Here and Gone...

Well there's good news and bad. We got a puppy, Mackenzie River/husky cross, so of course had to name him Mac. We haven't had a puppy, or litter of puppies, for maybe twenty years. Most of our dogs are adult rescues, so this one is a treat.

The bad news is my old leader, Jabba apparently developed acute pancreatitis and died. The vet did his best, but he never fully woke up after the surgery. At least we were able to bring him home before he passed, so that's something I guess.

Jabba in his prime, He was a natural leader, one of the best I've been lucky enough to have. But not just a lead dog, he was a good dog in so many ways, he was almost like a friend to me.

Jabba leading the team home. I had hoped he'd be able to train the new pup this winter when the pup was old enough to run with the team, but I guess some things aren't meant to be.

Grandpa was a carpenter...

Well not exactly, he was a cabinet maker, but still, like the John Prine song goes, he was "level on the level and shaved even every door." When I was a young kid, my family moved in with the grandparents so my mom could take care of them. While Grandma was fine with it, my Grandpa, well not so much. Having two wild indians like my brother and I running around probably wasn't high on his retirement plans. But we coexisted as a blended family for almost ten years before he died. He had a wood shop in the basement and would spend most of his time down there working on his projects. I don't know if he made stuff to sell or it was just to get away from us but he did a lot of wood working in his time. After he passed, his son (my uncle) came over and cleaned the shop out, taking whatever he wanted. Most of the power tools and a lot of the hand tools disappeared but he did leave some stuff that eventually wound up here with me.

These are the tools I remember getting from him. Probably the most used has been  the brace and bit. When we first built the cabin, there was no power to the site, so I hand drilled a couple of hundred holes in the logs to drive the spikes into. It still works great. The scissors are kind of interesting, not sure what he used them for, cutting patterns maybe, they're real heavy duty.

These were some of his projects. Apparently one his things was to glue different types of wood together and turn them into shape on his wood lathe. My brother sent these up to me when he moved from the midwest to Florida.

This was the one thing gramps made that I always liked. I remember playing with the ship in a bottle when I was a little kid and my mom telling me to be careful and not break it (Google: impossible bottle). It's a good thing she kept an eye on me or it probably wouldn't be here today.

Hail, All Hail...

Had a heck of a thunderstorm last evening, it dropped almost an inch of hail, some of the bigger ones were three quarter of an inch around, maybe not big by midwest standards, but probably the biggest I've seen up here.

The hail storm lasted for almost an hour, one of the longest we've had.

Here's the May weather summary from the Alaska Climate Center.

Mean monthly temperature was 53.3°F, which was 3.9°F above normal. The observed maximum temperature was 82°F on the 10th of the month, the minimum temperature was 27°F on the 1st. The total monthly precipitation was 0.5", which was 0.1" below normal.

This was the first monthly above normal temperature we've had since last fall. While it wasn't a record cold winter, could've used some global warming in Jan/Feb.

More Firewood...

After the crews cut down the dead trees along the power line (All spruced up 5/22/20), I was telling my friend Bill about it and how there were more dead trees to drop, some pretty close to the house. He mentioned that his neighbors nephew worked on one of the crews and dropped trees as a side  job. Bill had hired him and seemed pleased with his work, so I called and asked him to come over when he had time and check it out. He came over the other day and took down four trees near the house and garage. I helped him out and learned a little about how the professionals do it. Every tree went just where it was supposed to, so now all I have to do buck them up, split and stack it. Too much fun!

While I've dropped lots of trees, they didn't always go where I wanted them to, so it was worth it to get help on the ones close in. This spruce measured 95 ft. from stump to top, so could easily have hit the house.

Still splitting the trees that were dropped earlier, so I know what I'll be doing most of the summer!