Friday, April 19, 2024

We Are Limited so Baby Steps To Start

The Ridge

On Friday, Apr. 19th it was dark downstairs when I woke up at 7. That meant Bill and Gibbs and been out already and with Gibbs snuggled in Bill’s spot, my sweetie was downstairs either dozing or surfing on his phone. It was very quiet so I went with the latter. He’s a noisy sleeper in his recliner. 😊

Good morning.
Actually, this is lunch.
A poached egg on toast.

We had our tea and coffee and Bill had his cereal as we discussed, what else? the weather today. Another miserable morning, windy and cold with intermittent rain. I guess it means a slow start to our day. We are limited as to what we can do to set up our home base when it is raining. No point in bringing out chairs, the firepit, picnic table etc.

Looks like we're going somewhere, right?
Well, Bill was taking the truck and his tools down to the
end of the lane. Gibbs hopped in. He didn't get far and whined
so much to come back with me, Bill let him out.
He was so confused about who to be with. 💗
It was a good lesson since Daddy will be gone to work
for full days. 

I lounged in my jammies and Bill went through our income tax paperwork. We’d received our T-4’s in the stack of mail we picked up from Donna yesterday so started putting things in order. I’ll drop it all off at our accountants on Monday, the deadline being Apr. 30th. With the ‘junk mail’ and old (over 7 yr. old) tax forms, we have a small box of papers for burning in the pit, when we are able.

When we got outside, after the rain stopped,
Bill cut this broken branch off the tree

I removed the puzzles and my paint drawers from the shower, these things were under the bed, and had my shower. I thought our water pressure would be a real noticeable difference, since we were now using our water pump only, but it was surprisingly strong. I felt like a new woman again! I touched base with Sandy, my laundromat boss, to let him know that I was ready to work when his winter helper was ready to hand it over. He was going to check with her. 😊

I cleaned out the weeds from
the little oval shaped garden.

I’m not sure if I mentioned before that I have ‘retired’ from my work in the auto body shop. M still needs my help for errands into town (me driving, him running) and for his online ads but that decision is a big relief for me this spring. I didn’t mind the work but M has some financial and business issues. Working side by side, listening to how he runs his small business is frustrating and too stressful. Anyway, he was not surprised by my decision since I’d given him a heads-up last fall.  

I also found, what I hope to be, the resolve
to our bird bath issue.

Bill and I had poached eggs on toast for lunch and we all went out into the cool day. It was only 6C/43F so it was important to bundle up. The ground was wet too but at least it had stopped raining. I put Gibbs’ coat on so if he ran around in the grass, he wouldn’t get too wet. I wore my short rubber boots and work gloves.

I asked Gibbs if he wanted to go for a walk.
There was some hesitation (because Daddy was inside)
and then all he wanted to do was roll in the grass.

Bill replaced a bracket on the mailbox post and I took a trowel and managed to weed the small garden out front. One down, many more to go. When I heard the chain saw start up, I knew he was ready to cut the broken branch off our service berry tree. It has had a rough time over the last 3 years and we’ll be cutting it off at the ground soon. The chain saw chain was quite dull but Bill did manage to get the branch cut into pieces.

West and east views of the pond

I’ve been frustrated with our bird bath location for years, as it never sits level, so took the time to dig it out, remove any growth and large rocks, and used one of our ‘wheels’ (for lack of a better word) as a stable base. It is much better and the big rocks should hold it in place when we get our strong gusts. 😊 We’ll see! By then, Bill and I were ready to quit. Gibbs had already stopped and was sitting on the step waiting to come inside. Baby steps today before more rain tomorrow.

Are we reay to go in yet?

I had a cup of tea around 3:30 and then took Gibbs for a walk down the lane. I’ll keep him on the leash when we leave the property but want him to get familiar with his limitations. Bill joined us outside so we moved the picnic table and King chairs out to the yard and then cleaned up the branches. 

Down and back, rewarded all the way.
He walked really well (okay, he ran some too)

For supper, I made up a hamburger stew of sorts. It involved carrots, celery, onion, mixed vegetables, rice and some brown beans for good measure. My friends from Minnesota call it goulash, so that is what we’re having. With some crumbly biscuits, it was a filling meal and tasted great.

The daffodils are my only flower - so far
but lovely.
The peony bush is getting its leaves too.
I hope we have lots of blooms this year.

There is enough for at least one more meal, maybe two, which is always nice. I received a call just before we ate from Sandy. I’m starting tomorrow at cleaning the laundromat. 😊 I’m happy about getting back into the routine of every other day. 

