Category: Dear Diary

We probably did take the lake for granted before Trump renamed it. Now there are people wearing Lake Ontario shirts everywhere you go. We walked along Durand Lake this morning on our way to Lake America. It was nearly 70 degrees by the time we got there. This has been a most unusual October.

We raked leaves when we got back, and I chewed them up with our mower/mulcher. We shoveled the leaf mulch into our wheelbarrow and took that down to the garden, where we spread it on top of the garlic we planted.

Pete and Gloria stopped by, and I put on a few jazz 45s. Pete told me I have good taste for a young guy. We opened a bottle of wine and made some guacamole. I put a whole jalapeño in because our crop has not been all that spicy. This one kicked some ass.

Pete brought one of his notebooks and had Peggi and me each pick a drawing from it. He told us he is giving away all his work. We had a batch of pimientos de Padrón before they left, one of the last of the year. Our plants are still green because we still haven’t had a frost, but the peppers just aren’t growing anymore. Could be because we haven’t had any rain all month.

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We voted early. Why not? “Vote the bums out,” as my grandfather used to say.

We decided to watch El Clásico live on Sunday, and we planned our meal ahead of time so we could eat during the second half. We had high hopes for Barça, but we also had been watching Real Madrid get their act together in their last La Liga and Champions League matches, so the 2-1 scoreline was no surprise. So many reasons to root against Real, but then Arda Güler and Yan Diomande are so much fun to watch.

We would have watched Game 3 of the World Series last night if we had any of the three apps that are carrying it. I was happy to hear Milwaukee won. Maybe the series will be over by the time you read this. Milwaukee was my favorite teamwhen I was a kid. I stopped following baseball about the time the Braves moved to Atlanta but still have a soft spot for the city.

We’ve had two weeks of gorgeous fall weather, and we took advantage of every bit of it—long walks, split more than enough wood for the next two winters and planted 130 heads of garlic.

I took a short stack of Tone Poem CDs up to the post office and stood in line behind a couple of women who were taping up a big box bound for someone in the Elmira Correctional Facility. I watched two young women in hijabs ask the clerk if he had any stickers. He laughed and said, “Stickers? I’ve got plenty of stickers.” And he showed them the different stamps they could choose from.

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How quickly dreams dissolve. I can’t remember if I was caught up in a really good dream or whether I was trying to escape from some situation, but I know I was interrupted. We woke up to a really loud crash. We’ve still been sleeping with our windows open, and we appeared to be the only ones who heard it. We realized pretty quickly that it had to be our tree, the one down below with no branches that has been slowly leaning downhill and almost touching the power lines. We had just been down there the day before transplanting some trees, a tulip and a sassafras, shoots that had popped up in our side yard. It was probably the rain last night that did it in.

There was a flame coming from one of the fallen wires, which were now under the fallen tree on the other side of the road. We couldn’t quite see the tree in the dark, but that flame stood out. Peggi called 911, and the fire department responded in fifteen minutes. They stopped in the road before the fallen tree and called us back to ask where the flame was. From our bedroom window, we estimated the flame was about 100 feet in front of them, off the road to their left near the creek.

We could just make out the tree in front of the headlights on the fire truck. The power company showed up next in two trucks with more powerful searchlights. They located the power lines, cut the power going to them and about thirty houses down the road, and then they got to work cutting up the tree with quiet battery-powered saws. We got our binoculars out so we could watch.

At four-thirty we decided to go back to bed.

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Starting a brewery cannot be easy. Maybe that’s why whenever you see a picture of the owners of a new brewery they are always beefy-looking guys. The infrastructure behind the glass in the tasting room at DeWolf Brewery in Victor looks like something out of a scientist’s lab. The building is brand new and searching for a personality. The merch is rather generic. Their IPAs are respectable. Their concept, though, is right up our alley.

The menu includes patatas bravas, croquettes, gambas al ajillo, pan con tomate and a Madrid Street Bowl, saffron rice tossed with chorizo, chicken and shrimp, finished with a squeeze of lemon. The co-owner’s wife is from Estonia, and the couple spent five years in Barcelona before opening “a place woven into everyday life, where friends gather around a table, order a few things to share and stay awhile.”

We did exactly that. We joined Rick and Monica and met Jedi and Helena for lunch in celebration of Jedi and Helena’s anniversary. The Madrid Bowl was as close to Spain as we have been in a few years.

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It is so nice to have the beach back. Lake Ontario has been more than a foot and a half above normal all summer. We never had to water our garden. In fact, the last two plantings of lettuce and arugula were a bust because the soil was too wet. The lake is still a foot above the 245-foot average for this time of year, but there is enough beach at Durand to walk on in the morning.

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My father didn’t use cursive or lowercase. He was strictly an all-caps kinda guy. Even when he was cutting verse into linoleum, in this case a loose translation of an R. M. Rilke verse. We were at a friend’s house whose parents were close friends with my parents, and she had two of my father’s Christmas cards on her living room wall. Both were linocuts. I don’t have a copy of this one, so I photographed it. They were behind glass, so I picked up some serious reflections, and I couldn’t save the left half of the print, a village on a hillside at night with a church steeple towering above the houses.

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From where we sit in upstate New York we had a deep partial lunar eclipse on last night, approximately 96.2% of the moon was covered by the Earth’s dark shadow (umbra) at its peak. It was a slow burn but more dramatic than the solar eclipse we experienced in ’24.

We watched from the pool property down the street, the lot with the most sky showing. Clouds drifted by but that only increased the drama and added color. We were there when it wasn’t even clear which side of the moon would get a bite taken out of it. It turned out to be the bottom left. And we headed home two and half hours later when just eight percent of the moon was showing although at that point the rest of the moon had a soft glow to it.

We were in and out of the pool. It was warmer in but still in the seventies out. The moonlight was strong enough to read a book when it started and then not enough to take a photo as the eclipse reached its peak near midnight.

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All the picnic pavilions were full (or booked) when we walked through the park on the Fourth. These two guys were smoking meat for a party of one hundred. We stopped to talk for a bit. Peggi asked them what they were smoking, and the guy on the right said, “Just some yard weed.” We laughed, and Peggi said, “No, in the smoker.”

I was intrigued by the two gas cans hanging off the side of the smoker. They said, “It’s not gasoline, it’s cement.” And he pronounced cement like “see-ment.” He said the weight keeps the cooker from rolling over when he opens the top.

We had an invitation to a loft party downtown. The building overlooks the river and is right next to where the city sets off the fireworks. We decided to go low-key and join Kathy in her backyard overlooking the bay. The people on the other side usually put on a show for the boaters, and this year they went all out.

Today is our first day off from soccer in a month. The quarterfinals start tomorrow with only eight teams remaining. Our favorites—Spain, France, and Brazil—are all still in. I was pretty certain the U.S. team would go out when they met one of the European teams, and Belgium made short work of them. I felt sort of sorry for them, playing their best striker only after an intervention from Trump. Can you imagine how the world would have reacted if they had pulled off an upset? The guy wrecks everything he touches.

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Elizabeth told us a few times that if we ever sold our house in the city she would buy it. The thought was unthinkable, but twenty years ago it came to be.

She recently contacted us to say that two letters, addressed to us at her address, had come from a Paul Taylor. She left them between the two front doors, and we eventually picked them up. We learned Paul had moved back to the area. He included a photo of his artwork on an invitation to a dance performance he had commissioned at MUCCC.

We left the house for the eight o’clock performance just minutes after watching Spain defeat Uruguay. Our names weren’t at the door, but we went in anyway. The house was full, and we took two seats down front, close enough for one of the dancers to brush my leg. We looked around for Paul, but we could only vaguely remember what he looked like forty-five years ago when his wife, Jeanne, danced behind the screen at Personal Effects’ multimedia show at the Community Playhouse.

There were nine short pieces. Some were cringe, but most were startlingly good. A Taiko drum and woodblock piece performed in coveralls. A dancer in a backlit, scrim-covered cage performing to a spoken-word piece. Paul Taylor’s piece, performed by Claire Spenard to Jonah Kreitner’s atmospheric “Spiral Jetty,” was our favorite. Spenard opened under a blanket and, with movement that was at once physical and graceful, shed it, commanding the space in a dreamlike dance before rolling herself back up inside.

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I startled a fawn the other morning as I went out to pick up the paper. It was sleeping in our pachysandra. It jumped up and ran headfirst into our deer fence.

We went down to the garden this morning and heard a clicking noise. Something was shorting out the four strands of electric wire that surround our garden. We were prepared to find a toad with one leg on the wire or maybe a chipmunk. Sometimes they’ve been on the fence so long they are charred.

This was different.

A deer leg was pinning one of the electric wires against the metal fence, and the rest of the deer was missing. The thigh was still showing spots and the leg was small, so it must have been a fawn—maybe the same fawn.

Our garden is in our neighbor’s backyard, and they both came out at some point. Everyone had a different theory as to how the deer met its quick demise.

A few hours later a mama deer and her newborn twins sauntered by our front window.

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The Landmark Society’s spring tour took us (and hundreds of other retirees) to Beach Avenue in Charlotte where we toured four homes on Lake Ontario, the Secret Sidewalk and Holy Cross Church. We learned Beach Avenue used to run behind the houses on the north side of the street, where the Secret Sidewalk is today. And a street car ran where the Avenue is today. When the City of Rochester annexed Charlotte in 1916 they moved Beach Avenue to where is today. Some of the homes still show signs of being oriented to the north. Of course most have been either rebuilt or added onto beyond recognition.

One of the homes, our least favorite, was brand new. Solar panels on the roof, heat pump for air conditioning, an elevator, a full bar and rec room in the basement and this painting. You are not supposed to take any photos while in the homes but I couldn’t resist sneaking one of this.

The homes on the tour were spread out so we walked along the Avenue to the destinations and then back along the sidewalk with the huge back porches, decks and outdoor living areas on one side and the the boathouses and lake patios on other. The lawns all seem to run together back there. I was picturing a croquet tournament and gin and tonics but it wasn’t even noon.

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The face cords of firewood we have are normally stacked closer together than this. The stack to the left collapsed over the winter, and all this debris gathered between the rows. I started to clean it out and disturbed this snake. I kept poking him to scare him off, but he had apparently made this his home and didn’t want to give it up.

Instead of restacking the fallen row, I decided to distribute the wood to the neighboring stacks, pile them higher, and leave this opening for the new wood we have from the trees that fell on our property over the winter. This took the better part of the day.

That night the stack to the left of the snake caved in. The extra weight collapsed the support I had used, an old pallet. We tore the front end of that pile down. Peggi stood on the end of the biggest board we have and, like a teetertater, we lifted the remainder of the stack and rebuilt it.

So this is the better part of three days spent restacking firewood that had already been stacked. I’m trying to recreate that saying about firewood—how it warms you three times: when you chainsaw it, when you split it, and when you burn it. I’d like to add the days we spent restacking it.

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As we neared the end of Zoo Road Peggi said, “I bet we find people swimming today,” and sure enough we did. Mostly kids, and they seemed pretty comfortable in the water. We were unable to walk along the beach, though, because the lake level is so high—more than a foot above its long-term May average.

There was an article in our paper today that referred to Lake Ontario as the smallest of the five Great Lakes. I felt sort of slighted. I had always believed Lake Erie was the smallest. I looked it up to make sure it wasn’t a typo and found that Lake Erie is the smallest by volume, but Ontario is the smallest by surface area. Together the Great Lakes contain one fifth of the world’s fresh water. Don’t spread it around.

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This year, for some reason, we had the hardest time getting our most cherished seeds to germinate. We moved the tiny starter pots with the Padrón pepper seeds down to our neighbors’ house while we were in New York, and they sat in their sunny solarium for a week, but nothing sprouted. Fearing we had bad seeds, we ordered more from Hudson Seed. This time we kept the small pots on our bathroom floor, where they were warmed by the radiant heat. We banged into them a few times, but they sprouted in just under two weeks. And those original seeds—they eventually sprouted as well.

We’ve been chipping away at the fallen trees out back. I had to tackle this portion carefully because the big Y-shaped oak on top was only touching the ground at three points: the root ball at the top and the blunt ends, which are just out of the picture. The limb in the foreground was the most manageable, so I worked my way up it, cutting log-length sections but not all the way through because I was afraid the cut would close and pinch my saw. Mostly, I was afraid that if I shortened the foreground limb the big trunk might roll toward me.

Sure enough, my saw got trapped.

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This happens just a couple of times every year and usually in the early Spring. Big rains wash all sorts of debris, mostly natural, down the river and it gets dispersed along the shoreline at Durand. I brought home an armful and I’m letting it dry in the garage. This was my source for “Los Inmigrantes” a few years back.

We have five rows in now, down at the garden, and we potted up our pimientos de padron, jalapeños, tomatoes, kale, collards and some basil. They are in the widow. And when the Daffodils have finished we’ll plant the root vegetables, the beets and carrots.

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This monolith is in the parking lot of the town hall. It is just one of the supports for the giant cell tower that sits near the police station. I took this photo last week when the sky was impossibly blue. The last few days have been gray and chilly but perfect weather for working outside.

We’ve been cleaning up the debris out back and cutting log-length chunks off the three fallen trees. We roll those down the hill and up a board and into our car, and then drive them around the block to our woodpile. Because the trees all fell downhill, the trunks get bigger as we work our way up, and at some point my chainsaw will not be able to cut through the center, so we plan on calling Paul—another Paul—who burns wood exclusively. He has been here before with a giant saw.

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Dreary is a quality. Yesterday was about as dreary as it gets. We planned to visit two friends in two different hospitals, and we brought both of them some cookies from Rubino’s. We left our car in Rubino’s parking lot and walked to Rochester General to visit John. I still think of it as “Northside,” but that’s left over from when Charlie Coco‘s mom worked there and we used to pick her up after work. She couldn’t smoke at work so she chain-smoked Marlboros on the way home.

