Good Housekeeping

Goodhousekeeping Blog

This trailer park was built in the 1950s as a fisherman's park -- complete with a little brick "hut" dedicated to fish cleaning. Two sinks, fillet boards, light bulbs, stacks of old newspapers. Bring your own knife and plastic bags. 

I inherited three tubs of tomato and squash plants from two vegetable-and-pot-growing buddies (one of them has a prescription) who left Shady Rest and moved out of town to Benton. Scraggly, the left-behind tubs are farmed by ants who use them to pasture aphids. I have gotten gorgeous yellow squash flowers (no squashes) and delicious sweet tomatoes. The two buddies pulled out after a full-throated, foul-mouthed shouting match with the trailer park owner, over a shed. Since most residents have a storage shed in their trailer spaces, the buddies demanded to also be allowed to install one. I didn't understand what the fuss was about until their new shed arrived on a flatbed truck; bigger than my trailer, with a floor, windows and a double-plated door -- a proper cabin -- put to use as a sunlamp-powered greenhouse for cannabis plants. 

Winford feeds cats, racoons and skunks ("aren't they pretty?") outdoors on his screened front porch, or decking area, running the length of this single-wide trailer. Recently there was a midnight shoot-out between the racoons and the skunks. Hard to say who finally held the floor, but for the next seven days Winford's deck reeked from skunk spray. He stamped around the porch swearing he'd never feed them ungrateful critters again. It seems to me the cats won--now they get fed indoors. 

Upgrades to trailer sanctuary:

New Curtains! thanks to dear friend Barbara Cortese, who helped me pick out the fun Japanese parasol retro motif fabric and sew them together, complete with lining! -- in a marathon session at her home during my birthday visit there in July. Thank you, Barbara.

Shiny new screen in my screen door, thanks to Winford's expertise.

"Shed" for my painting frames and materials. the vertical file inherited from Inkworks Press, from the old pre-digital copy camera dark room. An antique!

It feels like it's been a short summer. The trees are beginning to turn at the higher lakes, and noontimes are cooler.   hope to have pictures of fall color for my next blog.

Fishing Update: Grand Total Trout caught and et: 15