Oh, the Pressure (washing)

Yep, it's that time of year again. Time to pressure wash things around the city house. We have an over abundance of very large oaks that keep everything nice & shaded but does allow mildew to form quite easily. We moved everything off & away from the areas to be washed.

We got the front patio/walkway done on Saturday afternoon but didn't get any pics (thought I had some old ones but couldn't find them). Anyway, the heat index was around 110 degrees - it was HOT & HUMID! And, the pressure washer wasn't working as well as it should. We had loaned it out last weekend & when it came back, the loanee had not drained all the water out of the pump, hoses, etc. According to Greg, this is a big no no. It was working but just didn't have as much pressure as it should have. Live & learn. He said we were never loaning it out again (we'll see).

We got an early start on Sunday & were able to get the front porch, driveway planter & back patio done. Rain was forecasted but had not yet arrived when we started around 9:00a. With the spraying water, it was like a fog bank for several hours. It then rained on & off the rest of the morning so wasn't quite as hot.

Here are the before & after pics of the planter & back patio:

Fog bank. It just held on the ground the whole morning.

 

Still wet, dried to a much brighter white (see below). Nelly approved.

The worst part, I think, is putting everything back (I still haven't put the front porch back together).

Here's a pic of the back patio with our new (to us) patio table & chairs.

The old table was on it's last legs & most of the boards had rotted through. We had painted the whole set a couple of years ago, hoping to get another year out of it & we did. But, it was beyond repair. The chairs are still in decent shape. Pressure washed them as well & will be transporting them to the country this weekend.

I found this set on one of the FB swap pages that I am a member of. It is a very high quality set (Hanamint) that we got for a great price. It is cast aluminum & has some paint flaking but we will eventually pressure wash it & repaint.

Rister likes it too.

Oh well, gotta run to the grocery store & then get dinner started (Lamb Shanks & potato cakes tonight).

Hope everyone has a great upcoming 4th of July. Stay safe, cool & dry.

Weekend in the City

We stayed in the City last weekend to get some limbs & bushes trimmed. The weather was perfect but those limbs got bigger & bigger, or seemed to anyway.

We decided to try our hand at grafting again. I wrote about our first experience here:  Plant Experiment. We got 10 plants out of that one & I'm happy to report that 9 are still alive.

We did 20 Loropetalum & 3 Camilias. Hopefully our success rate will be better this time.

As we were cutting back the Loropetalum we ran across this guy:

This blog is turning into a reptilian site. This one was as calm as the other one & only about 1/2 as long & 1/2 as big around. But, with different pattern & coloring. I need to get a snake book to identify what critters we have hanging around.

Rister isn't doing his job very well.

The hawks were very active & screeching at one another for about an hour or so. Then the owls started but it was too dark to get a picture of any of them.

Went to visit FIL after we were done, then came home, gave Nelly a bath, had an adult beverage & ate a steak with a twice baked potato. Overall a very nice weekend with a couple of semi-major projects finished.

It Finally Produced!

I put two cut off & dried pineapple tops in one of my very shady beds in the city, about 8 or 10 years ago. I check them occasionally & remove any debris but no pineapple has ever grown in either one .... until now.

Woo hoo!

Friend or Foe?

This guy was in the bushes at the City House. Right where I have to trudge through to turn on the faucet. He's about 3 or 4 foot long & about as big around as a quarter.

An Update! (Picture Heavy)

Didn't realize it had been almost a month since I posted! I've been in the country taking care of a few things. We went up over Memorial Day & got a lot of stuff done on the apartment. We got the appliances placed in the kitchen & the shop pretty well cleaned up. I stayed the following week to get the baseboards finished painting & the gas hooked up to the stove.

Here's an updated pic of the kitchen. Still have to put the panels on the island & the countertops ordered & installed, but it's coming along.

The best news of all ......... We got the pantry started. One side is done & just need additional pins to hold the shelves for the other side. Now all I need to do is fill it up!

