Deluge!!

Do you believe weather forecasts? I pay little attention to them, because it seems 90% of the time, no dire prediction comes true. I saw that thunderstorms were predicted before I went to town. I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for nothing to show up. I parked near Great Clips and walked in under a cloudless sky. My back was to the storefront. I enjoyed watching the young woman quickly cut my hair, paid for the service, and sat down to put in my hearing aids. Standing up, I took four steps, turned to the door, and saw the parking lot had disappeared behind a wall of heavy rain. An untranslatable sound escaped from my mouth, to which a male customer responded. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”

I was heading to the physical therapy place next door and quickly ducked under the eave of the building for those few steps. Every so often I go back to ask Fletcher to remove one or two exercises and add something new. The goal is to keep my phone session updated and under 20 minutes. He was the one who suggested I could keep coming back, and he is still willing to make changes for me. I wonder if there is anyone else who does this, but I won’t ask. It keeps me involved and looking forward to something that is essentially boring.

I dropped the envelope with my requests on the desk and asked if I could stay there until the heaviest of the rain passed. Fletcher was working with only one patient, and he included me in the conversation. It was like old times! When the man left, I stayed a few more minutes until the rain finally lessened.

I didn’t expect anything unusual when I opened the door of the car. I got in quickly, and I’m sure my eyes opened quite wide with surprise. I was sitting in a rain-saturated seat! There was nothing to do but keep going. I had forgotten I left the window open about an inch to let the heat escape. Instead, I had invited the rain inside. When I pulled into the garage and got out, I found the back of my jeans was wet from my waist to my knees!

I called the rain a deluge. My expectation that the weather would not change was delusional!

Lazy!!??

When I deal with the garden waterfall, there is always a lot of movement into and out of the screened porch. The remote pump control is inside, as is the water faucet. To add water to the pool, I put the hose in place outside, turn on the water inside, go outside to see when the pool is almost full, turn the water off, and hang up the hose. I described five times going through the door. This particular day I had also trimmed some old plants and watered eight new ones. Was I lazy to leave the gloves on the watering can, instead of hanging them on the handles of the trimmer?

First, I’m a miser by nature. I get pleasure in saving both time and money. The judgment took a few minutes, as I carefully thought of all I had done. I saved steps by temporarily leaving the gloves on the watering can. I wasn’t amused by it until I went back to put things away. It looked so funny to see the empty gloves grasping the handle, ready to move at a moment’s notice. I decided I hadn’t been lazy, after all. I had saved 10 steps to use another day. I will try not to squander them.

Garden Waterfall

Grandson David did the final steps to make the garden waterfall work well again. Husband John and grandsons David and Nathaniel installed it in 2015. Years later, major work was done on it by brother Bob and nephew Chris. It worked well until this spring. Over several days, I cleaned out the five pools. After checking the pump, which had been in the house for the winter, I found there was a clog preventing water from flowing into the upper pool. Another day I pulled out the hose and found nothing visually wrong with it. The flow still was not correct. It was difficult and dangerous for me to step around the pools on the hillside. In despair, I left everything until David could look at it.

David could easily step over the low wall to access the electric connection, and that’s where he began. Like magic, the water flowed again. In putting things back together, David found the remote controller in the overgrown evergreens. Once again, it worked, so I can turn the pump on and off from the porch. David put the slabs of rock back, killing a poisonous black widow spider in the process. As he observed, I would have had nightmares if he hadn’t killed it.

I’m sorry I couldn’t load the video of David sitting with the waterfall. Here is a still photo instead.

We sat on the porch to eat a dessert we’d bought earlier – a soft Brownie with thick dark chocolate frosting and a sprinkling of pecans. It was lovely to hear the falling water as we ate and chatted until after dark. I am inordinately pleased to have the waterfall running again, thanks to David.

Playing on a Cool Day

After walking, I trimmed the periwinkle plants with scissors to keep them from growing under the wood siding. It was very pleasant to be outside when it was sunny and cool. Surely it couldn’t be classed as work! On the way to dispose of the trimmings, I cut back low-growing evergreens that were creeping out of their boundaries.

