"To much of a good thing can be wonderful." - Mae West

Michelle's brother made it through the night, something they weren't sure would happen. This morning they said his body was doing all the things it should in fighting the infection, but this afternoon they took him back to surgery in an effort to clean out more infection, something they'd hoped to wait until tomorrow for. Beyond that we don't have any information.

This afternoon we drove 30 minutes north to Pape' Machinery so I could learn why I can't start the chainsaw I bought there two months ago. Turns out Stihl doesn't use the choke setting like every other motorized anything I've ever touched. On their chainsaws it means, "put it on this setting, give it a couple of pulls to prime it, then move it to the partial choke setting to start." The service tech agreed; the manual doesn't say anything about that little deviation from the norm. And if you continue to pull the cord in the choke position the carb will flood and you can forget starting it for the foreseeable future.

From there to Decker's Nursery on the way home (via a different route), only to learn the rhubarb starts won't be in for another two weeks, and the Marionberry starts a week after that.

I got the coop porch revision finished and dug two more post holes up at the deer-fenced garden. The 7' fence was built using 4"x4" welded wire held in place by 10' wooden poles about 4" in diameter. But the weren't treated and several of them had rotted at ground level. They're getting replaced with pressure treated 4x4's. I'll set them in cement tomorrow.

Here are a couple of pics I took yesterday when I was exploring on the far side of the creek. With everything but the Douglas Fir trees naked it has an eerie, fairy tale look.


And there's more to discover. This morning I looked out the kitchen window and spotted something that obviously was mineral, not vegetable (remember that game?), but I couldn't figure out more than that. I headed for the coffee shop and described it to one of the old-timers there and he told me what he thinks it is.

This afternoon I took a picture that I'll show him Monday (didn't think to take a picture before leaving). My camera had trouble figuring out what to focus on so this isn't a very good pic.
Can you identify it?
I'll tell you this, that you'd see right away if it was a better photo: it's an axle, and a leaf spring runs along the bottom from one side to the other. (Normally there are two leaf springs, one at each end of the axle running perpendicular to it.)

On my way to the coffee shop I had the classical station playing on the radio. The announcer was interviewing a tenor who sings opera all over the world. After some conversation he told us what he was going to sing for us - an aria from a Donizetti opera (I missed which one) the title of which literally translates from the German as, "Women are made to be loved and kissed."
The tenor said he sang it recently in Germany, so they understood the lyrics. And they laughed because they are so anachronistic as to be humorous.

I thought to myself, "Are they?"
If one accepts (as I do) the biblical narrative in Genesis of Adam and Eve's creation, is it too far off to say God's intent was that Adam should love and care for Eve, the "helper suited for him"? If we understand the word love in this context to mean treasure, care for, and nurture that seems to fit God's intent and the Apostle Paul's counsel in Ephesians 5.
The kiss part? Well, there's that "be fruitful and multiply" bit.