Scattered Thoughts . . .

I t has been about two weeks since I seeded the new putting green in our backyard.  The grass is coming up nicely but it is a slow and almost painful process watching new grass grow while hoping it would finally be mature enough to do some pitching and putting.   I've been watering all the new grass around the property every morning and every evening so I'm really not just sitting around waiting for the grass to grow.  I have a bajillion other springtime projects that are keeping me busy when my health allows too.  Waiting for this new grass to grow does seem like an awful lot of waiting though.   In the first photo, above right, we are looking at the putting green from our backyard.  The grassy field beyond the putting green in this photo is our neighbor's yard.  The putting green is in the farthest back part of our yard.  The photo below, at bottom, is looking at the putting green from the new area that I cleared out and also seeded.  This will be an area for pitching ont

T he additional bag of grass seed for our new putting green arrived in the mail this morning so I changed my plans and finished up preparing the putting green before lunch today.  It didn't take long to finish up that project although my spine wasn't too thrilled with this project this morning.  Walking is exceptionally painful again this evening. I loosened up the soil in the putting green first...  cleaned out a bucketful of small stones (for the third time), roots and debris...  then seeded the green with the new bag of grass seed.  I had already put down 2lbs of seed the other day but that bag only got me less than halfway across the putting green.  A 5lb bag arrived this morning which allowed me to finish the seeding job.  Since I had more than enough seed this time, I just re-seeded the entire putting green again today.   Things are starting to look good.  I put a Fescue mix down in the "rough" or "mini-pitching-fairway" adjacent to the putting green l

S heila and I spent much of the day yesterday doing some rather heavy landscaping work (heavy for us).  It was a productive day but all the work significantly impacted my health.  More on that later.  Yesterday's project was to remove grass from one area and move it to another area so we can have an extended putting green.  It is heavy physical work but it was well worth it in the end.  We want to add a better putting green in the yard, mostly for Lukey, but we also needed grass in the area in front of our trash shed at the front end of the property.  The logical answer was to remove the unneeded grass where we are making the putting green and lay it down in front of the trash shed.  I did the removing of sod while Sheila did all the laying of sod.  That worked out well.  Considering how this affected my health, it would have taken me days to accomplish this on my own.   Digging out the grass is tough work even if there are no complications.  Making this project even more difficult

W e did a photo shoot with Lukey and Kenzie at sunset last night.  At around 6:30 yesterday evening, we headed out for a nearby grassy field where I could put the setting sun behind them.  It worked out fairly well and the kids learned a little bit about the real difficulties of modeling.  The kids learned that good modeling is about knowing which angles and poses work well for you...  about knowing how to express a natural smile and not a forced plastic goofy smile...  about knowing which clothes make you look good...  it is about knowing what to do with your eyes, your hands, your feet, your chin, every part of your body.  What they learned is that modeling is not about simply being a beautiful, attractive person and just standing there but that modeling is actually a verb that requires a lot of knowledge, skills and abilities.   This was good practice for me too.  I haven't done any sort of photo shoot in about two years or more.  Shooting portraits with the sun behind your mode

As most of the east coast deals with a wet and windy tropical storm, we are experiencing beautiful, sunny and mild weather here in our neck of the woods which is really nice. There is definitely a feel of autumn in the air now. The past couple of times that I cut the lawn, I was mowing a leaf-covered lawn... mostly dry greenish leaves but definitely a sign of our approaching autumn season. I wandered outside yesterday morning with a camera in hand to see if anything was worth photographing in the backyard. I found a few things to photograph as the season changes... (I just remembered that I still have photos from earlier in the summer which I have not written about nor shared here... If my health continues to struggle and limit my activities, maybe I'll spend some time collecting some of those photos to share.)

All these delays in our home renovations has really snowballed at this point. My health and the weather were nowhere near in sync and, as a result, so many projects were delayed. Whenever the weather was good, my health was miserable so I could not accomplish anything. Whenever my health was well enough to accomplish a few things, the weather was so lousy that we couldn't get anything accomplished.  Now, the temperatures are below freezing every night and not much higher than freezing during the days. These cold temperatures makes finish work such as staining and polyurethaning impossible to do outdoors.  Unfortunately, I have a lot of wood to stain and polyurethane. Since I can't move all this wood outdoors, I am stuck trying to get it all stained and polyurethaned indoors without ruining our floors, walls, furniture, etc. This means I am stuck inside the small room I am currently renovating. I started staining wood today... I managed to stain half of the wide planks f