Bruce Still Being Considered for Jury Duty and a Cucumber Tornado

September 4, 2026

On August 26, Bruce headed to the courthouse for consideration for jury duty. He was expecting to either be picked or be released since the two-day time frame had been exceeded.

I walked around the back field to see if any of the trees or bushes needed anything. I noticed this spicebush swallowtail flying.

I love the second picture. I am not sure how I got underneath it enough for this picture.

I stopped by the garden and weeded out this bed. I need to put more dirt in it. I picked more cucumbers and okra.

I saw a bumblebee on the globe basil. I had hoped to get a bee bum picture, but no luck.

A hackberry emperor rode into the house on my clothes, most likely my hat. I had a difficult time getting him out.

On my way back from checking the mail, I saw a hummingbird moth.

I saw some other butterflies.

After lunch, it started raining. Bruce and I texted about the rain while he was waiting. Why couldn’t it have rained before I had to water?

I decided to try out my new KitchenAid strainer attachment. I hoped it would be an easier way to juice cucumbers. I read the instructions. I decided cucumbers were soft enough and wouldn’t cause problems. (Mistake #1)

I washed all the strainer parts in hot soapy water. While the parts dried, I peeled the cucumbers and cut them into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces. Already this is more work than running it through the blender. I picked out two bowls, one to catch the juice and one to catch the extruded remains of the cucumbers. (Mistake #2)

I put the attachment together and inserted it into the power take-off and tightened the thumb screw. I ran the mixer without anything in the attachment. I wanted to see how it worked. The attachment feeder screw wasn’t turning. (Mistake #3) Hmm. Back to the instructions. I missed a part when assembling the attachment. I took the attachment apart and reassembled it. I ran the mixer and I could see the feeder screw turning. Yay! I placed the cut up cucumber on the feeder tray. I pushed a cucumber chunk into the hopper. I could see the cucumber being picked up by the feeder screw. Juice came out just as I hoped.

The two bowls didn’t work very well together. The edges bumped causing juice to get spilled or some of the extruded cucumber to go into the juice. (See mistake #2 above) I replaced the juice collection bowl with a quart jar. This worked great. I was pleased and continued feeding the attachment. I noticed the metal cover over the screw was collecting bits of cucumber. I stopped the process and removed the cucumber from the metal cover. I started the process again. Everything was going well. I’d have to stop once and while to clean off the metal cover.

Disaster struck in the form of a cucumber tornado. I had the feeder tray full and the hopper full, when suddenly the attachment started spinning, spraying cucumber all over me, the wall, the cabinet, the countertop, and the floor. It took a bit for me to get the mixer switched off. All I could think was, “What the he** just happened?” as the cucumber dripped off me. I checked the thumb screw and discovered it was loose and decided that was the problem. (Mistake #4) I cleaned everything up. It took a while.

I was ready to try again. I put the attachment in, made certain the thumb screw was tight, and started up the mixer without anything in the attachment. Everything looked good. So I felt confident the problem had been the loose thumb screw.

I started off slowly by feeding one piece of cucumber in at a time. So far, so good. I checked the thumb screw. It was tight, so I added cucumber chunks to the feeder tray. I was feeding cucumber chunks into the hopper when a second cucumber tornado struck. (Mistake #5) Words came out of my mouth that should’ve sizzled the second mess in my kitchen.

After getting everything cleaned up a second time, I looked more closely at the power takeoff. Something didn’t seem right. Why was the cover hanging upside down? I touched it to see if I could understand what was going on. The cover fell into my hand. The indent on the right side helps keep the attachments from spinning. Attachments have a small post that fits into the indent. None of my attachments will work now.

I did several searches to see if I could find a fix. I couldn’t even find anyone who had this problem. Just my luck, I am special.

With my mixer broken, I gave up on trying to strain cucumbers. While the KitchenAid motor worked as expected, clearly the rest didn’t. Moral of this story, don’t use a strainer attachment to juice cucumbers.