In case you were wondering (and some people have been!) I am still here. It’s interesting how some people worry about me when they see I haven’t blogged for a while. It’s very sweet—thank you for caring. All is well. I’ve been busy but also haven’t really felt like blogging.
Rick is home from his travels and finally staying home for a while.
My sister has come and gone. (Good visit!)
The bathroom remodels were completed with several days to spare before my sister arrived. She gave the guest bathroom her stamp of approval!
The pool is finally coming up to a good temperature after going up and down with all the rain and cool nights we were having. We had so much rain—over 3.5 inches worth—over a period of a few days that we had to let water out of the pool.
The day lilies by the pool are in full bloom now (see header pic above); my fig tree is laden with little green figs.
Now we are looking forward to a lazy, low-key holiday weekend with plenty of grilling, eating and libations and poolside laying about. On the menu plan: BBQ baby back ribs with baked beans and coleslaw, Papaya Margaritas, Goat shoulder tacos, a frangipane fig tart (not my figs ... yet). (But not all those things at once.)
And maybe, just maybe, I am out of my blogging slump. Is anyone still interested in vacation posts or should I move on?
Pool temperature upon checking first thing this morning: 70 degrees. It’s struggling more than usual this year because of the filter glitch last week and not having been covered up by the (new) solar blanket. Today and tomorrow’s daytime temperatures are supposed to soar into the 90’s and dip down to only the 70 degree mark overnight, so that will surely help boost the water temperature. We need to take that first swim before Rick leaves for Shanghai on Friday! Maybe our first swim will be a skinny-dipping night swim this year ...
Last night the fireflies were out in force. Over the past week we only saw a few feeble flashing lights in the grass, but last night they seemed to be everywhere. As you know, they are one of my favorite things. We saw one bat swooping around too, which is a good sign. I keep hoping to see as many as we had the first two years we lived here but that may not be possible. I don’t know where their numbers stand or if the white-nose fungus that was plaguing them is still a problem.
It’s obvious that we have a pesky bear in the neighborhood. On Sunday when Rick was washing Mia in the driveway, Finn (the neighbor’s dog across the street) started barking like crazy. We looked up to catch a glimpse of a bear in their woods. He decided to not come down and visit us and turned around and went up the hill in back of Kim’s house. Yesterday morning we awoke to our trash all over the street (and Kim’s too). Like I said, pesky bear. One that likes to knock over trees and sleep on them and turn over garbage cans. I have yet to get a good look at this bear!
Our house remodeling is coming along but still not finished. My sister arrives next week and will be the first one to try out the new bathroom. Hopefully the paint will be dry by then ... (Just kidding, sis!)
The wild rose bushes have gone really wild this year. They are everywhere along our little road!
And they smell wonderful! This one is trying to take over a tree and it looks like it’s having great success.
The concord grapes that are growing wild along the road are coming along nicely. Last year it was so dry they became raisins right on the vine. Hopefully this year we can at least grab a handful while walking the dogs.
Fingers crossed for swimming soon!
More vacation blogging coming up next time!
The pool was opened yesterday. Temperature upon opening: 60 degrees F. brrrr. All seemed to be well until a few hours later when I noticed water spraying up on the deck from somewhere. Uh oh. It was coming out of the top of the pool’s water filter like a sprinkler! So, I had to turn the pump off and wait for Dennis, our pool person, to come and take a look.
Turns out that our filter is about 20 years old or so and they don’t make replacement tops or parts for it anymore. Just our luck. Things seem to be more challenging this year what with Johnny’s issues and all. We knew it was getting pretty old so it’s not really too unexpected. Tomorrow we’ll have the new filter installed and be up and running to get the pool in condition.
This morning I got out the skimmer because I could see several little toads in the water. Two were still swimming and two were doing the dead man’s float. I rescued them all and am proud to say that after they sat around and regained their body temperatures back they all hopped off. Not such a happy ending for the chipmunk that I also had to fish out of the water. Poor little guy! They are used to running across the pool cover so he must have been taken by surprise to find it was missing.
That’s what it’s been like around here this week. Lots of things going on. People coming. People going. Everyone is going somewhere except for me.
You see, Rick has been traveling since last Sunday. First to Cannes, France and now Bucharest, Romania. We’re separated by bad internet service and seven hours. By the time I get up his day is half over with. He’s eating out at nice restaurants and I am eating hot dogs.
We are in the midst of yet another remodel job: the upstairs guest bathroom. Every morning promptly at 7:30 Tim arrives, so I need to be up and showered, dogs and cats fed and scooped by the time he comes. This is not my normal routine. Sure, I get up because the dogs wake me up between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m., but I usually sit around in my robe and check email before I shower for at least an hour.
I can’t really go anywhere while people are working in the house. I’ve had plumbers and electricians here this week plus the landscape person to look at some shrubs they planted last year that didn’t do well over the winter and need to be replaced. There are always questions to be answered and decisions to be made because things don’t always go exactly as planned. So I’ve been kind of stuck. Once they leave I scoot out to the grocery store and pick up whatever I need. Not exactly exciting or satisfying. I’m not really complaining. I know the end result of all this will be wonderful. It’s the getting to the wonderful part that is a bit painful.
Then there is the Johnny story. Before we left for vacation Rick mowed for the first time. He got too close to the edge of the flower bed and hit a rock that got sucked up into the shoot. We thought it was okay, but when I started to mow last week I didn’t get very far before I noticed an odd, hot smell and all of a sudden the deck was not cutting the grass anymore. When I looked underneath the mowing deck I could see a belt hanging down. Great. Rick pulled the deck off to see if he could fix it himself but the belt needed to be replaced. We called John Deere and made an appointment for them to come out and fix the belt and check Johnny out to make sure the rock had not done more damage that we couldn’t see.
In the meantime we really needed the grass to be cut since it had really grown in our absence. So, we called a local lawn service that we’ve used in the past and he was able to come right over that same day. Only problem was, while maneuvering in a a tight space in the back yard he bumped our brand new fence gate and broke the hinge! He promised to get us a new one.
The earliest that John Deere could come out was Friday. Johnny’s string of bad luck events continued since they had sent Justin (the repair person) out with the wrong belt. And Johnny’s blades had gotten nicked pretty good from the rock and needed sharpening. So he ended up taking the whole mowing deck with him. My grass continues to grow daily. sigh.
While he was here working on Johnny, the lawn service guy showed up with the hinges. So, I had Tim cutting tile right outside the front door, the John Deere guy in my driveway and the lawn service guy all at the same time. See? Three-ring circus!
This week will be even more hectic since the painter will be here too. And the pool is getting opened. And Johnny is due back. And they will be replacing the shrubs out front. And they start the remodel on the downstairs powder room. And Rick is due back mid-week (yeah!)
All these things are good things but they all require me to be here at the house. (Well, except for Rick, but how would he feel if I wasn’t here to welcome him home?)
So there you have it. Tomorrow I will be by myself for Memorial Day and I plan to BBQ myself a juicy hamburger, make a small portion of potato salad, and have an ear of white sweet corn. Hope you all have great things planned for the holiday!
This photo was taken after yesterday’s two-to-three-inch snowfall melted on the pool cover. I liked the tree reflections and the scalloped edges dotted with snow.
