My plums have started to ripen. Hawken the Irish wolfhound started eating them off the ground last night, so this morning I told myself that I would pick plums this evening.

Minutes later, I heard a morning thunderstorm rolling in, and before it was finished, the ground around the trees was scattered with a couple of dozen ripe plums.

I cut them up and had them as my evening appetizer, and they were great.

In a season that seems covered in complexity, uncertainty, and sadness, I got a small piece of good news this week: the last freeze of the year apparently did not reach as far south as Byng, and my peach and plum trees appear to have abundant fruit on them.

I made time today to shoot a few of our firearms, including the NRA Special Edition Ruger Mark III 22/45 Lite I bought Abby for our 12th anniversary, my Ruger Mark III 22/45 Target pistol, and the Walther P22 I bought Abby for Christmas in 2009. I put about 140 rounds downrange, all .22LR, both to stay current and because it was an amazingly warm Christmas Eve day to be outside shooting. I had a lot of fun.

Afterwards I cleaned all three pistols. The Walther is easy to disassemble and reassemble, but the Rugers are notoriously difficult to reassemble, so much so that the Ruger Mark IV’s have been completely redesigned for one-button takedown and reassembly.

That said, getting the Mark III’s put back into working order isn’t undoable, as long as your learn and practice the tricks. You can find the full set of instructions elsewhere on the web (here, for example), though webizens have half a dozen or more slightly different versions of this. But I am here to encourage you that it’s not that hard to do. I got my pistols reassembled in just a few minutes.

Also on my Christmas radar is the early morning launch tomorrow of the James Webb Space Telescope, the next generation deep-sky space telescope that will in some ways replace the Hubble Space Telescope. I have an alarm set to get up and watch the launch at 6:20 a.m. central time.

For the past few years I have observed a mysterious puddle come and go near my orchard south of the house. I suspected it was a leak in the main water line leading from the water meter to our house, but as the years went by, it didn’t seem to be getting worse, and would sometimes disappear entirely.

Then in February, we had the worst winter storm in recent memory. A foot of snow covered the ground, and temperatures dipped below zero on two nights. We were careful to open the cabinets to allow warm air to circulate around our water pipes, and, unlike hundreds of area residents, we avoided a messy and expensive plumbing problem.

The extreme weather was not without consequence, however. The mysterious puddle at first shrank to insignificance, but in the last few days, it got much large, and I dubbed it “Lake Milligan,” after George Milligan, Abby’s first father-in-law, who installed the water line when Abby moved back to Byng in 1993.

It grew so quickly this week that it was apparent that the water line would have to be repaired, and Abby and I were certain it would take forever, and cost a fortune.

Enter Nickerson Plumbing. They were able to send out a friendly pair of young plumbers, one of whom remembered me from when I covered his Ada Cougar basketball games, and the other recalled being bitten by our neighbor’s dog last year.

The two determined that we did have a growing leak, and set out to find it. At this point, Abby and I were sure we would be leasing a backhoe for days, and this repair would completely consume our income tax refund.

Then, the Miracle on Main Street.

“We found your leak,” one of the plumbers announced after a 20-minute search. It was right where the puddle had come and gone over the years, and at this point, the leak had gotten large enough to see and hear. One of them showed me the joint that had cracked and leaked very slowly, but had, in the last few days, turned into a pinhole, then a larger hole.

They patched it up and buried it, and turned on the water. One of them had a billing app, and added it up: $204. Wow.

I know it seems a little early to be getting the garden in the ground, as in years past I have frequently dealt with mid-April frosts and freezes, but if you can get plants in the ground early, then have a little luck with the weather, you get a longer growing season, and a better yield.

I might have to replant some if we do get a freeze, but it’s only about $20 worth of plants.

My soil has gotten depleted over the years, so prior to planting, I tilled in a large bag of organic tomato/vegetable garden fertilizer.

Yesterday I planted…

• Ten Early Girl tomato plants
• Three Big Boy tomato plants
• Five red bell pepper plants
• One green bell pepper plant
• One orange bell pepper plant
• Three Sun Sugar cherry tomato plants

My variety selection was based entirely on what was available at the garden center Sunday.

That leaves cucumber, radish, and marigold seeds to plant, hopefully tonight.

My readers might be aware that I previously owned two small gasoline-powered tillers, also known as cultivators. The second one, Tilly, was purchased exactly eight years ago, worked properly most recently three years ago, meaning its useful life was five years. I consider that a complete rip-off, since that boils down to about ten hours of actual garden tilling, since I only need it once a year.

I thought about last year, when I dug the garden by hand. Not only was it slow, back-breaking work, it didn’t get the soil really chopped up like a tiller could. I am all about working hard, but I was not looking forward to another five-hour hands-and-knees session.

Local retailers had that exact model for an insulting $300, so I poked around on the interwebs and found an electric tiller for just $133, minus a small discount from rewards points. “Buy Now.”

My Sun Joe TJ604E 16-Inch 13.5 AMP Electric Garden Tiller/Cultivator arrived in just two days. It was easy to assemble and ready in minutes. The question would be one of electric vs gasoline, which is why I opted for the more robust 13.5 AMP plug-in model.

At the first turn of dirt, Tyler dug like a champ, including some very rough areas that had gone to grass several years ago. We’ll see how long it will live, but so far, the newest tiller in the family is working well.

I asked Abby what I should name it, and she said, “Tyler.”

2020 has been a difficult year, for reasons I don’t need to rehash because we’ve all been through it.

Abby and I have been lucky; we haven’t been exposed as far as we know, and we haven’t been sick.

Mother nature is somehow responding to 2020. It might be a coincidence, or it may be in response to a reduction in atmospheric, noise, and light pollution because of the pandemic, but this summer was pretty and green, and this fall ranks as among the most beautiful I can remember on our patch of green in southeastern Oklahoma.

I got half of my garden planted today. I went to town and got three kinds of tomato plants, pepper plants, and onion sets, all of which are now in the ground. I also bought seeds for cucumbers, cantaloups, rainbow carrots, and marigolds, which I hope to get in tonight or tomorrow.

The garden is one of the best things in life.

Readers know that with the arrival of late autumn, I am able to take Hawken the Irish Wolfhound on much longer walks, deep into the woods to the west.

Today I made a quick trip to town, heated up some leftover baked ziti for Abby, made baked sweet potatoes with sautéed green onions and mushrooms and a veggie burger patty for me, then took Hawken on our longest walk of the season.

These walks are so good for us. We never see anyone else back there. We seldom even see traces of anyone else. We disappear. It’s quiet and clean. We both get sun and leg time. We never get bored. Good times.