69½ Leaves

The quaking aspen tree Desiree and I planted near our hot tub is now down to only 69½ leaves. I counted them myself as I soaked in the tub. If the half-leaf has an interesting story, I’m not privy to it.

I think 69½ is a respectable number for this late date, but I’m not sure about the rules for counting a half-leaf. Does a leaf have to be at least 50 percent intact to qualify for a full count? This may require me to take one more soak and give the issue full consideration.

At this point, I’m not comfortable with dropping the count to 69.

Our Aspen Tree

—Mitchell Hegman

Close to Normal

If you walk down to my lakeshore neighbor’s place, you may, as I did, come across a pile of elk legs. I suppose this might register somewhere on a scale that ranges from odd to macabre in some places. But here in elk-hunting-season Montana, it’s close enough to normal not to register much at all.

A Pile of Elk Legs

—Mitchell Hegman

Underground

Driving past a building under construction with several piles of dirt heaved up alongside, the thought occurred to me that much of my best work is buried underground. Specifically, I'm referring to all the conduits and cable I have buried underground to serve buildings, and the miles of the same stuff I installed and buried under the concrete slabs of buildings.

By dint of either a weird fold in my genetic fabric or some unnamed malady, "dirt work," as we termed it, was my favorite part of the electrical work on a new building. My employer soon developed a habit of having me and another coworker who excelled at operating a backhoe perform all the underground rough-in for new projects.

We got pretty efficient at it and also strove for accuracy in stubbing-up conduits so they landed inside future walls and mechanical chases, where needed to feed panels and equipment. Placing as many conduits for feeders and branch circuits as possible underground saved a lot of labor and materials. First, you could often run diagonally across the building. Additionally, you avoided a lot of the collisions with plumbing pipes and ductwork that occur in the mechanical spaces in the ceilings above.

Good stuff. But nobody sees it.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Outdoor Refrigerator is Full

This time of year, outside temperatures are optimum for allowing us to use our back deck as a natural outdoor refrigerator. The extra space is wonderful, but over the last few days, a Desiree cooking spree has both filled up most of our cookware and sent overflow from our indoor refrigerator to the back deck.

The outdoor refrigerator is full.

If you happen to drive by our house and notice a pot on the steps out front, you’ll know that Desiree has not stopped cooking.

The Outdoor Refrigerator

—Mitchell Hegman

The Writhing Inside

I’m not sure what triggers this, but sometimes I wake feeling pensive and entirely in my head, like I have crawled back inside myself. My thoughts are entirely yesterday, last year, and all the years before. All the people who have slipped away are back with me. All my cats and dogs. But also there: my hefty list of personal mistakes. And everything is squished together into a writhing whole.

All that was lost.

All that was gained.

And for the rest of the day, I know I will be unable to escape myself.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Puzzle Chronicles

A puzzle update. The Yellowstone National Park Puzzle has proven about as difficult as I anticipated. We have managed to assemble the pair of wolves and the areas of snow, including the columnar sections of snow showing between the pine trees.

The areas featuring branches and boughs are pretty much controlling the field in this game. It’s a slog for us. Following are my daily tallies for pieces I’ve snapped into place over the last seven days:

·       Thursday: 41

·       Friday: 19

·       Saturday: 47

·       Sunday: 19

·       Monday: 16

·       Tuesday: 32

·       Wednesday: 33

We must note that Desiree fluttered by and also dropped a few pieces into place. I’m going to say somewhere in the realm of 40 to 50 for her part. We typically complete a 1,000-piece puzzle in something near five days. We are somewhere near two weeks on this one and still just crawling along.

Yellowstone National Park Puzzle (October 29, 2026)

—Mitchell Hegman

Late Blooming Flowers Seeking Pollinators

Back on October 9, I shared a photograph of one of the yuccas in my yard that had thrust forth a flower stalk. Pretty weird stuff, that. Our native soapweed yuccas are programmed to bloom in June and into July, not October.

Even on this late date, two flowers on the stalk have actually started to unfurl and open. Interestingly, this particular plant produced a successful flower spike in a timely fashion in June.

This eleventh-hour effort is not optimal. Obviously, the weather will soon slap the plant silly. Additionally, failure is further assured by the nature of the yucca’s pollinators. The plants rely primarily on a specialized pollinator aptly named the yucca moth. The problem here is that the moths have entirely abided by their appointed schedule and exited stage left months ago.

If this story were to hit the personals, it would be filed under this banner: Late Blooming Flowers Seeking Pollinators.

Blooming Yucca as of October 27

—Mitchell Hegman