Stew and biscuits

No word on when I’m needed for the Air bnb cleaning but that will get busy soon enough. The sun came out after 3, in spurts, and the sky was mostly blue by suppertime.

I finished my last J.E. book this morning
so got out my Kobo, charged it up and need to remember
how to download the rest of her series onto it. LOL

Gibbs is up to his old tricks already. Sits to go out as we sit down to eat and then just lays on the grass. Tonight, he stayed out there, inching closer to the stoop to make sure we saw him, for about 10 minutes. What a cute little bum!  

Just like a child out there, hiding from the parents.

It turned into a wonderful day, even with the cold wind. You don’t want to know what may happen overnight. Fingers crossed they are wrong but it wouldn’t be unusual.

The clouds disappeared so there was no
special sunset tonight but at least we had one!
Good night!
(I wonder if it will be white in the morning?)

Thank you for the visit!

Thursday, April 18, 2024

A Run-Around-Day, Family Visit

The Ridge

On Thursday, Apr. 18th, it was our day to take care of the most important errands. I was up by 7:30 and we had our tea and breakfast together. There is one thing (of many) that we are relishing in here at home in relation to Gibbs. Yesterday, he cracked us up with his Ridge zoomies and it was then that we realized how wonderful it is to just open the door and let him out to do his business. 😊

This morning, I took a walk
around the property
Sad to see this tree broke over the winter

We both bundled against the 6C/44F and wanted to believe that the rain would hold off until midnight. That didn’t become reality and as I walked around, Gibbs ran around and Bill puttered around, we were getting wet. We didn’t have the strong winds today which helped in a big way. Bill opened the sheds and outhouse yesterday so today he opened his cargo trailer and the Hangar. Until the weather cooperates, we won’t be moving too much out.

Our sheds - very wet from the rain
The Hangar on the left
My flower garden and Bunky/She Shed on the right

Bill's Hangar - top
(woops, same pix)
Storage shed and outhouse on bottom

Before 9, Bill had taken the mail box down to the road and then we drove to our regular mechanic to book Black Beauty in for an oil change. That was our first roadblock. Grey Bruce Fleet no longer does them, their business being mostly on big diesel trucks. They recommended a couple of places in the area to check out. From there, we drove to Murray’s to pick up Ptooties.

These blue spruce trees grow like crazy

My little Rav 4 waited all winter for me in his barn. We’ll get Jazz, our Yamaha, on the first suitable day to bring her home. On the way, we stopped at one of the shops about the oil change but they didn’t deal with trucks as big as BB, so it was down to one more place to try. On the way back, I took Ptooties to fill our two 5-gallon water bottles. A little chit chat with Mark, and then I stopped at Bath & Biscuit to make an appointment for Gibbs to get groomed in May.

When you see the plane, you know you're at Murray's



Bill went to the hardware store in town, to fill our water bladder and then to check out A & E Automotive on the way home. He, thankfully, was able to make an appointment for the oil change before he returned home. We had some lunch while the water was being transferred and then we carried on with the errands. We drove to Priceville, to the post office, to cancel the “HOLD” on our mail but this was our second stumble. They were closed for another half hour.

Happy to have my car back

Okay, we’ll go to Hanover first to Donna and Gerry’s and pick up our mail. It was a fair bit of back and forth, at a time where gas is an absolutely ridiculous price, (it jumped 14¢ overnight), but fortunately we’d left Ptooties with a full tank. It was nice to see family again and have a great visit catching up. We left around 3 and went back to the post office to take care of business there. That was it for the running around. Inside, we relaxed until supper time.

Our pond

Our second trip to Priceville

The boys dozed and I read my book. It’s coming to its end and I’ll have to move on to a different author. I’m having so much fun with these stories. Supper was restaurant fare. I had liver and onions with pepper squash and Bill had fish and corn. There wasn’t enough fish for both of us and he doesn’t like liver – at all. We cleaned up, loaded and ran the dishwasher and watched The Voice together while I worked on my blog.

The liver was cooked perfectly!

Gibbs was cuddling with Daddy after we ate
He has been a good little boy today

This was a good day and we got a lot taken care of. Hopefully, the rain holds off tomorrow so I can get out to do some raking in the gardens and the laneway. Bill is overjoyed to hear that our chorus frogs are back and in terrific harmony! (sarcasm at its best!) They are so loud! 💗 On another note, today we wish our grandson, Connor, a very happy 19th birthday! 

Happy Birthday, Connor!

We didn't see the sun all day...............so it was 
a surprise to see it preparing to set.
Good night!

Thank you for popping in.