I was struck by this house on Ridge Road. I didn’t think there were any houses left there. Rubino’s and Pasta Villa are still standing, but East Ridge Road is mostly chain restaurants that we have never set foot in, like Moe’s Southwest Grill, Jersey Mike’s Subs, and Dave’s Hot Chicken. I went to Kearney for two years, and there used to be a house on the corner of Goodman and Ridge that we stood in front of while we waited for the bus. When it rained we stood on their porch. Golden Point was just across the street, where Starbucks is now.

Up at Highland, Pete got going on the many bands he played in. He inherited his uncle’s Slingerland set and was in a working band in 1962. Rock and roll at that time required both a sax player and a guitarist. Pete was the lead singer from behind the kit for the first couple of years. They played clubs in all the small towns between Rochester and Buffalo, including bars frequented by migrant workers who at that time all came from the South. In Olcott, the doorman, a Black guy, sang along with the band while they were on stage. He sang so well that they asked him to join their band.

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Despite the recent thaw, the level of Lake Ontario is about a half a foot below its long-term average. I read somewhere that more snow evaporates than melts, and we saw evidence of that yesterday as we walked through the park. Snow piles in shady areas were surrounded by puddles, and the ones in the sun were not. Trust but verify. There was, however, enough water running out of Durand Lake and under Lakeshore Boulevard that we were unable to walk along the beach without wading into the stream as it cut across the beach.

There are two kinds of witch hazel in bloom in the park. The tree at the top of the hill on Zoo Road is so fragrant you smell it before you see it. The yellow winter aconite is wide open. The pussy willow buds are in their prime. Spring unfolds so quickly. Someone has to keep track of it. We listened to red-winged blackbirds singing in the marsh and saw a pair of pileated woodpeckers making a racket overhead. And we stopped at the garden on the way back to pick our second batch of wintered-over mache.

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The first thing I remember after my colonoscopy was a nurse asking me if I preferred Lorna Doones or Fig Newtons, two brands from my childhood that I never imagined were still available. I mulled the two over long enough for her to say, “I’ll bring you both.” And they were both delicious.

Thinking of Peggi’s father and mine, who were born ten years and two days apart in early March. Both were early risers, and this week provides daylight at 6 AM. We’ll spring forward on Sunday. Before the upcoming “False Spring” 70-degree weekend, we woke up in a crystal palace with ice clinging to every branch. It sounds like it is raining now, but it’s only the ice on the trees melting and dripping on our metal roof.

We visited Pete up at the Highland Hotel and learned this bit of local trivia. Alec Wilder wrote “I’ll Be Around” for Marian McPartland in the Sheridan Hotel on 111 East Avenue. Peggi plays the song on piano. It was first recorded by Rochester-born Cab Calloway in 1942. Here’s Marian’s version.

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Like the chipmunk above, we really don’t know what to do with ourselves as the snow melts other than watch the ice slide off the roof. We walked through the neighborhood yesterday and found the mail truck (with a substitute driver) wedged up against a band of four mailboxes. A woman from one of those four houses was out there with a small throw rug that she had put under one of the wheels, and she had a bucket filled with white pellets of some sort. We offered to push and gave it three or four good tries, but the one wheel that was engaged just kept spinning on the ice. The mail truck passed us about a half hour later, and he stopped to thank us. He told us his boss had pulled him out, but in the process they wrecked all four of the mailboxes.

While we were still reading the paper, we noticed our neighbor Jared shoveling his driveway. He injured his shoulder playing tennis and normally clears his driveway with his tractor, so something was up. We offered to help. He told us his wife was having her coffee group (“the gals”) over and the battery on his tractor was dead. This was heart-attack snow, with heavy water and ice content.

We took a short break, and I asked if he would have some time later in the day to help me with a project I had been meaning to get to since we moved in. One of the copper pipes from our radiant heat setup was visible in a corner of our living room. It came out of a brick ledge below our window and went down through an opening in the floorboards — a small visual irritant that took endless speculation before we came up with a solution.

I hollowed out a white PVC board, leaving only an eighth of an inch to hide the pipe, and used that as floor molding. I had never used a router. Jared had one, and he guided me. A retired chemical engineer, he likes to think projects out completely before going ahead — just the opposite of my approach. And because this piece went around a corner, I needed to use his radial arm saw to cut the forty-fives. He has one of those. The plastic shavings went everywhere in his garage, and the tiny pieces had enough static electricity to stick to every object in sight. The longest part of this project was spent with his shop-vac roaring away.

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