23 Monday Mar 2015
Posted in Family, Living, Passages, Relationships, Seasons, Time, Totem Hall, Vacation
Tags
beach, boarding school, children, classes, college, empty nesters, life, savannah college of art and design, spring break, tides, woodberry forest school
that last sunset…
Perhaps, I should say, spring sprunged. My youngest returns back to his boarding school later today, and in Savannah my oldest returns back to the college grind today, which all means that today at Totem Hall we return to life as empty nesters today, not a bad life mind you, but a life nevertheless…
12 Tuesday Aug 2014
Posted in Family, Living, Passages, Relationships, Time, Totem Hall
Tags
dodge, lexus, memory, moms, moves, moving, nissan, packing, pathfinder, poodles, ram 2500, roommates, rx400h, scad, sons, u-haul
Our oldest made his return to college Saturday. This was not our first fond farewell, having over the years sent him off to summer camps, boarding school, and the first year of college, but somehow yesterday was different, he was moving into his own home, well, own home with four other roommates.
folding sheets for the first and last time…
boxed up and ready to go…
The whole process was most entertaining and it brought back a flood of memories.
i’ll just stuff this in…
it doesn’t take me long to pack…
To begin with, all our carefully thought out plans fell by the wayside. The big Dodge 2500 is still in the shop. She was going to be the workhorse of the move. So, you say, no problem, I am sure you have a Plan B. Well good old Plan B did not work out either. Since my son’s Pathfinder did not have wiring for the trailer lights, there was no U-Haul for us, not rentable. Surely, we can use one of the open-air trailers here at Totem Hall, right? Ooh, too bad, the Lexus, choice three, with tow package and harness, is no good, faulty wiring.
The end result: ah, stuff it in the back of the Nissan.
packed in the back…
packed on the side…
packed on the other side…
and packed in the front…
He is definitely my son.
How crazy time is, really. We move through it, try our best to hold on to it, swimming upstream, you know.
bye moms, bye poodle…
Was it just the other day that I was making my own moves, possessions stuffed into a trash bag, or two? Or how about renting the first moving truck, enlisting a couple of friends with offers of beer and lunch, forgetting to tie down everything in back.
bye totem hall…
Then came children, just the births alone seem long ago, though, in the grandness of time, not too far away, remembered, just not able to be captured again, the first words, the first walk, off to school, off to university.
bye son, fare thee well…
Life is such a funny game…
06 Wednesday Aug 2014
Posted in Family, Living, Passages, Relationships, Sporting Life, Time
Tags
archery, avon old farms school, bait fish, boarding school, fishing, golf, hiking, hunting, lacrosse, landlord, quail, roommates, savannah college of art and design, tadpoles, woodberry forest school
Do you ever think that life shows you, gives you, just what need, when you need it, as you need it?
stuff of boys, stuff of dreams…
Case in point, entering every day into the world of gentleman farming at Totem Hall, I pass a little corner in my home. Until yesterday, I never paid it any mind. It was just stuff. But for some reason, for some reason, yesterday was different; I sat down and, as if for the first time, I saw the stuff of dreams, stuff of boys…
gotcha…
Blessed, our family has always lived surrounded by nature. Nature has all sorts of bugs, butterflies, tadpoles, and baitfish that need catching by young boys.
boys and bows and arrows…
My two sons and I like to hunt and fish. After summer camp one year, one of the little rascals, maybe both got the idea of bow hunting and fishing. So we bought an archery set. Now the only thing left is the bow, the arrows are long gone.
walking and talking…
I take long walks on our land. Because of the possibility of running across a rattlesnake or water moccasin, just about all the time I’ll carry a stick with me. For me, it’s better than a machete, which is too close quarter.
get up and fly, dagnabbit…
My part of the world has quail. Sometimes even if your dog sets and holds, the bird might be a bit reluctant to get up and fly. The boys use this strap to beat the bushes in hopes of getting the bird to move along.
spring sports…
Both the lacrosse stick and baseball bat are relics of the past. My oldest son earned a varsity letter playing lacrosse at Avon Old Farms School. My youngest tried baseball when he was much younger, maybe not even ten, in the end deciding the sport was too slow for him.
I did not even talk about golf, or tennis, or squash, whose tools of the trade you can see in several of the pictures. And there is no way I can possibly describe how much fun I had teaching and then getting bested by my two, just a great way for me to grow up and stay young at the same time.
all gone now…
Okay, I staged this scene, but still, why not a bit of poetical license, after all we are all adults here. The oldest is off to college in Savannah by the end of the weekend, moving into a home with four other roommates. God help the poor landlord. Then our youngest son leaves for Virginia and the start of his boarding school career next week.
Time moves along downstream like a river, always present, always changing, always there, never there…
10 Thursday Jul 2014
Tags
ella fitzgerald, heir, kingdom, louis armstrong, parenting, primogeniture, spare, summer break, teenagers, the tams
Gosh, can you even remember no school, no worries, no problem?
Or, as the fabulous Miss Ella and Mister Louis would put it, “summertime, and the livin’ is easy”.
the heir to the throne…
the spare to the throne…
the heir and the spare…
The good news is I know where they are.
The bad news is I have no idea what they did.
How does that song go? Oh yes, “be young, be foolish, be happy”.
15 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted in Gentleman Farming, Passages, Relationships
Tags
adjustment bar, alternator, broken heart, farm chores, field mow, john deere, kubota, repair work, stump jumper, warranty, woods mow, zero-turn mower
Well, there is an explanation, broken heart, and broken tractor, and, so, I have been running late, and running behind.
not good…
The broken tractor is easier to explain than the broken heart. Underneath my rotary mower, manufactured by Taylor Pittsburgh, in the center part, is a contraption known as a stump jumper. The stump jumper is dish shaped so the mower will slide up and over large stumps and rocks. Bisecting the stump jumper is a brace, bolted to which are two blades that do the cutting. It is that brace which failed and put a damper on my spring fieldwork.
really not good…
Of course, that is not the only equipment failure. There is an adjustment bar for the mower wheel simply vanished somewhere in my back forty, a victim of my negligence in checking for fastness. At least that job did not require a trip to the welder, just a wait on the UPS man.
under warranty…
Both zero-turn finish mowers, a Kubota, and a John Deere, required more than one trip to the shop. The John Deere had an alternator issue, thankfully covered by warranty. The Kubota suffers from a faulty starter, unfortunately not under warranty.
woods and water await…
right, off we go then…
Tomorrow I make a run to pick up the now repaired Kubota. The John Deere I used today around the barn and pool area. The tractor went into the woods for a hard mow to maintain our hiking and horse trails. The new adjustment bar will need some adjusting; the back part of the deck keeps dragging, cutting down on my efficiency, and not helping the aesthetics of my mow.
