On the Road Again

Tomorrow morning I am starting on my journey West. The first leg of the trip is a 13 hour drive to Hayward, Wisconsin where I will visit two of G's sisters and their families. In the "old days" I would try to drive it in one day, but I don't think I will this time. Either that is a sign of getting old or a sign of becoming smarter. I would like to think it is the latter. From there I drive six hours to Mt. Lake, Minnesota to visit my Mom and siblings. I'll be there six days.

Today I am doing the last minute preparations, like mowing the lawn. If I would not have done that, it would be long enough to bale when I returned. G has agreed to feed the cat and the humming birds. Maybe water a couple of outdoor pots of flowers.

I am bringing my laptop along so may post along the way. But no pictures. That will have to wait until I return.

I checked out several books on tape from the library. Actually I have so many that I may have to add two more weeks onto the trip just to have time to listen to them :)

K's Motorcycle

It looks like she is going horse back riding, but no, it is ---

"Motorcycle riding"

Papa finally has K's "motorcycle", as she calls it, running. The battery was poor so he replaced it with two better ones. He also put a control on the throttle so the speed could be regulated. As it was, she could drive it faster than we could run, which did not seem like a good idea, thus the control.

A three year old should probably be supervised. Note this picture. Her Dad and Papa are both looking to the left as she rides toward the opening in the trees and makes her escape into the wide fields! Click on it to enlarge to see the details.

Garden walk

Yesterday I went to a Garden walk with a friend. It is the annual fundraiser for the local YWCA. There were seven gardens. This one was designed by a professional (who me met). Our guess is that it cost at least $100,000.

Besides the overall view, I take pictures of small items I like. This one had a fairy garden. This guy was about 3 inches tall. Click on the picture to get it enlarged to see his expression.

I figured since G has several welders and lots of raw material (sometimes called junk) he could make something like this.

I found this tree striking. Love the bark.

Christmas in July and stories about my son

This Friday through Sunday, G is attending a Vintage Motorcycle show/race at MidOhio, which is a race track about 1 1/2 hours from here. So I socialized on my own. Last night friends from Illinois visited. I made dinner and we spend a relaxed evening looking at my gardens, sitting on the deck and watching a DVD of the Continental Divide trip. This afternoon I went to a "Christmas in July" party. Apparentely this is a popular thing on July 25th. It was at the home of next door neighbors at our previous house. I had a long talk with their oldest son, who is a couple years younger that Shawn. He told me stories of things they did that I was not aware of. He said Shawn understood that when you poured gas on a long stream on the ground and lit one end, you should not be too close to the end. Also, Shawn had made some kind of machine ( if you could call it that) that was to sterilize creek water using solar power. They all drank it. No one got sick, but it really did not get very warm. He also said they climbed on top every building on our property.

My memory of the neighbor boys was this. One night Shawn had a friend over to stay night. I awoke and heard the neighbor boy's voices in his room. Apparently Shawn had thrown a rope out the window and they had climbed up. It was on the second floor. G said there probably are a lot more things I do not know about what they did. I am sure that is true.

Beans, cherries and trees

So far I have been able to keep ahead of the beans. Usually they get too mature, I pick them anyway, and they taste terrible. I found a recipe to make pickles out of them. Just need some pickling spices and I will make a couple pints. We have had an incredibly dry six weeks, but now it is to rain almost every day for the next week. Yea!! There will be hope for the tomatoes, peppers and herbs. That is all I have left in the garden. Today I will pick up 10 # of fresh pie cherries, already pitted. Pie cherries are the tart ones. Pitting is not fun. When we lived in Illinois, we had relatives visiting and they helped pit cherries from two trees we had there. Later I looked at the ceiling and there actually was cherry juice on it. So I am happy to get them already pitted.

Last night I met with a man who is an amateur landscaper, but very passionate about the topic. He still works full time, but sells a few shrubs, trees and perennials from his home. He gave me ideas for lots of types of trees that I can choose from. He is knowledgeable on how to prepare the soil and how to plant the trees. He said it is more important how you plant the trees that what kind you plant. I am working on the plan now so I (should say we) can get them planted this Fall, which is the best time of the year to plant.

