Scattered Thoughts . . .

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...

M ost of our 50 tulips have bloomed in our playhouse gardens.  We have two new gardens flanking each side of the steps leading up to the playhouse.  Kenzie and Gee did a good job at planting last fall.  Thanks to Will and Sue's gift of tulip bulbs and Gee and Kenzie's work, we now have two very colorful tulip gardens in front of the playhouse! A few days ago, we started to worry about whether this tulip garden idea would work in this location.  The few tulips that had bloomed weren't looking all that healthy.  They were wilting a bit and the long leaves were sort of curling over.  Actually, even those that hadn't bloomed yet weren't looking too healthy either.  So, we were a bit worried. We weren't sure if maybe there is too little sun (which is true since these gardens are under a big tree) or if these young tulips were already somehow diseased in some way.  I determined that the soil may have been a bit too wet especially for two gardens that ar...

Sometime after midnight last night, I got up out of bed and wandered to the bathroom.  On my way to the bathroom, I passed by one of our windows and instantly noticed that the ground was covered in white stuff! This morning, I awoke to a little snow squall outside our windows and everything was blanketed in clean, soft white...   It is not yet after Memorial Day weekend so this snowy weather should come as no surprise.  After all, we are almost as far north as southern Alaska (54° latitude vs 45° latitude) .  Sheila, however, is in a bit of a lousy mood over the snow.  She's usually done with snow falling from the sky by mid-January.  Personally, I like when the muddy brown spring landscape is covered in fresh snow.  The snow hides the lack of vegetation and all the mud while it blankets everything in a clean soft look.  Plus, spring snow always melts on its own requiring absolutely no shoveling (almost always anyway). On the pos...

We had a mild dusting today of yellow... pollen!   Actually, we've never seen pollen this thick and heavy here before...

Although the weather is beautiful today for working outdoors, I am in 'recovery mode'. My spinal pain, at rest, is in the 7-8 range on the 10 point pain scale.  Yesterday, I dug and installed footings for the roof covering our grill/outdoor kitchen area. Then, I jacked up the adjoining playhouse to raise it four inches to match the roofline I need for this new roof over the grill/outdoor kitchen area. This work proved to be far too much for my spinal injuries.  Anything I do adds inflammation to my spinal injuries but I've been doing a lot of things lately which require a lot of bending over and that is never good for my spine. I don't think I slept more than a total of one hour last night! My spine was so inflamed that it was excruciating just lying in bed. I spent the night very carefully and very slowly tossing and turning trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. It didn't work. I simply could not sleep. So, today is a down day for my health.  As I s...

Snow lightly falling and covering my sailboat. It looks like I'll be indoors again today since it is snowing out there again. One of these days I'll be able to pull my tools outside to get some carpentry done! I also need to get the sailboat and kayaks ready for our journey to the lake house in a few weeks. Today, since it is cold and snowy, I'll be looking for things to keep me occupied indoors... which should be easy...  My desktop computer started whistling again late last night and fixing this is a project I've been putting off for about six months. The whistling comes and goes and gets annoyingly loud. In fact, it gets so loud that it is even tough to hide the whistling by playing music.  I'm fairly sure I've isolated the problem to my power supply. My plan is to order a power supply this morning... and, while I'm ordering parts needed for my computer, I'll also order a graphics processing unit.  I'm taking a course in videography ...

It would be absurdly silly to complain about awaking to some snow falling out of the sky this morning after a winter of rain and mud so I'm not complaining at all... It definitely looks nicer out there this morning than yesterday morning... fresh snow covering dead leaves, mud, dead grass, more mud, and bare trees.... I suppose getting the boats ready for the lake is on hold for now... I usually cover the grill but this snowfall caught me by surprise. At least I hadn't already opened up the bedroom wall to install a window alcove yet.  I actually have some things to accomplish indoors... including finding the paint brushes I put away after renovating our bedroom in December so that I can paint this other bedroom...

I'd really love to find the energy to get up early... just before sunrise... grab my photography gear, including my tripod, and head out to shoot some early morning landscapes of the new spring growth... preferably on a morning with a dewy, misty, foggy, moody atmosphere as the sun begins to appear. Unfortunately, the weather has been rather lousy the past few days so I have no desire to get up early just to be frustrated and disappointed by attempting to shoot photos in the rain, with poor light, and generally lousy conditions. My health has been rather lousy the past few days as well and, when this happens, very little gets accomplished in my little world. I have, however, managed to capture a few photos of our spring season in the past few days. New leaves emerging from buds Now that the springtime rains have started, I don't think I'll be getting out there with my photography gear again until after most of the blooming has occurred. In the meantime, I have managed...

We had a very late start to summer this year due to some snowfall in April and May. I couldn't plant anything until very late in May because the ground was still frozen. We even had some piles of snow and chunks of ice leftover through Memorial Day weekend which still needed to thaw. Needless to say, we by-passed spring altogether and summer has been late. This morning, while I was staining our front deck (a continuation of yesterday morning's little staining project... and a project which will continue into tomorrow morning), I noticed that we are finally beginning to get some flowers in our wildflower gardens around the house. We have three good-sized wildflower gardens and, oddly enough, the garden which is doing best this year is a garden which hardly had any growth in previous years. Maybe our other two gardens are a bit tired and need a year of rest. After cleaning up from my staining project, I decided to grab one of my cameras to attempt to capture a few shots.....