Alan old bean, old boot. I suggest as a summer hobby you take up one of mine (now that bad hips hath ended my soccer most temporarily):

I am making walking sticks (hades, I live in 100 acres of forest, I should use a tree or two for something other than campfirewood)

I am growing Dills Atlantic Giant Pumpkins (two plants really, not sure how many 'kins).

I am learning Spanish.

See! I thought that was the dumbest post I ever wrote but it reached out and touched you. The internet is magic.<p>I heard one trick with the pumpkins. Cut off an end to the vine with the pumbkin you are plumping and put it in a basin of milk. I can't recall where I heard this but I did.

I had some good summer jobs. The bad one was shipping ice cream at a dairy. Wore a snowsuit all summer. -14C in the cold storage area; would go in for up to 2 hours at a time to fill pallets to load on trailers. Got to eat lots of unshippable but perfectly good ice cream for free. Gloomy place though, I felt like I was living in a Bruce Springsteen song.

Sounds like it was in Dartmouth. I think most of Burce Springsteen's songs were actually about Dartmouth in 1978 and not New Jersey at all.

For the record, the garden is almost completely planted. I still have one planter left to fill. I've branched out into herbs this year, with mint, lavender, bergamot, and marshmallow. How could I not plant marshmallow? Whether or not I make any with it remains to be seen.

Here's a tanning tip, based on recent experience: drive 1500 miles on the 4 hottest and sunniest days of the year so far. The wife hardly recognizes me.

My brother and I start cottage construction next Thursday. We have 16 18" holes to drill, then stuff them with sonotube and cement. I just realzed yesterday that we'll be hauling just shy of 4 metric tonnes of cement (130 x 30kg bags). We'll be accepting applications for hammer swingers after the concrete has cured.

Can you advise as to the accessibility of the work place? Is one on Fantasy Island until the man in the white suit lets you leave? I sense a BBQ opportunity.

Oh, I think something might be available. Email coming your way, Alan. :-)

Ah. Milk. If I had a nickel for every time someone has told me the milk trick this week, I'd have $0.65

Its a rural myth. The pumpkin gains the water from the milk, that be all.

Then again, living in the sticks this past year has learned me a few things about farm-folk:

1. They have urban myths and old wives tales for every aspect of their lives
2. Contrary to popular opinion they are not ambitious yet they disguise it as "if it works why change it". It is called laziness in the city.
3. They all have small garbage dumps somewhere in the back 40.
4. They are pretty darn nice people
5. Don't say "nascar and wrestling is for morons" in a crowd of them else you can forget about #4

You hug your superior anti-myth-ism, then, and I will laugh all the way to the podium with my milky gourds.

Avast! Mayhap a contest is in the works?

I am shooting for a 300 lb orange beast, the 1000 lb size is a bit beyond my skillset, or attention level.

We will have to wait until 2007 for that.