The heat pumps have been off for several weeks, neither heating nor cooling. Because it was cold last night, the house was cooler than usual. I had a sudden longing for a sweet and sour sauce to go with cooked chicken. That brought up the idea of rice, which reminded me I wanted to boil some eggs. The rice cooker is my method of choice these days. The eggs were done in 20 minutes, and then I used the appliance to cook rice.

While the rice cooked, I looked for a sauce recipe with an Echo device on the kitchen counter. That was no short cut! I flipped through 20 recipes it offered me, and every one of them called for pineapple. It would be one thing if I were cooking a dish from Hawaii, but for a plain sauce, it was overkill. I probably could have found a recipe among my own. Finally a simple one came up. Rice and sauce were ready at the same time, and I put chicken chunks on the rice and covered it with sauce. Oh! What a treat! I might be tired of it three days from now, but today it was perfect. Playing in the kitchen paid off!

Magnificent Neighbors

I had already worked in the garden and taken a shower when I stepped on the porch and heard a chain saw. The sound came from my yard! Going to the bedroom deck, I found D and J taking down a large limb that had split. These wonderful neighbors could see it from their house and offered to remove it several days ago, but I didn’t know when they would come.

I put on garden shoes, picked up gloves, and trotted down with my new garden cart. I couldn’t do much to help, but we loaded small branches in the cart. As I unloaded them onto my growing pile of branches near the back fence, J saw a branch hanging from a nearby tree. It took only seconds for him to cut that branch down, making everything neater.

He returned to the broken limb on the cherry tree, and I watched him position his ladder carefully. D stood by, ready to steady the ladder if necessary. In just a minute or so, the limb made a thud as it landed. Using the saw, J removed little branches and then began cutting the big one into uniform lengths. He made it look so easy. He put it over another log so that where he was cutting was suspended in the air. What was the secret of uniform lengths? He held the saw with the tip at the end, then marked with his eye the spot where the blade ended. Each cut log was a blade length long.

I used D and J instead of their names. If you put the two together, it’s DJ, an abbreviation of disc jockey (someone who selects and plays discs for an audience). They do make beautiful music together as they do yard work.

I have no photographs of this operation, because I’d left my phone in the house. Having already dressed for the day, I was wearing slacks with no pockets. A short video would have shown their ease of working together, but my words will have to suffice. As you can imagine, I’m extremely grateful to D and J for removing that broken branch. You’ve read about only a few hours in the world’s best neighborhood.

Memorial Day

What a marvelous gathering we had on Memorial Day! All the neighbors were here, and the weather was perfect – sunny and cool. I’m sorry about only one thing. I failed to get Logan’s photo. He was not on the porch when we were pausing between the main meal and dessert.

Several years ago it was raining, so Jeff pulled his grill onto my porch. We’ve done that ever since, because he can visit with us while grilling our hot dogs and hamburgers. At one point today there was a lot of smoke pouring out of the grill. Birds in a large bush nearby began to complain loudly, because the smoke was bothering them. We surmised they have a nest there and resented being smoked out. None of us blamed them.

Holly promised to bring deviled eggs as her contribution to the meal. We all love that, because it’s a tedious job to hard boil eggs, make the filling with the yolks, and put the filling in the egg whites. She made it look so easy that I had to take a video. She had put the filling in a plastic bag, then cut one of the corners to squeeze the filling out with a flourish. When she was finished, she just threw the bag away. Brilliant!

This was our first time being together this year, and everyone was catching up with the big news that Joyce is moving this summer. She has signed a contract to sell her house and is going through all the steps that entails. We are pleased that she will be near her two granddaughters, although we will miss her very much.

Shopping with David

Grandson David and I have a routine of having lunch together and shopping for groceries on Friday afternoon. It’s always a high point of my week. Today we went to a pub, the Scotsman, in town. I like taking a photo in the restaurant, but it was very dark. I doubt we would have been able to see ourselves. “Very” seemed to apply to everything there. It was very noisy, because the music was about ten times louder than was comfortable. Thankfully, the food was very good, as well.