These are the shelves that I got at the World Market going out of business sale in January 2015 ($15 each). Three & 1/2 on each side. Greg had to cut the 1/2 one & fabricate the shelves but as usual, he did a great job. Once the shelves were up we decided that we needed a top in order to make full use of the space. There is no way we could have purchase wood to make this shelving for $105. It would have cost twice or maybe even three times that much. I can't wait to get it finished & start moving stuff in!

We got the grass mowed & everything cleaned up around the yards. Also had these for dinner one night, along with some potato salad.

The following weekend I hosted a small cousins get together to swap recipes for a family cookbook that I agreed to coordinate. We'll see how that turns out. Everyone is so eager to get one done but only a few actually take action to make it happen. I've got until the end of the year to use the software to get it finished for printing in January. So far, myself & only a couple of cousins have added 75 recipes, 50 of which are mine (or friends & MIL). Oh well, I'm not going to stress about it, if they don't contribute by the deadline then it's their loss.

Anyway, it was a lovely week, even if it was a bit HOT & no rain ALL week. It did cool down enough at night that it wasn't unbearable like it is in July & August. The mornings were nice until around 10:00a then you definitely wanted to find shade. I watered trees most every day, all the established ones are doing good. The ones I planted last October are struggling but I'm crossing my fingers. TS Colin brought some much needed rain to the area the day after I left.

Each morning as I was enjoying my cup of coffee, this guy showed up to spray the surrounding fields.

I have seen them do this before but not so many days in a row. The only thing that is different is that the field is planted in corn instead of squash, melons, cotton, etc. The fields behind my Dad's place & directly behind our lot are pretty small so it was pretty impressive to see his skills in getting to those. I'm sure it's pesticide he was spraying but there was no wind & he was very precise. Most mornings on his direct approaches I could see his face, he was that low.

He flew & sprayed a different direction each day. Although I don't like pesticides being sprayed, it must be an awesome job to get to get paid to fly each day.

In othere news, the Crepe Myrtles are doing great!

And Nelly enjoyed her time in the country as well.

I'll end with this parting shot. Thought it was pretty cool & shows that the property is not all completely flat. This is looking from the barn down the driveway through the branch.

Chicken Pot Chicken Pot Pie

Didn't know what to make for dinner so decided to use what I had on hand.

Home canned chicken & home canned veggies (corn, peas, celery & carrots) fresh potatoes, additional fresh carrots, onions. Sauteed all fresh veggies & then made a roux (1/3 c. flour) in the same pan (3/4 c. stock & 1 - 1.5 c. milk). Added chicken, canned & fresh veggies. Let cool to almost room temp.

Already had the pie crust in balls in the freezer which I took out to thaw earlier.

Rolled dough for bottom crust & then put in dish then added cooled filling.

Put top on & pinch just like my grandma used to do.

Bake for 1 hour & 30 minutes

Let cool for 30 minutes then enjoy!

Country Tree & Weed Update - Plus a Lady Fidget Quilt

Went to the Country last weekend. Summer is mowing season for us. Greg works until 1:00p on Saturday. We leave the city & arrive around 4:00p. Jump on the mowers & mow until dark.

This is only the 2nd time mowing this year. We are about 5 weeks behind due to the rain earlier in the season. Greg went the weekend I was at the quilt retreat only to find the larger 72" mower had a mechanical problem so he had to mow with my our 60". First mowing took almost 6 hours & a lot was still too wet to mow.

There was also string trimming to be done around all the trees & crepe myrtles. We usually only have to trim once or twice a year .... thank goodness.

But we got it done. Here are a few pics from around the place:

Oranges!

Peaches about the size of a 50 cent piece

Pretty blue weeds along fence line

Honeysuckle

Lots of it!

Pretty white weed bush. Lots & lots of these along the fence

Blackberry growing under In-Laws porch.

One of the Cherry Bark Oaks planted in 10/15. Birds seem to love it.

And last but not least, I made a Lady Fidget Quilt I mentioned in my last post.

