Yesterday was another busy day for us. When I ordered the ten yards of cinders to be delivered from Brimhall Landscape Supply on Thursday, they said they would be delivered about 10 a.m., and the driver would call me ahead of time to let me know when he was on his way. Dave Fairchild, the delivery driver, called me a little before 10 and said he was would be there in a few minutes and sure enough, at 10:02 he pulled up in front of our place. Besides being a nice guy, Dave is excellent at doing his job. He backed through the gate in our fence and dropped the cinders exactly where I needed them to be. Brimhall provides fast, courteous service, and I would use them again anytime.
After a light breakfast of mixed berries with walnuts, I answered a few e-mails, researched a couple of things I needed to clarify for my new Big Lake book, and then it was time to go outside and get to work. It was a beautiful 70° day with lots of blue sky and a bit of a breeze. My first project was to try to repair a garden hose that was leaking. It was an ancient plastic cloth-shielded hose that had come with the house. After I cut the leaking section out and tried to attach a new nozzle to it, I realized that the hose diameter was too small once I cut away the cloth. The more I looked at it, the more I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. So I threw it in the trash and replaced it with a new hose.
The next order of business was to remove rocks and debris that had fallen into a couple of shallow water run-off trenches in the yard. Our property has a slight slope from the south side to the north, and the trenches direct the water away from the main part of the backyard.
With that done, I got one of the wheelbarrows out of the shed and brought Terry a couple of bags of soil and a bag of steer manure for our raised garden beds. One bed still has strawberry plants from last season that are looking good, and Terry planted more strawberries in the second bed. That lady loves to play in the dirt!
After adding in the soil and manure, and with the new strawberries planted, we covered the beds with a light coating of wheat straw and Terry watered them. While she was doing that, I connected a couple of soaker hoses and turned them on to water some more of the pine trees in the backyard.
We were getting tired by then, so we sat in chairs on the back deck and relaxed for a while as Terry talked to her mom on the phone. We went inside just as Tiffany and Kenny arrived, followed soon after by granddaughter Britni. Kenny and Tiffany had had a busy day themselves. He had to deliver a school bus to Flagstaff for some warranty work, and Tiffany followed him in their car to bring him back. They got a call while still in Flagstaff about a broken-down bus, so they rushed back to town, a two and a half hour drive, only to find that the driver had remedied the situation and didn’t need to be saved. But folks at the office never called Kenny back to tell him that. Then, when they got back to town, they were short a bus driver, so Kenny had to run one of the routes, taking kids home.
After staying to watch the splashdown of the Artemis II capsule, they left to go home and get some rest. Britni stayed and had dinner with us, General Tso’s Chicken over rice. It was the first time Terry made that dish, and it was delicious. I told her she could make it every week and I wouldn’t complain.
I’m not sure what today holds for us yet. There’s still plenty that need to be done outside, but I also need to get another chapter or two written in my new book. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be another busy day.
Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an autographed copy of Police Stories: The Rookie Years by my friend Patrick O’Donnell, who was featured in our first Author’s Spotlight last week. The author of eleven books, Patrick hosts the popular Cops and Writers Podcast and founded and runs an 8,500-member Facebook group for crime writers that was featured in the Wall Street Journal. He has also hosted true crime television documentaries and consulted with crime writers for their books and screenplays.
As Patrick shares in his book, his introduction to being a police officer in Milwaukee happened during his first week as a rookie cop, when he had to decide whether to pull the trigger on a man running at him with a butcher knife. The knife-wielding man just killed his brother over the last hot dog. The book shares real-life gritty police stories, including a Thanksgiving stabbing that left the victim with a carving knife embedded in his eye, the sweet elderly widow who held a cocked .38 to a rookie’s back, breaking every rule to help a stranded mother find shelter, almost being shot by a fellow officer, a father who bit off part of his daughter’s nose, and a dying man’s last words: “Scooby-Doo shot me.” As Patrick says, sometimes the most unbelievable stories are the ones that actually happened.
To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed. After 30 days, unclaimed prizes revert back to the drawing pool for a future contest.
Did you know that you can find all of my books and sign up for my free author’s newsletter on my website at www.nickrussellbooks.com?
And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.
Thought For The Day – Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company – Mark Twain
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!