I broke the small garden cart that John bought for me years ago. David agreed to go to Walmart with me, looking for a new one. We went up and down the aisles of the outdoor department, not finding a single one. There are hundreds on their web site. David finally spotted one type of cart on a shelf. He lifted one down for me to see. Demonstrating how big it was, he got in it!! I didn’t want to wait a week to see what Lowe’s had to offer, so I bought it. I was very grateful that he carried it out to the car for me. Tomorrow I’ll attach the handle.

My food purchases are minimal, so I’m always through shopping before David is. I go to the one bench in Ingles and wait for him there. He wasn’t going home with me today, so we sat there chatting. Several people greeted him – folks he knows from work and from church. I’ve shopped at that store for 12 years, and I rarely see anyone I know. I’m impressed that he has gotten to know so many people. We took a selfie to mark the occasion.

Dancing Balloons

I was probably a grandmother when I was given my own helium balloon for some special occasion. I hadn’t realized I’d longed for one for years, so of course no one else knew of my obsession with them. It became common knowledge, and I’ve had several balloons every year. I love them when they tug at their tethers, and I talk to them when they sink to my level.

Both balloons had lost some bounce. I opened the door to the back porch, because it was cooler outside than inside. The red Valentine saw an opportunity and escaped out the door, still tied to his clothes pin. He had been bigger than a basketball and just as round when he was new in February. He’s an odd shape now, with a personality to match.

At breakfast time, the Mother’s Day balloon perched on the back of a chair and pretended to chat with with invisible people all around the table. She even turned and watched the Aura frame in the background! We were listening to a Vivaldi CD, which we both enjoyed.

Have you ever noticed that older people who live alone get a little funny in the head??

An Amusing Bagel

Our family used to have bagels on a weekly basis – Sunday morning. I had half a bagel in the freezer and looked forward to eating it after it thawed. I toasted it perfectly for me, lightly browned and slightly crisp. I spread a little butter on it and used up the last of the cream cheese. I spotted the Everything Bagel label in the spice rack, knowing the Everything word was much smaller than Bagel. The “B” was BIG. I shook it vigorously over the bagel. Luckily the bottle was almost empty, because what came out was decidedly green. I had a lovely bagel, now green with ground BASIL! Ugh! I shook off as much as I could and sprinkled Everything Bagel liberally. It was probably the worst bagel I’ve ever had, but it was edible. From now on I’ll wear glasses and turn on a light before retrieving a bottle from that dark cabinet. As proved today, getting old can be quite amusing.

Kate and David

Daughter Kate, grandson David, and I were relaxing on the final day of Kate’s stay. David would put up his hanging seat each time we sat on the porch, keeping it clean from perching birds. Kate has no place to sit outside her home in NJ, so she enjoyed both porches when it was warm enough here.

The next day Kate stopped in the street after backing out of the driveway and offered to pose for her parting photo. Bless her, she knows how I love pictures and knew I’d want a going-away shot. When I told her I’d left my phone charging in the kitchen, she handed me hers! What a thoughtful daughter!! She sent the picture to me after she got home.

Our lives returned to normal, leaving us with lovely memories. At the end of the week, David and I resumed our Friday routine of eating together and shopping for food. I totally forgot to take a photo of us at the restaurant, so David agreed to a selfie at my house. He, too, knows how much I love family pictures.

There was an event at the supermarket that I want to record, because I thought it was so impressive. David has a personal budget of $100 for food. Each week he keeps a running total in his head as he put things in his cart. There were several times he was under budget, and once or twice he went a few dollars over. That day I watched as his total grew closer and closer to the $100 mark. I was holding my breath for the total. Yes!! The total was $99.74!!! I congratulated him, and he just smiled. I couldn’t add two numbers and keep the total in my head while picking out a third item. He had a cart full of food and KNEW he was near the goal!!