Quilt Retreat 2016 & No Water

Went to our annual quilt retreat last week. It was in Lancaster, same as last year, you can read about the facilities here: 2015 Retreat. I got the same room with a separate entrance & private porch. It worked out great as I had Nelly with me this year. She became our official retreat mascot. A little skittish at first but by the end she had settled in quite nicely & everyone really liked her. Especially because she is so quiet, she would only bark when someone new came around.

Met some new ladies, many of whom are master quilters. Way out of my league but I had a great time anyway. Food, as usual, was excellent. Got to get back on the diet & exercise routine.

I must say my quilting skills are slowly improving. Here are a couple of projects I worked on:

Lap quilt top made w/fabic I had in my stash.

Started on a baby quilt. Plan on putting borders on each square.

More stash fabric. This will be a wall hanging or table topper.

The lady who owns the B&B is so very sweet & kind. Her husband died a few years back, from complications of Alzheimer's. My friend Debbie, who organized the retreat, suggested that we each make a fidget quilt to have Mrs. Catoe give to the local nursing home. A fidget quilt is a lap quilt with many sorts of things sewed on to make it easy for a patient to fidget with. Different fabrics for texture, velcro, zippers, etc. I didn't get mine made until I got home but I finished the 'male' version this morning. Will make another one & get them in the mail to her soon.

Our water pump switch went out last night so we are without water until Greg can get a new switch installed this evening after work. Gotta run to the hardware store. Hope I get the right one!

Hope everyone has a good week.

Barn Apartment Update

Left for the country house last Friday. Storms rolling through the areas that we were headed & that we were going to be driving through. But, since we left a little bit later in the afternoon most of the really bad stuff had moved on. We hit a few patches but nothing like what I was dreading.

Upon arrival it was obvious that a LOT of rain had come down that day. Water was standing everywhere! I have never seen it just standing like that. Plus, it started raining about 9:00 that night & continued until around 10:00 the next morning. We had hoped to get the 1st mowing under our belt but the ground was just too wet. I think it was estimated that we got over 6" in a 24 hour period.

Also, we discovered that the drain field for the septic was flooded as well. Not surprising but left us with no way to flush toilets or take showers. We decided to come on back to the city since we couldn't really accomplish anything, or at least what we wanted to accomplish.

We had hoped that the contractor would be finished with the trim for the apartment but alas, they have just a couple of things left to do. Isn't that what they always say?

We still have a couple of things left to get done as well. Like - install the fridge, dishwasher & stove, kitchen faucet(s), bathroom vanity & faucets as well as a light fixture for the bathroom. All are already purchased except for the bathroom faucet & light. We have all the shelving for the pantry, just need to get some hardware to put it together. That was one of my big bargains last year. We also have to get a separate septic tank put in because the one for the house is too far away. It's always something.

This is in a metal building we had built in Dec. 2014. It is divided into 2 sections - an apartment in the front & my Greg's shop & office in the back. Took a few pics to show our progress so far:

Living area (bedroom door to the left)

Kitchen. Still have the island to install

Looking down hallway to the shop.

Tongue & groove boards w/metal ceiling in living/dinig area

Dining room

Greg's office

Another angle of office

That stuff on the wall in the office is slat board that someone gave Greg many many years ago. He knew he would find a use for it someday! All you do is put brackets in for shelving & will will hold a lot of stuff. psst .... He's also giving me one area in the office to eventually put my sewing table!

The contractors wife had thinned her amaryllis & daylilly beds & gifted me with about 75 amaryllis & 25 or so daylillies. Guess what I did Sunday?

I put about 40 or 50 in various pots on our patio & gave the rest to a neighbor & my MIL.

Avocado with small amaryllis

Below are some Begonia cuttings that my friend from SC gave me last November when we went to visit. I believe she was gifted some by a friend whose mother or grandmother brought them from Italy. The leaves are huge & they are just starting to bloom. I noticed the honey bees from our city neighbor, have been visiting the last few days.

I won't be going back to the country until the end of the month as I have my annual Quilt Retreat to attend in a couple of weeks. Spending most of my time these getting projects ready for that. And yes, Nelly will be going with me. She's a travelling dog.