Scattered Thoughts . . .

One evening, while Gee went to pick up Lukey and Kenzie earlier in the week, I wandered around our yard with one of my cameras in hand.  Most of our flowers are now in bloom so it was time to try to capture some nice images of the landscaping around our house.   We get a lot of compliments about our home as people walk by our house.  Actually, almost everyday we get at least one compliment.  Even while I was shooting photos on this particular evening, a neighbor walked by and told me she loved the house and that "it looks like a little paradise".  I must be doing something right with our landscaping and the exterior of the house. Here are a few photos. First, here is a photo looking toward the road... Here is our covered outdoor kitchen...  one of the most useful and nicest additions to our home... We used to cover this tree in Christmas lights every year until it grew to about 30 feet tall.  Now it is probably more than 50 feet tall... Another evening of S'mores... Two o

Today was a landscaping day.   Mostly, I was focused on the lawn and especially the new putting green.  The new grass in the putting green is filling in nicely.  The grassy area in front of the putting green is coming along but there are still a few bare spots as you can see in the second photo, below.  Some new grass should be popping up out of the bare spots in the next few days.   Mowing a putting green is something new to me.  I started with my usual mulching mower in the hope of picking up most of the debris that has already fallen from the surrounding trees.  We have all sorts of seeds that have fallen from nearby oaks and elms (I think).  After sort of vacuuming up the putting green using my usual mower, I then went at it with a reel mower.  This reel mower cuts much closer and it worked very well.  The putting green is looking very nice. The rest of the lawn around the house is looking nice too.  I spent extra time and effort on seeding bare spots and then fertilizing the lawn.

S heila took a day of annual leave today, the weather was exceptional summertime weather, my health was better than average, and I had a surprisingly good night of sleep so Sheila and I had a very productive day today.  Everything came together, for a change, to make today a productive one! I actually had a relatively pain-free night of sleep which made for a restful night.  That is highly unusual since our first bout with COVID just over two years ago.  For some reason, my inflamed joints didn't bother me enough to keep me awake last night so that made for a better night of sleep.  I awoke this morning feeling well rested and feeling pretty good which almost never happens!   By mid-morning, we were on the road headed to Lowes to pick up some summertime landscaping and gardening items.  We picked up quite a few plants for our planters and window boxes at Lowes.  We also picked up potting soil, gravel and sand for various other landscaping projects.   We then headed to a nursery to

T he first of our 50 tulips has bloomed today!  Kenzie, our playhouse gardener, will be happy to see it in person.  For now, this photo will have to do.  Gee showed this first tulip to Kenzie this afternoon during their daily video chat but seeing it in person will be much, much nicer though.   It will be interesting to see how many different colors we get.  So far, we are seeing only yellow and what appears to be red.  It looks like that red one next to this yellow one will be the next to bloom...  probably tomorrow...

B ack in October, I built two flower gardens flanking the steps to the playhouse.  After I finished the rock border and filling these two gardens with soil, Kenzie and Gee planted 50 tulip bulbs which were gifted to us by Sheila's parents, Nan and Pop.   After the bulbs were planted, I covered both gardens with chicken wire to keep animals from digging them up through the long winter.  I then added a bit more soil on top of the chicken wire.   This spring, we've been patiently waiting for these two tulip gardens to bloom.  We weren't sure these flowers would bloom in this location because they don't get much sun here but things are looking very good so far.  Tulips have been sprouting up over the past two weeks and now both gardens are filled with healthy green tulip plants.   The new news is that these young plants are now showing buds that are getting ready to bloom.  I know that these buds will bloom suddenly and then we'll have all sorts of color in these garden

Will and Sue gave us a big bag of tulip bulbs a few months ago.  Sheila and I had been trying to find a home for them in one of our flowerbeds and finally decided to plant them around the playhouse.  This meant I had to find enough rocks to use as a border for two new flowerbeds.  I quickly found the necessary rocks and dug two new flowerbeds, one on each side of the path to the playhouse. Kenzie came over and helped Gee plant all the bulbs about a month ago... After Kenzie and Gee planted the bulbs, I went out there with chicken wire to cover the flowerbeds to keep our local rodents from stealing the bulbs.  I then covered the chicken wire with a mix of more potting soil and top soil.  We've had bulbs stolen by rodents before so hopefully this chicken wire will deter them this time. We'll see how these tulips do in the spring.  They should look very nice flanking each side of the steps to the playhouse.  

I am now two weeks into this mild TBI...   two weeks ago I slammed the top of my head into a temporary cross-beam on a trash shed I am building, saw stars, passed out very briefly...  and I am now feeling a bit better than early after the injury.  I really haven't done much of anything over the past two weeks though.   Whenever I attempt to do anything, my headaches grow increasingly worse, sometimes throbbing, and behind my right ear begins to hurt.  I've been good about stopping whatever I'm attempting to do whenever the pain comes back or worsens.  Yesterday, I was feeling pretty good and the weather was dry.  It was hot and humid, but dry.  I knew the lawn needed some attention so I figured I would do that slowly.  Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it, I had my woodworking shop set up in the yard and I was finally doing some work on the trash shed again.  The heat and humidity was really affecting my mast cell disease which is my primary illness and m

This year has been brutal in many ways but, for now, I'm just referring to our climate. For months, we've had our house closed up with the air conditioning running because it has been unbearably hot and humid. We've had many rain days and so few days of clear skies that I could count on one hand the number of times I was able to use one of my telescopes in the past five or six months.  So, we've had our air conditioning running just about daily during this period until the day before yesterday.  Yesterday, the heat and humidity finally broke and I was able to open all the windows and doors in the house! That really felt great and I thought that perhaps we were finally due for some nice autumn weather.  Wrong. The temperature plummeted and this morning we needed to close every window in the house and use the stove to heat up the house. It was frigid! On the positive side, this first cold snap of the year always reminds me that it is time to test the furnace