Get Those Potatoes in the Ground!

     Gardeners who grow potatoes have to store them in a cool place over the winter.  The best place to do so is a cold, well-built, root cellar.   Unfortunately most of us don’t have one, so we do the best we can.  I usually store my potatoes under the house in the crawlspace.   It stays pretty cool during the winter, so it does a pretty fair job of keeping the potatoes from sprouting.

    However, once spring starts warming the outside temperatures, our crawlspace also starts to warm up and the potatoes start to throw out sprouts.   Don’t jump to conclusions now, those outrageously sprouted potatoes in the photos aren’t mine.  The photo was taken in 2013, and the potatoes belonged to a friend, let’s just call him “David”.

    Unlike me, my friend “David” is one of those fastidious gardeners, who does everything correctly in his garden.  Whenever I see his garden, I am embarrassed, thinking of my untidy, weedy, garden.  Well, in 2013, I did feel a bit superior, when I saw the potatoes he had stored in his basement.  By the time I saw them, I had already had my spuds in the ground for weeks.  I had never seen such long sprouts on potatoes.

    If I remember correctly, that year David had been spending most of his efforts foolishly trying to eliminate the dandelions from his lawn.  That is just a useless and impossible job.  Instead of putting so much of his energy to that endeavor, he should have been planting his potatoes.  

    I am not sure what happened to the potatoes in the photo.  I don’t know if he ended up planting them with those incredibly long sprouts, of whether he just gave up on those sprouted potatoes, and just bought some new seed potatoes.

    In the spring, I usually have some sprouts on my saved potatoes, but certainly, nothing as sprouted as in the photo.  I do plant them, sprouts and all, and they always produce for me.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Man Against The WIlderness

     Because we live in the interior of BC, we often hear people who don’t live in Canada say, “I could never stand living up there with those winters.”   While I admit that our winters last too long, they do offer some advantages.  One of them is that because of the snow and cold, nothing is growing outside, leaving me with a lot of free time to myself to pursue other things.

    Once Spring arrives, everything changes and everything becomes a rush.  Outside, plants grow quickly, like in a jungle.  There are so many jobs have to be done quickly, especially yard maintenance and getting things planted in the garden.  I am currently running far behind in both those endeavors.  

    I do have the greenhouse planted (although the I haven’t been able to deal with the weeds that are coming up) and I have been able to get the garden half planted.  However, I am becoming overwhelmed with the lawn.       

    We have had so many rain showers of late which are causing the grass to grow very rapidly, and at the same time, because of the grass being wet, I can’t mow it.  I think in places, I will have to cut the grass down with a lawn trimmer, then rake up the pieces, before I can use the lawn mower on it.

    Hopefully with time, I will slowly be able to get on top of things, but at present, I am sure feeling discouraged and frustrated.  

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Sun Rising Over the Mountains

     In order to be healthy, I have been making myself do four laps walking/jogging around the pond.  If the weather is clear, I do it early in the morning.  If if is raining, I put it off until later in the day.

    The other day it was very clear, but there was a lot of dew on the plants, so instead of my running shoes, I wore my gum boots (rubber boots, “Wellingtons”).   They were not the most comfortable foot wear for jogging, but they did keep my socks dry.

    As I was rounding the pond, heading in the direction of our house, the sun was just starting to peer  above the mountain range behind our house, back-lighting all of the dew on the plants.  The horsetails looked nice coated with backlit dew and the star-shaped leaves of the lupine made for an interesting scene.   I had my phone in my pocket, so stopped my exercise long enough to snap this picture.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Epilogue: My Fainting Experiences

      I can find no rational explanation for why I suddenly “pull the plug” and pass out in those kind of situations when I fainted.  When I was a baby, one of my front baby teeth started to turn black.  The dentist said it should be pulled, and so the appointment was made.

            I was too young to remember any of this, but my parents told me that when the dentist began to pull the tooth, he had a really difficult time getting it out.  It turned out that that tooth was joined at the root to the tooth that was beside it.  I think it was a very traumatic experience for my very young self.  I often wonder if that bad experience in a medical setting when I was a baby had some kind of lingering effect on my subconscious.  

