September 15^th, 2002:

It has been a very pleasant day. It started out overcast but windy, the overcast broke up before noon, and the temperature reached 22°.

Harvesting time is upon us again, and I spent four days last week at Grimson’s, driving the combine. While we didn’t dig any big ruts into the fields, there was the odd time that the combine slid sideways. I lost my nerve in one field of canola and left about fifty feet of swath behind.

The canola was pretty good, in both quality and yield, but the wheat was shriveled and bleached. To everyone’s surprise, it went as #3. We tried to straight combine some peas but they wouldn’t feed into the combine, so we switched to rye. I think that was the first time I have combined rye, and found a new problem - the heads hang down so low that some are cut off and fall under the knife. As a result, we had the table almost sliding along the ground, which meant lots of green stuff going through made the combine think it was being overworked. We relocated a fair bit of topsoil, too.

I came home Friday night to find that there was about a tenth of an inch of rain here. There had been none at Grimson’s, though the cloud buildup was a bit worrisome at times. They should have had good combining weather all weekend, and that will mean another couple hundred acres out of the way.

Some of the Park buildings are getting a new coat of paint; hardly a newsworthy event since it happens every fall, but I got a picture of Brian up a ladder and hard at work.

Another landmark is gone! The Tackle Box was jacked up, loaded on a trailer, and hauled away yesterday. Steve and Ardie Kwiatkowski did the work. I asked Merv Miller about the history of the Tackle Box. He says it was likely built in the ‘40s, and was located right on the main beach, close to where the shower are now. In the early ‘50s, it was moved to the Peninsula, then across to its current location in the ‘60s. I have a photo of it on the main beach, but not much of the building is visible. A photo of it on the Peninsula shows it to be about the same size as the current one, but it had a pitched roof.

My photo shows Ed Norgrove’s old Jeep parked by the building; the Peninsula is almost flooded, but I can see a vehicle parked out farther, so there must have been some high ground. That must have been 1954, an awfully wet spring and summer. Somewhere around I have a photo of the walking bridge with both ends in water! Merv tells me the peninsula and west of the Marina were low, marshy areas. The campground was where the parking lot beside the Beach Cafe is now. Before the Marina was dredged out and the Island built, clay was hauled from the Ball Diamond to build up the low areas. That explains that ridge along the west side of the Ball Diamond.

I asked Kelly Chase what his plans were for a replacement for the Tackle Box, but at present he isn’t sure.

A tree by the tennis court - I think it is an ash, but not sure - has turned bright yellow, and our gooseberry leaves are their usual gorgeous, glossy maroon. Chokecherry bushes are beginning to turn a bit, but otherwise things are still pretty lush and green.

I noticed, (for the first time, I think) that Virginia creepers have berries; they start out dusty green and redden later. Pretty, but I don’t think I will try eating one.