diddlee

We are in Cullman today. David and I put in a good afternoon of work to get most of the grass cut. We took MawMaw to the store to get another lawn mower. The old Murray has gone kaput. So she bought a new John Deere. We also got the right color paint. If the rain stays away tomorrow morning, we can paint the front of the shop. We went out early Tuesday to begin work on the shop but as we were preparing, I noticed the weather radar was getting very close. We just had enough time to get the stuff back in the shed. It started raining and continued thru Wednesday. Mawmaw bought a new John Deere mower. I put a part on the old John Deere which seemed to fix the belt coming off problem. Her hoe handle had come off so we did a little work to get it fixed again. All the old shotguns got a cleaning. We took the down time to hunt varmints on the farm. Managed to get a few. Perhaps we will be ready the next time we go up.

We came to Cullman to have another work week. The boys and I painted the shop but the color came out wrong. Probably need to apply a second coat. A lot of grass was cut. We did some minor work on the mowers and tillers. I even let the boys hunt the groundhogs. Max put a bullet in one of them.  Mawmaw brought out all of the guns that Pawpaw has collected over the years. Most need some attention so I'll bring my cleaning stuff and get it done next trip. The things to do list seems endless, but the constraining factor is how much time we can spend. We are beginning to see what that is.

On April 3rd, Bev's father passed away. He was taking immunotherapy for metastatic renal cell carcinoma so it wasn't completely unexpected, but it was actually a bout with pneumonia which lead to this end. Just prior to his hospitalization, he spoke with me about the many projects that were necessary to keep the farm operating. He was concerned that Bev's mom had what she needed to continue to live there. We spoke about what needed to be done to maintain the equipment. He would speak about each tractor or area of the farm and what needed to be done with them. After a portion he would conclude with, "Now this is yours". I realized he wasn't giving them to me, he was giving me the responsibility for each. It was touching. I was reminded of a similar time with my own dad back in 1984 when he was dying with cancer. The isolation required by the pandemic made visiting him and attending to him so much harder for Bev and Mom. They were taking turns with one staying...