            In more recent times, I did have one experience that should have brought on a fainting spell, but didn’t.  It happened in 2021 when I was up on our waterline intake on Sunbeam Falls.  The creek running over the falls was running hard after a hard rain, and as I worked with a neighbor to clear debris off of our culvert, a rock came shooting down from the falls above, hitting and mangling the ring finger of my left hand.

            I had to lay on the ground for a long period of time, while my neighbor hiked down the slope to call an ambulance.  As I waited, I did remember to position myself so that my legs were above my head.  Maybe being in that position kept me from fainting.  

            I did loose my finger as the result of that accident, but I spent most of the time in those hours before the operation on my back on a hospital gurney or in the ambulance taking me up to Prince George for the amputation.  At any rate, I didn’t pass out during that whole ordeal.

    All this fainting really hasn’t done me any lasting harm.  The worst part of those reoccurring ordeals is the blow it does to my ego.  It’s so embarrassing for a seemingly big strong healthy masculine guy like myself, to be floored by an event as non-threatening as a chest X-ray.  Of course, the sight of a glowing paperclip sizzling through your toenail maybe more understandable.  At any rate, it’s a flaw that is lurking somewhere deep inside of me and I have come to accept the fact and try to warn doctors and dentists when I find myself in a situation where it might show itself.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Fourth Memorable Fainting Episode

         In the photo above you can see bundles of fence posts and rails produced by the mill where I was working.  I was standing on top of one of those kind of bundles when my accident occurred.

    The mill where I had borrowed the jack in yesterday’s blog, also played a part in my next fainting episode, which happened about half a year later.

            One of my jobs at this cedar mill, which made split rail cedar fences and posts, was to bundle and strap the posts into bundles.  To do this I had to climb up on top of the posts which where laying in a crib.  From this vantage point about 4 feet above the floor, I would insert the metal strapping that was strung around the bundle, into a manual cinching machine, crank the strapping up tight, and then clamp the straps, to secure the bundle of posts.

    I did this thousands of times, but on this one particular day, we had run out of the regular steel strapping we normally used, and I was told by the boss to use another type of strapping which was noticeably narrower. 
    “Go ahead and cinch it up tight,” I was told,  “This strapping is real strong,”

    I stood up on the bundle, my legs apart, bent over and put the strapping into the machine and started cranking the machine to tighten the strapping around the bundle.  The posts were being gathered together as the strapping squeezed around them.  I was bent over a pulling against the crank  on the machine when suddenly there was a snap, and the steel strapping broke.  The ends flew in opposite directions and suddenly the force that I was pulling against vanished, and I was flying through the air to the concrete floor waiting below.  

    My hard hat saved my head, when it bounced against the floor, but when I picked myself up, I noticed that I had broken my right arm at the wrist.  I remained  calm and a co-worker came over to help me.  I told him I thought I had broken my arm and I had to go to the office for some help.  Alone, I walked across the packed snow in the mill yard  (Photo below) to the trailer that served as the mill office. 

    “Bob, I need to go to the hospital,  I think I broke my arm.”  Bob asked me some questions about how it happened, then told me to get into the company pickup, and he would drive me over to the hospital, which was only a short distance away.  

            I remained calm, and in control, sitting in the truck.

    When we got to the hospital, Bob got out of the pickup and came over to open the door for me.  There was about six inches of powdery snow on the parking lot.  Bob was supporting me as we headed across the parking lot toward the hospital door, when suddenly, I fainted.   As he told me later; suddenly I was just “dead weight,” and he couldn’t hold me up, so I dropped to the snow below. 

    When I regained consciousness, I was being lifted out of the snow and unto a wheelchair. by a couple of nurses.   I was then wheeled through the snow in the parking lot, into the hospital.  My right arm was broken at the wrist, and I was patched up and spent the next month and a half with another chunk of plaster on my arm.  

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Third Memorable Fainting Experience

      In 1979, I was living in a small town in the Canadian Rockies.  I was working in a cedar mill.  My wife was in university in Vancouver working toward her teaching license.  I would often take my mandolin over to the little house in town that Earl rented and we would play music together.

    Late one evening after we had played out, Earl mentioned to me that the fuel oil tank that sat beside the house was sinking into the ground and that he needed to somehow lift it up and put some blocks under one side of it.  I told him that the mill where I worked had a big jack that it used on its big loader.  I figured I could borrow the jack bring it over and we could jack up the fuel oil tank and set it right.

