Scattered Thoughts . . .

B ack a few years ago, I custom-built a garden window over our kitchen sink.  This is perhaps the first year we have purchased any plants for this window though.  We do decorate this garden window during Christmas and one year we had some mint and some green onion in it but this is the first year that we purposely chose plants for this window.  And, it is looking good! I actually did some research this spring to figure out which plants would fare best in an east-facing garden window.  That was actually the easy part.  Finding some of these plants was far more difficult!  We managed to find a nice selection though... And, the view from outside looking in...

I 've been down for a couple of weeks due to significant spinal pain so I've been taking things slow and easy.  While I've been mostly sedentary, I've been working on a caboose kitbash I've had planned for a few years.   Unfortunately, I never thought about capturing a photo of my caboose before I started cutting away parts of the caboose so the photo below is someone else's photo of the same exact caboose.   This caboose is what is known as a bobber caboose and these cabooses have the distinct characteristics of being very short in length and having only two fixed axles.  The first thing I wanted to change was this fixed two axle configuration.  This caboose never rolled well and it sometimes would derail on our small garden railroad.  I wanted to remove this whole undercarriage and install two typical railroad trucks with two axles each under this little caboose. In these photos, below, you can see that I now have two trucks under the caboose....

A couple of days ago, I was lying on the couch trying to get some much needed sleep when some yelling and screaming disturbed me.  I was still in a lot of pain from my spinal injuries but, at this point in the overwhelmingly painful week, I was now able to get a bit of sleep for an hour or so at a time.  What awoke me wasn't the sound of screaming and yelling kids playing though. This was older people yelling like they were rodeo cowboys, yipping and hollering, and that is odd since we have no rodeo cowboys within hundreds of miles from here. After our encounter with a fox in our backyard a couple of weeks ago, I have a couple of my cameras already set up with longer telephoto lenses and ready to grab if something noteworthy happens again.  When I heard this commotion the other day, I got up and immediately grabbed the camera with the longest lens and stepped outside the front door.   It sounded like the yelling was coming from a couple of doors down from our h...

A fter a week of excruciating spinal pain, I recovered enough this weekend to make a few nice updates to our outdoor shower. First, I built, stained and installed a new shelf above this seating/dressing area shown in the photo below.  It is made from 1x1 strips that I ripped from a treated 2x4.  Now that the shelf was in place, I installed a spare bathroom mirror we had lying around waiting for our new indoor bathroom.   Another thing I did today (after these photos were captured), is replace the hoses that connect the valves on the back wall of the house to the plumbing for this outdoor shower.  I had originally custom-assembled three foot sections of garden hose but one of the hoses popped off the connector and we wasted a bunch of gallons of water.  Since then, we've been turning off those valves at the house whenever we finished using the shower.  This is incredibly inconvenient (and I often forget to turn off the valves after a shower) so I replac...

Y esterday, at the last minute, we decided to invite a few people over since the weather was so nice for a change.  We've had far too much rain since April so it was nice to have a clear, sunny day that wasn't too hot.  Will (Sheila's dad), Frank and Christine came over and we had a really nice time.   I had an exceptionally rough week as far as my health goes but I was feeling well enough yesterday to have some guests over for a bit.  My spinal injuries were excruciating for the past week.  I couldn't even sleep for a few days because the pain was into the unbearable level constantly, even at rest.  I also needed a cane to get around for most of the week and even getting around with the help of a cane was excruciating!  I think I overdid it in the yard over the previous couple of weeks and then my spinal injuries flared up enough to impinge nerves in my lumbar spine where I have permanent irreparable damage. This caused pain to my hips and throug...

T he weather forecast changed for the better one day last week so we changed our rainy day plans and headed toward Burlington to do a day cruise on Lake Champlain.  We do this cruise every summer with whichever kids and grandkids can meet us there.  This year, we had a rather small group but, as always, we all enjoyed ourselves.   We order snacks and drinks during the cruise and then, after the cruise, we walk up the hill into Burlington to visit one of the pubs to have an early dinner.  This is always a relaxing time even when Sheila and I do it alone.  We haven't done it alone in more than ten years but we've always enjoyed ourselves.   Below, we have the view of our backseat for the ride up to Burlington... Here is the group photo (minus the photographer) on the boat.  We always get the back corner tables on the top deck and this time was no different... One of these days, we're going to do a cruise on one of these two boats...  (we'v...