Flo’s new front door.
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Inside her apartment.
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Celebrating Susan’s arrival – ice cream at Erickson’s.
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I picked this tulip from a busy area next to the garage. Normally the three flowers I planted get trampled before they have a chance to bloom. I wasnít able to reproduce it in these photos, but it has a perfect shape, and according to Diane, smells like a lemon.

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Photos of relatives yet to be identified sent to me by Susan of Torroemore. .

Siding Dwight Schirmer’s (of the infamous pokergroup) house. Dwight is utterly fearless of heights. I usually work with people far more timid than I of walking on narrow planks at back breaking heights, but not Dwight. Set it up, and out he goes.
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Stucco is falling off the chimneys at Applewood, and instead of re-stuccoing, theyíve been framing them in with plywood and adding a copper cap to keep the rain at bay. This is my second, and at about forty feet off the ground, hopefully my last. My staging is set on the deck Mark Queijo and I worked on.

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Dan and Jim

War planners

Alice Hanway O’Connell, my mother’s grandmother. Born 1861 and died in about 1945.

The back of Robby’s cell phone fell off and he taped it back on. How many adults could still use it?
More skateboarding pics taken by Chris Grosjean and Robby Nadler.

Shinydome

Thursday morning Barb Westman stopped by on her way to the Humane Society to show us a kitten that had shown up on her doorstep. Seems that someone who didn’t want it had abandoned it nearby. This happens occasionally (both cats and dogs). It was a cute little guy, probably about six weeks old, but she already had two cats and a dog and did not want to increase her “zoo”.

As you may know, I put grape jelly as well as sugar water feeders on our deck to attract and feed the Orioles, but at night I bring them in so as not to attract raccoons. Thursday night about 9:30. I went out on the deck to bring them in when I heard “meowing” and other rustling sounds down below. When I looked over the railing I saw several more kittens. I went in, got a flashlight, and went down to investigate. What a surprise. There were at least a half dozen little kittens running all over. I went back inside and called Barb and asked her to come over and help me corral the little guys. (I knew it would be a mistake to involve Susan. She loves baby animals especially kittens, but she hates cats. She would want to keep them.)

Barb came over and for the next hour and a half we chased the kittens around the house, under the front door “bridge”, up and down the hill, and in the woods trying to catch them. It was almost impossible. We had trouble seeing them in the dark and the beam of a flashlight would scare them into running away to get away from it. We caught three which she took to her boathouse where she fed them. Meanwhile I continued to hunt for the others. I got one more and then learned that the mother cat was also present and was trying to round up her family.

Barb returned with some cat food and the idea that we might have better success tempting them with food rather than chasing them with flashlights. (She had learned how hungry the first three captured kittens were.) So we set up some food on paper plates on the pavers in front of the garage and waited. Before long we had two more kittens and the mother cat in custody. We took them to the boathouse to join the others. We now had the mother and her six babies in a safe place for the night. They obviously had been in the woods for a couple of days. They were very hungry and ate like pigs. The kittens were very thin but seemed in good shape.

Friday morning, I packed them all in the big dog kennel that belonged to Monaghan and took them to the Humane Society facility in Buffalo to join the seventh kitten that was already there.

It is hard to imagine that someone could be so cruel leaving baby kittens in the woods, but when you see the headlines and pictures of the prisoners tortured by our soldiers in Iraq, you realize that cruelty exists everywhere – even at Lake Sylvia.

Father of Helen Virgina and husband of Helen Josephine O’Connell.

This is it for me, the last camping story.

Our first stop after leaving Acton is always Portland, Maine. Besides being a town with good food, it breaks up the long drive. Two hours to Portland, three hours to Greenville, an hour or so to our campsite.

As we drove along the waterfront, Adam and I bantered briefly about where to eat. Portland is a college town, and restaurants abound, with one on every corner, and some streets having nothing but. I thought we should stay away from the micro brews, not because the food that accompanies their copper-kettle-created creations isn’t good, but because only two of us were over sixteen.

We circled the crowded streets before we gave up our search for a cheap meter, and pulled into a parking garage. Matt spied the going rate – one dollar for the first two hours. We laughed. A fee we could afford. We parked, walked out of the garage, and Robby, glancing across the street, said “How can we not eat at a place called Gritty McDuffs?”

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Robby has always reminded me of Travis. They are both understated, smart, and have a sense of humor that appeals to maybe six people in the country. Fortunately, Diane and I are two of those six. I remember Travis and I were looking for lunch one day, and though he wasn’t wild about sushi, we had to stop when he saw the name of the restaurant – Fugakyu.

And that was it, no debates, no hesitation, we walked into Gritty’s, a micro brew, and sat down at a picnic-style table next to one with all women.

I got a quick glimpse before I sat, back to the gigglers, and assumed college age.

Trying to get a conversation going, and wanting to acknowledge how fond I was of the sounds that accompany Matt’s collective group, I said “Those people sound like your friends.”

“What, my friends sound like a bunch of drunk thirty year olds?”

Guess what? Ice out on Moosehead lake – May 1st.

I told Chris I would take credit for these inspired photographs, but after reading the last few comments, Iíve decided discretion is the better part of plagiarism. The extreme close-ups of Matt and friends were taken by Matt, holding the camera at armís length, but after that, I think itís only obvious who wasnít the photographer. Although I do know Chris and Robby worked the action shots. Also, Chris is responsible for most of the image titles.