    It was agreed that was what we would do, so the next Friday I borrowed the big 20 inch chunk of steel that was the jack.  Saturday afternoon, I took it over to Earl’s and we jacked up the tank, and slide a concrete block under the low side, to level it again.  I put the jack back into my truck, said goodbye to Earl, and drove the jack back over to the mill.

  Once through the mill yard, I backed the truck right up to the door of the storage shed.  When I got out of the truck I carefully avoided the wet puddles in the ice because I was wearing my canvas running shoes.  I grabbed both handles of the heavy metal jack and in one motion I hefted it out of the truck, swung it around to inside the shed door, and lowered the full weight of it onto the thick boards of the shed porch, and the big toe of my right foot.  

    “Damn,” I thought, “this is not a good thing.”

              I lifted the jack off of my toe, sat down on the porch, and took off my shoe and my sock.  The nail was already discolored but at least my foot wasn’t bleeding.  I put my sock and shoe back on and drove home.

    Saturday night was hell.  My toe hurt like crazy,  I finally gave up watching television and decided to just go to bed, but that made the pain even worse, without any distractions, there was nothing but the painful throbbing of my big toe.  I must have dozed off a few times during that long, long, painful night, and eventually morning came.

    “I’ve got to get myself down to the hospital, and get some relief from this throbbing toe,” I decided.

            As soon as it was 8:00, I awkwardly drove down to the hospital and limped over to the admissions desk.  The doctor was there and came over to take a look.   When I finally got my shoe and sock off.  

    “Ooh,” he remarked, as he examined the purple/black nail of my big toe. 

            “We’ll have to make a hole in the nail to relieve the pressure.  We can burn through it with a wire.”  Then he instructed me to go over into a little kitchen, just down the hall.

    “Burn a hole in my nail with a wire?”, I thought dubiously, as I limped over to the kitchen.

    The doctor, accompanied by a nurse, had me sit down beside the small kitchen table.

    “Just prop your foot up there on the table.” Then the doctor showed me a paperclip he held in his hand.  “This will work just fine.” 

    With his surgical hands he unbent the paperclip, then turned on the stove.  He held the paperclip with a pair of pliers and lowered it to the red-hot stove element.  I was aware of nothing but the glowing end of the paperclip and watched with fascination as it was directed toward my blackish toenail.                                          

            I felt no additional pain as the glowing end of the paperclip burned its way through my nail and the dark blood began to spurt out from beneath my toenail.

    The nurse was busy wiping and cleaning my toe, when I notice that the panorama of my vision was quickly diminishing.  “I think I am going to faint,” I warned.

    “No, you are fine,” replied the doctor.

    “No, really,  I faint a lot, and I think I am going to faint.”

    At this point the nurse said something about my blood pressure dropping fast.  I don’t even remember how she knew that, but my vision by this time, was had been reduced to just a small circle and I felt myself fall forward.  I could feel the nurse straining to keep me in the chair and the doctor grabbed my other arm to support me.

    I was only half conscious, but I heard the doctor tell the nurse that they should take me to the empty room by the check-in desk.  The two of them, one on each side of me holding me up, half dragged me down the hall toward the hospital room.

    I wasn’t able to help much on this journey, but as we were working our way down the hall, through my fog, I looked up into one of the rooms we were passing, and there looking back at me was one of the high school teachers, visiting their son who had a broken arm.  

    “Damn,”  I thought, “I wonder what he is thinking; seeing me being dragged through the hospital, like a drunk on a Sunday morning”. 

    I was placed on a bed in the dark room, and slowly I was able to rejoin the world.

You can se my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Beautiful Homecoming

     Yesterday we spent a very long day of shopping and medical appointments up in Prince George.   That always makes for an exhausting, seemingly never-ending, drive home.  Al least yesterday, the boredom of the trip home was somewhat alleviated by spotting a total of six black bears grazing on the new grass along the edges of the highway.  Nevertheless, as we finally reached McBride and our road, I was very tired.

    When I turned into our driveway and looked down toward the house, I must say, my spirits were lifted.  Just seeing the evening sun highlighting the all of the light-green hues of the newly foliated spring trees, rejuvenated me.  As soon as I got the car parked in the carport, I walked up the driveway to photograph the colorful scene.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca