Spring! It will come, better late than never! Also, VAE car shows – Shelburne Museum, July 16th and 17th; , The Vermont Antique and Classic Car Meet (formerly, Stowe Car Show) now taking place in Waterbury, August 10th 11th and 12th, just in case anyone has forgotten!

Our Colorado daughter, Martha, has set us up for a trip to Alaska the first week and a half in July. I hope to be able to get some vegetable gardening done before we leave, as we are out of relish and pickled jalapenos – now that is serious. We (hopefully) will be back before the Shelburne Show. My brother and his wife, will be going with us, and Martha.

A friend will be staying here while we are gone as our three cats will need food and company. By the way, I really enjoyed Nancy Olney’s “cat tales”; she and Gary do need more than one cat, of course. We could help with that since we have one that needs taming. Two of our cats go outdoors and back in, about 20 times a day – guess that is my exercise. I’ll just mention cat pans which they use before going out.

Our third cat is really, really elderly and mostly eats and sleeps, first on Wendell’s chest, then my head. O.K., enough about cats. It’s about time to clean up the yard – Wendell has almost all the logs he’s been splitting and stacked in the shed for next winter, so there is now a project for getting ready for lawn mowing – lots of chips and bark to rake up – and haul out. I am hoping the asparagus will do better this year – maybe getting the weeds out would help. I also hope the horseradish will be doing well, as we need to make horseradish sauce for the shrimp Wendell and others (not me} like a lot. That’s it for cats and gardening – for now!

It’s very common these days to wring our hands over the fact that the younger generation has little interest or motivation beyond their smart phones and social media. In the VAE, our Golden Wrench Awards are aimed at encouraging young people to move beyond these distractions and focus their interest on science and math.

This month I decided (with a little prodding from Wendell) that it would be a good idea to write about a Milton young man, we have known, who has been recognized for his achievements. He has always been a “tinkerer”. Among many other things in the family garage, he put together a mini-bike, which he briefly rode around town, but it went faster than was wise with the increasing traffic. He came here to see our old cars, in fact. I think he did some work on old cars, as well as, all of his other projects. His name is Tyler McNaney.

After graduating from Milton High School, he attended Vermont Technical College in Randolph, but came up with the idea for a machine to turn recyclable plastic into filaments for use in 3D printers. He calls it “Filabot”, and he left college to start his own business to manufacture and sell his machines. His Filabot business has earned him a “Rising Star” award from Vermont Business Magazine and Best Small Business Award from Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation in 2016. He was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list a few months ago.

His team includes Whitney Trudo, Josh Heisler, Ben Holleran and others. I would like to think that we might have had some influence by encouraging him along the way. But I suspect he would have done just fine anyway. Tyler has many more ideas and hopes for future developments and to quote him, he will “Hit the ground running”. It’s gratifying to know that there are young people who have the drive and intelligence that Tyler has shown.

Editor’s notes…….

This from Tyler’s website filabot.com

Who are we? 

Used by NASA, Dupont, MIT and others all across the globe: Filabot is a plastic company that builds machines for filament extrusion. Our Filabot product line-up is built to convert plastic into filament for use in 3D printers. 

Check out our webstore for products and accessories, our blog for updates about Filabot and our customers and feel free to give us a shout with any questions or concerns. Thanks and happy printing! 

These BRRR mornings are reminding us that there is a cold winter to come. Cold as it is, we in Vermont have it much better than most parts of the world, so no more complaining. In Vermont, tornadoes, earthquakes, wild fires, mud slides and hurricanes are rare. Of course, there are exceptions, like the microburst that blew down our barn in 2008. Anyway, on Friday the 13th, I once again fell and broke some ribs, right in my own kitchen. With the help of Tylenol and sympathy from the medical profession, I can still cook meals, feed the cats and birds and do laundry. I’m forbidden to do anything really strenuous like use the vacuum cleaner, oh darn!

Fortunately, I had already cleared the flower beds and what little we had for garden vegetables – cherry tomatoes and basil was about it.

Then it was time for the Gypson Tour up next to the Canadian border set up by Duane Leach which I first thought would be too painful – antique cars do bounce around when on back roads. But, take Tylenol and a blanket and go for it, I decided. So glad I did as it was a great tour, with beautiful scenery. Then there was all of the delicious food at Gary and Sharon Fiske’s home, once we got there – I am not the best navigator so we were the last to finish, but there was food left!

Then came the gale force winds that rattled the area last weekend. While there was havoc all around us, we were fortunate to have only one tree blow down and Wendell started up the outdoor wood furnace, so we had warmth and never did lose electricity, as did so many others. Our blessings, right? That was true until last Thursday evening when we were alerted by Green Mountain Power of a fifteen-minute electricity outage while some final fixes were made. It turned into a two hours outage. Guess it was our turn for a little taste of inconvenience. But, all is well now – so far!

If you are reading this and are not a “cat person” do not bother to continue. But, if you tolerate them and even love them, read on.

For several months this winter I was feeding two feral cats, one female and one male. The male decided that inside the house would be better than outside, so we took him off to the vet for a checkup and sex “adjustment”. Henry became our second inside cat. He and our first cat were not exactly copacetic, but adjusted, mostly.

In the middle of May we went to Colorado for our grandson`s high school graduation and then for a visit to the Grand Canyon with our daughter. When we returned home, we discovered that the female cat had delivered five kittens, all of whom were living in our wood shed in and among the stacked furnace wood. Of course they were all cute – three calico, one gray, and one black. Who was the Dad??? No idea at all. In the last week of June, our daughter, grandson and his girlfriend came for their annual visit, to be in the Milton July fourth parade and to ride in a classic car. Meanwhile, it was becoming ap-parent that we could not keep all of these kittens and Mommy Cat. How do you get five kittens that you can’t even catch, into adoptive homes? Our daughter-in-law demonstrated the wonders of social media to us by putting their pictures on Face Book. The word was out to the world that we had these amazing possible pets to give away. About this time, our grandson and his friend had to return to Colorado, then our daughter’s significant other arrived with his two children and we all tried to catch the kittens as we now had people clamoring for them. We managed to catch three with only a little patience, deception and speed, and handed them over to some very happy people. One lady even decided she wanted two. Next we needed to catch the last two and Mommy cat. Finally after much effort, we caught the last two kittens. Who would have thought that a cute little kitten could be so vicious? Wendell’s hand is healing and nobody has shown symptoms of cat scratch fever yet. A lady wanted the little terror so badly, she drove three hours from New Hampshire to get it.

Now we “just” had to catch the mother, so we put out a Have-a-Heart trap, put food in it and hoped for the best. The first night we caught a raccoon which our daughter insisted we release. The second night we caught the same raccoon again. Wendell says it died of cardiac arrest, all very sudden and unexpected. The third night we caught a very large Tom cat that we have never seen before. He was the wildest thing I have ever seen, bounced off the garage walls and made a break for it. That might solve the mystery of who the father is. At one point, I thought I had trapped the mother in our garage, but she managed to slide under the garage door and get away again. We are still trying. So, our saga is not over – we still need to catch Mommy cat and take her to the Humane Society – may have her spayed first, but it may be too late. Ah, CATS!!!!! I’ve gotta lov’em!!