After it finally warmed up this morning, it proved to be a lovely day to soak up some sunshine and watch the great play at our local tennis tournament. Stop over at the courts anytime Friday or Saturday to watch some of the tough matches in action. I copied this info from the tennis court blog at: Palm Creek Tennis
On Sunday, the two top Mens and Womens teams from divisions A, B, and C will be playing a winner take all match at 11:30. The court assignments will be posted Sunday morning at the courts. The top two teams from the Mixed divisions A and B will be playing their matches at 2:00. The Mixed C division will be finishing their round robin at 11:30 and 2:00.
On Sunday, the two top Mens and Womens teams from divisions A, B, and C will be playing a winner take all match at 11:30. The court assignments will be posted Sunday morning at the courts. The top two teams from the Mixed divisions A and B will be playing their matches at 2:00. The Mixed C division will be finishing their round robin at 11:30 and 2:00.
***********************
Of course, I had to take a lunch break and head over to poolside to get a cup of that delicious tortilla
soup. Golllly.....that stuff tastes good!! Wendy was selling tickets and made some crack about my blog so I retaliated by posting her picture here. Hi Wendy! 
********************
Congratulations to the Palm Creek Wood Shop as they made the front page of the Casa Grande paper today with a great story about their handiwork and the upcoming wood show. I copied the article for you in case you do not subscribe to the paper.
Palm Creek wood show and sale
When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday
Where: on the green behind the main pool.
The Palm Creek wood shop hummed with activity. Lumber was being turned into bowls, tables and fountain pens.
Dave Owen made a trio of Lazy Susans. They reflected the creativity of the one-time Idaho farmer. Wood shop can mean so much more than wood. His centerpiece Lazy Susan was a kaleidoscope of horseshoes, elk horn, olives, acorns and sections of an aspen tree — all trapped in a clear finish of hardened resin. It had a plywood base. That was the wood part.
The other two Lazy Susans also had clear finishes of resin. It encased cottonwood burls, tree growths often used for woodworking.
Owen, 78, will not keep all the Lazy Susans to himself.
“One of them I’m going to give to the shop for their sale,” Owen said.
That sale comes but once a year and offers up a wide range of woodwork crafted by the hands of Palm Creek Golf & RV Resort residents. They’re mostly men, but not exclusively. A few women know their way around the lathes and sanders, including Ruth Lytle of Port Townsend, Wash.
As a young girl, she was not allowed into the guys’ sacred temple of power tools. But the Palm Creek shop does not discriminate.
“It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a kid,” said Lytle, 66.
A bowl spinning on a lathe and my questions competed for her attention. The bowl was winning. After all, she would soon come to a critical step, where she had to glue on another half.
“This is the scary part, getting it to match exactly,” she said.
If you see the bowl at the wood show, Lytle’s anxiety won’t be evident. Just that perfect match.
The Palm Creek wood show and sale runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. next Thursday on the green behind the main pool. It’s open to the public. Just show up at the Palm Creek gate, 1110 N. Henness Road, then follow the signs.
Proceeds are plowed back into the wood shop, which sits off the main drag in a warehouse of a building tucked behind the shuffleboard courts. The park owners handle the big expenses, but the shop’s board still has to buy sandpaper and things like wooden biscuits used as joiners.
“Basically, we provide everything but the wood,” said Roger Salter, president of the wood shop’s board.
Residents, mostly retirees, buy their own wood. Use of the shop costs them a dollar an hour.
Like many here, Salter did little woodwork before making Palm Creek his winter home.
“I never had a shop to do anything before, so I really enjoy it,” said Salter, who’s 68 and summers in Minnesota.
Starting out, he wasn’t just handed some tools and told to make something. Nobody uses the shop without first going through an orientation and safety class, Salter said. Over the years, some 600 people have signed up, he added.
He spoke from a small office near the entrance. Here, the sound of saws and lathes and drills were muted, a bit.
The knowledge of woodwork is handed down. Experienced crafters teach newcomers the way of the wood. And in making their first bowl, the beginners discover the pride of craftsmanship. They grow from there.
“Everybody that comes here just learns so much,” Salter said.
That includes Salter himself. He’s been a regular at the shop for about 12 years. In that time, he made his share of bowls and special wood-handled stoppers for wine bottles. He later graduated to furniture.
“I made a lot of display cabinets for my wife and for my daughter,” Salter said.
After a brief talk, we left the office for a tour of the shop. I expected an atmosphere of one part air to 10 parts sawdust. I didn’t see any sawdust. Surely, there were particles of the stuff floating about, but not enough to notice. Salter said that was no accident. The shop board, in the past few years, has installed more sophisticated filtration units. Overhead filters removed sawdust and sent it to a collector outside the building. Sanding tables drew in the sawdust before it could get into the air.
With seniors, it makes sense to keep a clean shop, Salter said.
“The older people get, the more susceptible they get to dust,” he said.
At 63, Jerry Hennings was the shop youngster. He was assembling a table. When finished, it will have a lineage of fine woods: pecan, maple and mahogany. He laid the pecan top — a laminate of different pieces — on a workbench. There were a few flaws in the wood, but Hennings would deal with that. He would patch them up with a paste of coffee grounds and epoxy. That would harden to a dark rich color.
Like many wood-shop creations, Hennings’ table will go to family.
“This is for my daughter back in British Columbia,” said Hennings, a winter visitor from his hometown of Kamloops.
Ken Elsom, no doubt, has made plenty of tables for family over the years. Elsom, 79, is a retired carpenter and cabinetmaker from Victoria, British Columbia. He teaches wood-shop classes at Palm Creek.
“What I get most out of this is to be able to impart 60 years of knowledge to people,” Elsom said. “It’s pretty rewarding, actually. And, like schoolteachers, I’ve developed a lot patience.”
He spoke as he continued work on a small table designed for RVs and mobile homes. The leaves can be folded down to open up space, when the table’s not in use. The top swivels for easy service when it is.
He’s making six or seven of them. And they’ll likely draw a lot of interest at the wood show. And, if interest translates into “gotta have one,” the tables could raise some money for the wood shop.
They’re going to be raffled off.
Chances are you won’t see Terry Dieleman’s magnum opus up on the auction block. But then it’s a work in progress, Salter said. And has been for some time. It’s a dining room set.
“He made a table of solid cherry,” Salter said. “He’s been making two chairs each year.”
If it’s a 12-piece set, he could be at it a while.
Paul Jacobucci works at the smaller end of the scale.
“My wife wanted me to make some pens for Christmas,” said Jacobucci, 78, from Brighton, Colo. He showed off some little blocks of wood. They didn’t look like much, but he insisted they’ll end up as highly polished writing pens.
But he wasn’t one just given to talk. He left the shop, and 10 minutes later returned from his Palm Creek home. He laid a black case on the workbench and opened it up. And there, perfectly lathed and polished, were rows of writing pens. More than the wife could use, no doubt.
So he’s taking some of them to the wood show.
“I’m going to see if I can sell a few.”
*************************
Kent and Leslie Evans sent these photos they took on our golf course near the pond on #13. Great work, Kent! Thanks for sharing. Look at those long sexy black legs!
Al Rangitsch read my blog entry about the Shamrock Dairy Farm and had a correction for me. "Even though they have 40,000 head of cattle, they only milk 10,000 a day. The rest
are calves, dry (non milking) cows. Thanks, Al.
***********************
*************************
