20 May 2020 Wednesday Today is a one of the kind for the month. At 10:20 PM tonight and in 24 hour time it will be 20:20 20 May 2020. Of course, the same thing happens every month of this year. This is, apparently, a special year. Various state governments have stumbled and bumbled through the C-19 overreaction “Flattening the pandemic curve”for over two months now. Republican governors were relatively quick in their reopening their states whilst Democrat governors are holding back the reopening of theirs. Either way both were and are destroying the American economy and impoverishing their citizens in a Main Stream Media driven panic. Pandemic is a scary word used for full effect by the MSM. A pandemic is a spread of a disease across a continent or continents. That means that people all over the world are contracting the same disease. Every flu season is a ‘pandemic’. Are you panicked every flu season?

19 May 2020 Tuesday Did not write an official blog post. It rained off and on all day. Summer worked through the day planting all of starts in the new raised beds. My only official actions were to string a line to hang her flower baskets and cut some posts for the raised bed attached to the Tomato Palace.

Today I hauled gravel. We needed to fill the drainage ditch that leads the French drain, across the back of the house, down hill and away from the house. This attempt to dry up the ground under the house is likely to fail but I’m gonna give it a shot. Worst case is that It will stop some of the water, if not all of it. I can live with that outcome.

The other problem, nay opportunity, is the ceiling fan that has been sitting on the floor in my bedroom for so long that I’ve don’t know how long. The box presented a flat surface. The entire Steele family for generations have been afflicted with FSD (Flat Surface Disease). If there is a flat surface we will pile stuff up on it until things start to fall off. The ceiling fan box was no exception. That may be why it languished for months on the floor of my bedroom. It was buried under a pile of other stuff. However, today was the day. I hung the darned thing. It took me almost two hours to do a forty-five minute job. The fun started when I had to stand on the bed to reach the light fixture. Taking that down was fairly easy as it was just hanging there by the two power wires. My bed when I lie down on it feels like a slab of concrete covered by an inch of foam. BUT when I was standing on it, it is unlikely that nothing could have been squishier outside of a Louisiana swamp. The process just went power sliding down hill from the moment I stepped onto the bed. I’m trying desperately to balance myself and put screws in little holes. I kept dropping the damned screws which immediately disappeared into the quilt folds. I found a couple of them by accidentally stepping on them with my bare feet. At long last, I got the hanger, the motor and the motor shroud installed. Then came the installing of the blades. The motor swivel is so loose that when I put the first blade on it tilted the motor so that it was next to impossible to put another blade on the motor. I ended up bringing in a long board to prop up the installed blade and level the motor. Of course, I did this after spending 10 minutes trying to get the next blade on. All told, it took over 30 minutes to get the five blades installed. Oh! About those demon blades. Every one of them had to have three rubber grommets installed before they could be screwed to the metal blade holder thing that attaches to the motor. Then there as the light fixture with 6 itty bitty screws all of which I dropped, at least once. At the blessed end of the installation, the wall switch was thrown and it all worked. In fact, the fan ran so quietly on the low speed that you had to look up at it to be sure that is was running.

I made a pitcher of sweet tea had a bite of lunch. After lunch I took Sheila, the dump truck, and got 4 yards of gravel. This I dumped in the yard and spread it out with the tractor. You can only get the material to a certain level of smoothness with a tractor. Therefore, I spent about and hour shoveling and raking so that the gravel would be all pretty and smooth or was that pretty smooth. Whatever.

Today was a beautiful sunny day. The temp outside was in the 60s. I took the Summer’s garden tour and then helped her where to plant some additional items. We still have potatoes, corn and three kinds of beans to be planted. They need to be planted very soon, if we are to be able to harvest them before the cold comes again.

Well that’s it for today. Tomorrow will be another exciting day on the homestead.