Things that keep us busy this spring

I have been so happy that we are now into spring, but the weather has been rather disappointing down here in southern Ontario. Every so often we get a teaser of warm temperatures lasting a whopping whole day only to be chased off by rainy and cool days that put a damper on my gardening ambitions. Would you believe it but it was snowing again a couple of weeks ago for crying out loud. 

 

April 18th

Nevertheless, Benno serviced the John Deere lawnmower, exchanging the oil and air filter, greased the wheels, and even gave it a wax and polish, ready for me to use. The blades are still in reasonable state. Because of the wet conditions here I used the weed trimmer instead to cut some of the uneven and long grass patches so it will be more manageable once the grass dries enough to use the lawnmowers. 

 

Ready to start mowing

Once again I am delighted to see all our birdhouses being occupied with nests seeing birds hopping in and out. Even a Grackle built a nest in one of the cedar trees next to the boat. It had five eggs in it when I checked and mama bird is now nesting ignoring Benno’s noisy hammering and banging inside the boat. I noticed Hummingbirds already a couple of weeks ago at our feeders and this morning one of them sat and poked its bill into the feeder over and over lasting a good five minutes. Maybe it had just arrived from a long flight, but it sure was very thirsty.

 

A bumblebee finding food in our daffodils

We were busy with rearranging things from the garage and my garden shed into the portable shelter once it was covered and ready to be used. Because of the wet ground here at the moment and to keep the boat and Benno’s workshop reasonably clean, we purchased some long 2x6 planks and built a walkway from Benno’s workshop to the boat.

 

Soggy ground

On the boat front you might be interested in the ongoing boat renovation projects Benno is undertaking. (Did I mention just how much he enjoys his hobby?) Just the other day he opened both diesel fuel tanks, pumped out the old stored diesel from the two tanks, removed some muck and wiped the tanks clean with rags. A messy and smelly job for sure. But there are a lot of technical things going on and from time to time I might be enlightening you with some of them. As an example, Benno was sawing a rectangle block of aluminum into smaller pieces with the table saw in his garage. That made quite a mess of tiny aluminum glitter that clung to his clothes and everywhere else.

 

OMG what is all that down there?

Once that was cleaned up, they ended up on his workbench in his workshop. He then transformed these pieces on his lathe into these collars to hold fittings. 

 

Sawed pieces of aluminum

Next step

Working on the lathe

Only some of the aluminum shavings

The finished collars

The two saddle diesel tanks in the boat did not have provisions on the bottom of the tanks to drain out settlement or condensed water from the humid air coming in via the tank vent which turn over time into water droplets and sink to the bottom of the tanks. These collars are used as a tank opening with ball valves to feed via hose a diesel-polishing unit with electric pump to fill a future day tank with clean diesel for engine and generator.

 

Installed collar with ball valve on one diesel tank

View of the starboard tank with open inspection lid

The sealant used around the collars

And of course there happened to be a bit of cooking going on in my kitchen during these past wet and cold days. Thanks to our nice neighbors we benefit from some fresh caught fish from time to time. We feasted on a big plate of beer batter deep fried small pickerel/walleye with some onion rings to use up the leftover batter. If you are looking to ever wanting to charter a fishing trip, we can recommend our neighbor David, who is running a professional fishing charter “Mainstream Fishing Charters.” He is hugely successful in catching fish!

 

Deep frying the perch

We couldn't eat it all in one sitting but made a good dent ;-)

Thanks everyone for dropping in again.