Laboring on Labor Day

The first time I heard of Labor Day I was about 4 or 5. I remember the event. Dad was explaining to me that he wouldn't be going to work the next day because it was Labor Day. I promptly decided that "labor" meant not working. After all, that's what you do on Labor Day, not work. Stubborn kid that I was, it took some convincing that you celebrated labor by not doing it.

Weather has been dry the past couple weeks, so the mushrooms are hiding, waiting for moister weather. The mushroom in this photo is about an inch tall. The woods is full of them if you look carefully and don't mind grubbing around a bit.

Here's a mushroom-related story I just found. I'll leave the link in so I don't force you to read the whole article if you're not interested.
Magic mushrooms reduce anxiety over cancer

September 7, 2010

Source Link: New Scientist Health

The active ingredient of magic mushrooms, psilocybin, has been shown to reduce anxiety and improve mood in people with cancer. researchers from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center have found. Volunteers reported feeling less depressed and anxious two weeks after receiving psilocybin. Six months later, the level of depression was significantly lower in all volunteers than it had been before the … more…

If I didn't celebrate by photographing mushrooms, what did I do? My custom nowadays to celebrate Labor Day by doing a different kind of labor. Actually it's pretty much the same kind of labor I do most weekends: work on the homestead.

Next weekend we are hosting CIEE, the local foreign exchange student program. (We don't have room, but we're hosting a young lady from Germany. She shares a room with the two daughters.) So with a good dozen or two visitors, we need to get the place cleaned up, and this weekend is the last opportunity.
Saturday: zap weeds and clean up the various walkways. Remove the fence from around the veggie garden. Put the motorcycles out of the way. Haul a lot of debris, including the pile of siding left by our defaulting contractor for supposed reuse. I stacked it on the bare, exposed, desolate foundation of the abandoned addition. We'll use it for kindling—after two years of improper exposure to the elements, it's pretty much useless as siding. SI also split some wood (see previous posts).

Sunday: built a new gate at the gazebo end of the deck and move a shelf. Looks okay, keeps the dogs in, and gives us our deck access back. The previous dog barrier was inconvenient to open up. Moved a set of shelves and its contents from the shed into the gazebo, now that we had access without having to go through the house. Split some more firewood.

Monday: Cosmetic improvements day. I picked up the tools leaning against the sheds, got rid of more debris, and generally made things look nicer. Tweaked the gate latch so it would be easier to open from the other side. When we remodeled the garage, our neighbor, Martin, the best neighbor in the world^TM, asked if he could have the discarded doors for a shed he was thinking about building, so I stacked the parts next to the fence between our properties. Over by the woodpile. He has yet to build the shed, but the wood pile is getting big enough that I needed to move the pile of door parts so we could walk to the back of the pile where the driest wood is. When I stopped over to ask where he might want the pile moved to, I discovered that he was bed-ridden! He had just had major surgery. So I brought them a dozen eggs and mowed his yard and settled for shifting the pile to the right about five feet. Got a chance to do a little rearranging in the slightly-cleaned-out shed (so I can work on the bike). And I split some more firewood.

Maybe the next post will have photos of some people from exotic locales!