getting ready for winter
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Thanks to all the folks who came to the Senior Centre Christmas concert Friday night. I wonder if the songs we sang are re-echoing in your heads? They are in mine, (Gloria!) oops, there goes one now!
We surprised ourselves, getting through the program with very few noticeable (Angels We Have Heard On High... sorry) goofs. I think I've figured out how we did it. At practice when something catches the director's ear, or doesn't catch it as the case may be, she thumps the podium and makes us go back and sing it over, and over and over until we've got it. In the actual performance she can't do that. We have to get on track as the song drags us along. A good ending, everyone in harmony, takes attention from rough spots.
(When I'm worried and I can't sleep) will you cut that out?
As winter slouches toward us there are chores to be done, leaves to rake, storm shields put on the gazebo, lawn furniture to lug into the gazebo, outdoor water system to be drained. When the family was young and money was tight I farmed much of our lot in Straffordville. Every fall I gathered leaves from my own maples and anyone else's within reach and trenched them into the earth. Our soil is the sand of an ancient lake. It needs all the help it can get to produce topsoil. The leaves absorbed the rainfall or it would percolate down to the underground lake we live on.
I don't rake leaves any more. Our kids did it for years, but they have responsibilities of their own now. Got a strapping young man who does that for me.
When temperatures nose-dived two or three weeks ago I drained hoses and stored them. Usually clean out the fishpond when I do that but like raking, (Angels We Have Heard On High!) will you stop that?), like raking, I have a young man who does that for me, too. Wouldn't bother, but the tannin of leaves that have sunk in the water is lethal for any fish in there.
The windshields for the gazebo are made of heavy plastic film. They get slashed by various wind-driven objects. I tried the Red Green system to heal them, but duct tape dissolves in the weather. I found that drywall tuck tape sticks like magic and is resistant to most attackers, mechanical or chemical. The red colour adds a festive look to the building.
We have a Shelterlogic tent to keep the van from being buried in (Have a holly jolly Christmas) in snow. It keeps the windshield wiper well from filling with ice that strips the splines off the posts if you activate them without thawing. Saves frozen fingers, too. Whoever invented that system never lived in snow country, or if so they had a sadistic streak.
I take the tent off the metal frame over the hot season in hopes it will last longer, and it makes access to the van easy. You walk through the walls, so to speak.
Last winter the winds scuffed the end curtains on the crushed stone until the hems were cut open. I have a length of PCV pipe through the hems to make it easier to roll the curtains up to get the van out. All summer I lay awake, worried that I must get those repaired (just count your blessings instead of sheep!). I'm a great procrastinator. It was time to put the canopy on and still no repairs done.
Hey, I thought, duct tape won't work for this, but tuck tape might. I sealed the south end curtain with that. It's the end we enter and exit by. I put a wooden lath in the north end, which was in worse condition, and stapled the plastic to outside and inside. Seems less likely to cut the material than thread would be, and the wood will swash back and forth across the gravel in the gales instead of the plastic.
Many thanks for the standing ovation! Have yourself a merry little Christmas!