Catch up posts

I have noticed to my chagrin that I have not posted for over a month. To catch up I will pick events from the last month and tell about them, with pictures too. We had our annual holiday dinner for the friends we see every Monday night for dinner (at a restaurant). The hit of the menu was the dessert, which was Panna Cotta with a blackberry sauce.

The other ongoing tradition is to have a "White Elephant" gift exchange. I looked up the term "white elephant on Wikipedia and found this explanation: "The term "white elephant" refers to an extravagant but burdensome gift which cannot be easily disposed of, supposedly after the King of Siam gifted rare albino elephants to courtiers who had displeased him, that they might be ruined by the animals' upkeep costs." Below is a picture of our friend, Ed, opening the gift Gerry brought.

Guests are allowed to "steal" the gift from others.  Here Jerry is contemplating that. It was rather funny since I heard some wives saying "Don't you dare!"

In CA

Tomorrow we will have been in San Francisco for a week.  The last three days G and I were alone with the grand kids. Their parents headed to Vegas for a getaway.  I always forget the high level of energy that they have. We have had a great time.  Saw the movie "Big Hero 6", went for a long bike ride, and have played lots of games.  They are happy just making up a game, like choosing a word and thinking of as many rhyming words as possible.  Pictures will follow after we return home.  K (granddaughter) said she was really looking forward to Thanksgiving when she saw the desserts that I have been making.  G has been doing a few repairs around the house.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Music to work by

Today I spent a couple wonderful hours stripping the leaves from the dried herbs while I listened to piano concertos by Yuja Wang on Youtube.  I do get a little sidetracked in watching.  I cannot fathom how they play from memory and how fast their fingers move.  It is such a treat to be in the front row of the concert.  The rest of the day was more routine: defrosting the freezer and spreading straw on the perennials.  But even that was fun for me.  G would never understand that!

Book Club

Book club met at my house on Monday.  There were 18 members here.  My responsibility was to have enough room for them to sit and provide refreshments.  I made tortilla roll sandwiches and a pumpkin cake roll which has a cream cheese filling.  At the end of the meeting I offered to cut fresh herbs for anyone who wanted some. I know a killing frost would be here any day and there still were a lot out there.

The book we discussed was Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior. I found it an interesting read, others felt it was too wordy.  What interested me was the interaction between a young women from the hills of Tennessee and scientists who were there to study the Monarch butterflies.  Besides the plight of the butterflies due to global warming, it showed how people are sort of locked into their ways of thinking if they are not exposed to the outside world.

Happy Halloween

Since we live out in the sticks, we do not get any Trick or Treaters.  Each year I do not bother to even decorate for Halloween, sometimes not even for Fall.  This year was different as I decided to throw a party.  There were 18 guests, plus G and myself.  We encouraged them to come in costume.  Here are a few of the guests:

Beauty and the Beast

Flapper and  The Scream

Cowboy and Arab woman

Flashers

Black Eyed Peas and Cereal Killer 

Carol Burnett's mother and an aviator.

Keep in mind these guests are between the ages of 65 and 90.  You can never say we are "old foggies".  We played some games, had great snacks and plenty of wine.  

I am so bored - not!

I was looking at my calendar at the dates since I last posted, to see what I could write about.  It looked like this:  Monday night we had dinner with a group of motorcycle riding friends (which we do every Monday), on Tuesday I had lunch with women from my AAUW book club (which we do every Tuesday and we hardly discuss books, just our lives and world events) , on Wednesday G and I attended the monthly meeting or our British car club, on Friday our monthly dinner group of four couples met, on Saturday we went to a bonfire at a members of the car club, on Sunday I attended the 50th Anniversary party of the AAUW group I belong to, on Monday G and I drove to the Museum of Natural Science in Cleveland where we listened to a talk by a couple we know who rode their motorcycle on the Silk Road (about a 3 month trip). Tuesday I went to the dentist. During this time G was getting his bike ready for the Hatfield-McCoy ride in West Virginia.  He left this morning to return on Sunday.  What do we do in our retirement you ask?  Oh, yes, we also put down 4 cubic yards of mulch, I made pesto, --I will stop. I am getting tired just writing this,  But life is full, interesting and fun.

