I've been watching You Tube videos of people who are 'homesteading'. Living off their land. Lots of growing food, raising animals for food, canning and preserving, baking - even making homemade eggnog. I love the idea of learning new skills and trying different things so while we are most definitely still relying on the grocery store for our food, I am saving videos to try new things. Homemade eggnog for the holidays is a definite 'on the list'. It will also justify the canning jars I'm saving for no reason other than you never know when you can use them.
It's been three weeks since I last posted and I have no explanation for that other than the days fly by.
Landscaping took 3 weeks total but the finished result was worth the wait. Here are some pics:
We are very proud of the labyrinth which we did entirely by ourselves. It was pretty clear the landscapers weren't sure what to do so we knocked it out in about six hours split into three sessions. Early evening or morning to keep the heat down. Once we got going on it, it was fun to watch it come together and on Monday morning when the landscape company owner stopped by to check in, I answered the front door and he said 'hey, labyrinth making people!'. He agreed it was awesome.
The birdbaths are getting used very frequently - I keep trying to capture the spa days in progress on video but they are fast. Yesterday, there were two blue birds taking some very serious baths - flapping around so much it just looked like water splashing - the bird creating it was pretty much invisible. It was amazing and I sure hope to get it on video soon.
A neighbor we hadn't met before visited last week to see what we had been working on - the labyrinth. Her house is across from ours with the 12th tee area between us. She commented on the birdbaths - how the birds will 'poop all over the fence'. Yep, they do. Guess what? Bird poop washes off. She also commented that in the future, we will probably need to remove plants because they will expand so much. Um, no, we WANT the yard to be full of huge plants and are willing to wait a few years for that...and will take care in pruning, shaping, trimming when the time comes.
When she left and was well out of earshot, I said 'wow, she's a ray of sunshine, isn't she?' to no one in particular.
It's all how you look at it, my friend. I've got plenty of things to obsess and overthink - but bird poop on our back fence isn't one of them.
About a week after landscape completion, we have voles or moles attacking the plants in the front yard. They will (potentially) kill all the plants - so needless to say, we are on it. We bought some 'sonic sound' emitters which may deter them. We've also ordered some nasty smelling pellets which they hate the smell of. (Hoping we don't hate the smell of them as well but...we'll see. If they keep them away, then the smell might be worth it). I'm lining up a host of other options which may involve mayhem and death (of them) but hopefully, we won't need it. Another non-harm method is using peppermint oil and putting cloth or cotton balls soaked with the oil near the plants. We'll roll out any and all approaches in the upcoming weeks.
The 'punch list' has revealed a couple 'big' things. The builder has agreed to have all closet and pantry shelving redone - the shelves will be removed, cleaned, sanded and re-painted. It's a huge amount of work for us and the company doing the work - I'm kicking myself for doing a stock up trip this week so the pantry has a lot more food that it did a week ago - but it's got to be done.
My friend C. visited last week - while she was of course welcome to stay here, I wanted to treat her to some 'me' time (for her, not me) and got her a room at Atlantis and booked her a massage. We spent two evenings and a good chunk of last Thursday here at the house hanging out. We played slots a bit and I had one of my most extraordinary winning streaks on a Dragonlink machine with her cheering me on. It was lovely. During our preparing for her visit, I cleaned the pantry door and realized something was very wrong. The glass insert was 'moving' as I wiped and then it became clear that the edges of the glass insert were 'shattering'. Turns out the door is warped so they will be replacing the entire door.
We're also still having issues with the 'combination' lock on the man door from the garage to the side yard. And still have tile and grout work to be fixed as well.
I struggle with the 'people here' concept of all this stuff but it has to get done so I'll deal.
B. is winding down his deployment in Texas and will hopefully be returning to KY later this month. His leave status is a bit up in the air at the moment because he's got some irons in the fire for where he'll land next. We know we will see him before the end of 2020 - we just don't know when - and whenever it is, we'll be thrilled.
H. started his new job with Dr. Pepper Keurig and is loving it. He gets home nightly absolutely exhausted but he is loving the work and the company seems really great.
J. had his first (of two) planning sessions for his radiation treatment and he will have the second planning session next week. Radiation treatments will start the week after and so far, he's aiming for a 4:30 time daily. That leaves his mornings free for golf.
On October 7th, Salvation Army will arrive to haul away most of our furniture - Lazy Boy has most of what we ordered but the dining room furniture has been delayed until November. We plan to accept delivery of all they have in October and then we'll wait for the dining room - no choice. So we've worked on moving some items out to the garage - the small purple couch I bought online from Overstock.com a while back (way before we knew we were moving) is in the garage now. J. and I flipped it over and did a repair of the underside where the cats had been scratching. The repair worked fine - glad I had some fabric scraps we could use as cover - it's really a cute couch and if we had room, we'd keep it - but we don't so out it goes.
Guess that's pretty much the news to report for now. Days just blend one after the other and I guess it's a retirement joy to just let them flow. Nothing super pressing to worry about and while there is always plenty to do, I treasure being somewhat slow on inertia. After decades of always feeling hurried, rushed and urgently busy, it's lovely to just let the time go.
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