Motivation from afar

My health care provider (through Ohio public employees) has a plan in place to help motivate a member to improve their health (sort of a prevention plan). You receive money ($50 for me) if you make a health plan. They then call you every two months to ask how you are doing with the plan. Mine goals were consistent exercising. I chose a brisk walk for 30 minutes three days a week and then do stretches the other days. With all the yard work I have been doing, I have not met my goals. But I am committed to try again. It's not for the money. I know I need to keep limber and keep my strength up. Today I added drinking 32 oz of water a day. So I will sign off and go walk in my woods.

Small town entertainment

Lodi, which is a small town about 5 miles from here, has a town celebration called "Sweet Corn Festival." So last night G and I rode the motorcycle there. He has put a different seat on it but I could not tell in that short distance if was more comfortable. Anyway, the doings are very small town. It consists of the midway and the usual games and vendors. All in less that one square block. They have corn eating contests and such competitions. We like to check it out local events, but decided since we did not know any of the crowd, we probably would not go again. Our dinner was an ear of sweet corn and a bison burger.

Another "rural" event took place this week. G awoke to this loud rustling in the bushes outside. For some reason he did not get up to check it out. We later learned there were nine head of cattle wandering around. Our next door neighbor, who has two cattle in their pasture, ended up letting them in his pasture so they would not be a hazard on the road. It took more than a day for the owners to come around and find them. They had traveled over a mile across fields.

Communicating with animals

Recently I had a conversation with a woman who, with her husband, have rescued greyhound dogs. They currently have five. She told me how she has learned to communicate with animals. They have told her things they are upset with and their names. She can actually hear the words. But the primary conversation was about one dog which had a stroke and she had to have it euthanized. She knew it was ok because of how the dog communicated to her. But the coolest part was that she heard her father's voice saying it was ok (he is deceased) and she saw the dog looking like he was two years old running free on a hill after he left us here. She also saw six "bubble-like" objects, which she felt were angels, surrounding the dog.

The part about hearing her father, brought back a memoryto me. Once I heard my father saying the same thing. I heard his voice saying "It's ok" when I was really upset about something. This was some time after he died. Have any of you had experiences like these? I went on line and read some about this. The writers there said we all have the ability (intuition or whatever) to communicate with animals.

Deck renovation - board by board

As promised here are pictures from the deck project. Hope it makes sense. The first two pictures are "before" pictures. This is the west side.



This is the south side before we started.



This part that projected out (previously had gone around the pool) will be removed.







As you can see this was all manual labor. That is especially hard for DH because he loves to make a machine for every project. He did make the tool he is using to remove the boards.




The view from the north side with all the boards we removed.





This is how it looks from the South side. Next step is to lower this part as it is 9 inches higher than the rest of the deck.

July 4th weekend

The 4th of July weekend has come and gone. And what a weekend it was. On Friday G and I went to a cookout at a friends house. This has become an annual tradition since we can walk through their woods and watch the Medina town fireworks from there. They grill brats and hot dogs and we all bring something to share. This time I brought a chocolate cake and ice cream, since it was G's birthday and he chose that over cherry pie.

On Saturday we took a 100 mile (one way) motorcycle ride with a group of friends. It was one of these slow, scenic rides going there. On the way back G and I went by ourselves since we had seen signs for garage sales and wanted to stop at some. I did find a pair of leather shoes that cover my ankle that I can wear on the bike (for $2 no less).

Buy the time we got back home I was close to being in tears. The seat on the Triumph Tiger is not comfortable for the passenger on a long trip. I would say my area to sit on was about 4 by 8 inches. And I had no back rest so had to hold myself up which uses a lot of muscles. So either we need to try a different seat and get a back rest or fix the Honda Goldwing. The seat on the Goldwing is like a recliner on wheels. I am spoiled. But the ride was very scenic and the weather was perfect.

On Sunday, the 5th, G and I worked on our deck. I will have some before and after pictures on the next blog.

Watching your little boy play volleyball

As you may have read on Shawn's blog, their team won the championship in their group. Last night were the playoffs and Gerry and I were the cheering section. They played three games, won one and lost two, so are out of the running.

They did not seem too devastated and are planning how to do better the next round
which starts this month.