Usual activities

For a gift last Christmas I received the book, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward Smith.  He advocates planning your garden so that you have walking paths in it so you don't walk on the planted area and compress it.  I had tilled my garden earlier so made plots and then delineated the paths with cardboard.  I plan to then cover the cardboard with straw.  I only have tomatoes and basil in it this year.  One plot will be for garlic that I will plant this Fall yet.  My friend who gave me the garlic to plant said to plant it when the moon is Full Moon in October.  

Two years ago G said we needed to replace the mowers that I use.  I have learned to never mow unless he is home to repair them during the mowing.  This is what they currently look like.  The deck is so worn through that he can no longer weld it so he has resorted to repairing it with wood.  I guess if it still works, why get a new one!   It did make me smile while using it, because this is rather pitiful. So stay posted as to what happens.

Busy week

I know it is a bit late for this, but Happy Birthday to me.  I told my granddaughter that I was putting two candles on my cake, a 7 and a 0.  She said "Good, I am glad you didn't put 70 candles on it, that would have been too much."  Since it was right before the Pig Roast, a friend made the cake for me.

My two sisters were visiting which was great. I think it was more of a working vacation than a relaxing one.  Thank you to both of them.

We had about 110 people at the party.  Next year we need a bigger tent.

These friends are resting after cutting up the meat.  We did not get a whole pig this year, just 9 pork butts.  No one seemed to miss seeing the whole pig.  

This is the welcoming tent, where we gave out name tags (and took donations).  

Cleaning and weeding

Most of my energy these days is getting the house and yard ready for the visit of about 110 people on Saturday (the annual pig roast).   We will have eight house guests for the weekend also.  I feel like things are under control, although there always are more things on the "to do" list.

Since I had two  three-week vacations this summer, the weeding in the landscaping got ahead of me.  Fortunately it has rained a lot so it is easy to pull them out.  I also received a birthday gift of eight iris rhizomes (Thank you Gill) but I needed to find a permanent home for them.  I have chosen the south side of my house to be the iris garden.  I now have twelve different colors of iris planted there.  In case you haven't figured it out, iris is my favorite flower.  So be prepared for lots of iris pictures next year.

Regarding the weeding, I thought of putting before and after pictures, but the before ones were too embarrassing.

Great Accomplishment

After returning to Ohio, having ridden with Gerry on the Goldwing,  Frank was presented with this Certificate.  The last time he had ridden a two-wheeler was at age 19 (50 years ago) on his Lambretta scooter. I had to ask what the definition of "pillion" was.  It is riding as a passenger, behind the rider.

Certificate of Achievement

awarded to

Dr. Frank Pearson

Pillion Passenger 101

Bravely (naively) endured first 500 mile (805 km) day

530 actual miles on July 26, 2014

Pillion Passenger 102

Riding in the rain

“If you don’t ride in the rain you don’t really ride”

Pillion Passenger 201

Completed a total of 1168 miles (1880 km)

July 26 to August 4, 2014

________________________________

signed

Gill, Beth and I went to Chicago for a couple days while the guys stayed longer looking at airplanes.  One day was at the Art Institute of Chicago.  One of my favorites exhibitions was the "Miniature rooms".
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/thorne

These miniature rooms are 1 inch to every foot in actuality.  The detail was amazing.    A second exhibit I loved was the paper weight collection.

EAA week

On July 26, Gerry and Frank geared up and started their 500+ miles trip from our house to Oshkosh,WI.  F had not been on a bike for many years, but was challenged by the trip.  Beth, Gill and I came by car. Another long drive, since I was the only driver.  But we made it fine.

This was the camper the five of us stayed in.  It worked out well.  The kitchen was a nice size as were the sleeping areas.

Now for some pictures of what we saw at the EAA show.

On a sad note, in the ultralight section G saw this memorial to Frank B, who taught him to fly his ultralight years ago.  Frank died last year.  He was very active with the ultralights at EAA. 

A whirlwind three weeks

Our guests from the UK have come and gone.  We spent a couple days after they arrived giving them time to acclimate to the time change.  There were here for the anniversary of Andrew's death.  It was good for us to be together.  We lit a candle which we burned for over 24 hours, with a picture of Andrew and some flowers.  I found it a very special way to remember him.  It was a time of sharing our sadness with his family and a time of remembering.

We had the other in laws visiting too (Stacey's parents)

Then we found out what Gill's passion really is!  She is an excellent gardener.  She took her time to get every weed out and used the fork to loosen the soil in my flower beds.  Hope I can keep them that good.

The whole family helped with the lawn mowing. Sure looks like they are having fun.

My next post will be on the next part of our time together.

Always an engineer

The last week has been one of nonstop projects, especially for G.  The Camry needed new brakes.  It turned out to be a 2-3 day project, since some of the  parts were so difficult to get on.  Then, I noticed a water spot in the ceiling of the hallway -  right below the upstairs toilet. He took the leaking toilet out and has spent a couple days repairing the rotted floor before replacing it.  This is the second toilet that has sprung a leak since we moved here.  My guess is that it was not installed correctly.  Since he "over engineers" everything, I don't think it will need to be done again while we live here.

Speaking of "over engineering", that is what he was accused of when he built a ramp to load a tractor that he bought.  I must say it worked flawlessly.

More of trip, and baking

It used to be that one of my favorite things to bake was muffins.  Now it is bread.  The hamburger buns are so much better than store bought.  G really likes them too. It is so easy when the kneading is done with the stand mixer and I have a "proof" setting on my oven. I have learned that the key is to be patient and let it raise slowly.  

To change the subject, I love looking at clouds.  At one time on our trip, there were clouds like this on either side of us.  We almost managed to get through before the rain hit.

Here we just enjoyed seeing the fluffy clouds with mountains in the background.

Minnesota has between 1000 and 1200 wind turbines to generate electricity.  We past this field, which had at least a hundred.

Home again

We have been home almost a week now, having ridden 4,600 miles on the Goldwing.  We experienced rain, gusty winds and heat.  But the bike did not break down and neither did we.  Gerry is not the only one who can nap on the trailers.

We arrived home at 8 pm on Tuesday and promptly started up the lawn mowers.  I ended up mowing in the dark, using the tractor headlights. Now our property looks lived in again.  

We could tell we were near home when we came upon this.  If you look closely, there are an Amish couple sitting on top of the loose hay rack.

Gerry  promptly left again.  He is at the Mid Ohio Vintage Motorcycle event. He plans his life around that every year.  If he has any exciting pictures, I will post them when he returns.  

In the Midwest

This is a typical view as we drive through Iowa and Nebraska.  It is just a view of fields for hours at a time.  As we ride, we seems to stop at a lot of ice cream stores.  A popular one is Culver's.

Visiting family

A few months ago I bought my first tablet.  It has been quite a learning curve for me to learn how to use it.  I have learned that I must just try things to learn.  All that 

said, this will be my first blog post with the tablet.

Grandson, Bryce, received a kit from his other grandfather.  We are visiting him in CA now and he asked G to help him put it together.  They have spent at least two hours on it already and are only half done. 

Rain will not stop

We really would like to mow our lawn and maybe plant a few things in the garden or flower beds.  But the rain will not stop.  We are lucky to not get the 4 inches that a neighboring town did.  I did get the herb garden planted.  It seems to be thriving.  So G and I spent some time in the basement sorting and organizing. My next step is to get the items in boxes for the thrift store.

On Mother's Day G and I went on a motorcycle ride. We stopped to see the Yard Art that a friend has. They hauled this  bull from a neighboring state. Can't you just imagine driving down the freeway and seeing this in a trailer ahead of you.

G was gave me a gift of something I really wanted.   It is what I call "Black Gold".  It is well rotted horse manure and sawdust.  A friend loaded and delivered it.  He was stuck at his place and ours because it was so muddy.