Getting Odd Jobs Done

Monday - July 8th  

Hot and humid weather continues here in Catlin Hollow.  Makes it hard on the people that work outside, but I guess they get used to it and continue on.  Lou and I try to get the majority of our outside work done in the early morning and late afternoon and do inside things during the heat of the day.  Thank goodness for central air conditioning.

We had seamless gutter installed on our home several years ago, but many of the screws have loosened or broke off.  Lou tried to repair some of them last year, but I hated to have him up on the ladder this year to work on the task, so I asked my nephew, Jeff if he would help me out and he was only too happy to do it, in fact he more than did the task, he found several trouble spots and rectified the problem, so we shouldn't have ice on the steps this winter.  He has even agreed to replace board on my little barn that need to be replaced, so we should have things looking good before we take off on our trip.

Krista has been scraping paint on the big barn when she has a few minutes and when we have a good weekend we are going to get that painted, but we certainly want to have cooler weather to complete that task.  They are getting ready for a family vacation in New England, which they are all excited about, which is not an easy task with the allergies, so Kris has been busy baking bread and such to take with them.  Those of us that just pop into the closest restaurant to sample the local fare don't think of such things.  Their whole family have become experts on what to look for and Lou and I are getting better at it.

Shelling Peas

July 6th - Saturday 89 Degrees and Humid

Today was the Johnson's Family Picnic at Ives Run and Lou and I are always invited to attend and we very much enjoy of day with Brion's family.  Some of the family I knew before I married Lou and the rest of them are all new acquaintances.  Janet and  Brion spend a lot of time preparing for this annual event with helping hands from the rest of the family and lots of food to be enjoyed by all who attend.  They rent the Stephen Foster Pavilion which is located next to the creek, so the dogs and the kids have lots of fun in the water.

Janet and Brion's garden is much ahead of ours and they are always so kind to share the wealth with us. This year they brought us fresh peas from their garden and after we got home from the picnic,I was shelling the peas and was reminded of  years ago when I was a kid sitting on the front porch at home with mother, daddy and my brother and we would be shelling peas and my folks would say if we found a pod with nine peas in it we should throw  the ninth pea over our right shoulder and make a wish.  Do you know there are very few pods with nine peas in them.  It sure made the job of shelling peas go much faster.  Suppose that is why they told us that??

June Catch Up with Pictures

June 25th - Tuesday - Hot and very humid

My out of town family have reminded me that I have not posted anything for the month of June and I see that they are correct, so to catch everyone up on a very busy month, I will just post some pictures that I have taken of our many activities with some captions, along with a promise to do better in the month of July.

We attended my Aunt Marilyn's funeral in Erie, PA on the 8th of June.  This is my cousin Russ and his wife Sherry Bush

We celebrated Matthew's second birthday on the 15th of June at his Aunt Missy's house and it is always a delight, as we get to have a picnic and watch the Laurel Festival from her shaded yard.  A wonderful time was had by all of us.

You can see Matthew loved to ride in his cousin Nick's car with his new friend that his Grandma Torpy made for him.  Matthew loves anything that goes Varoom and has wheels!

This was his big present, and what fun this was, works great  on  Grandpa  Rice's driveway.

The best act in the Laurel Festival

Pastor Keith doing his last communion  using the new chalice and  plate that  we had Preston make  for him as a going away present.  Pastor was touched by the act of kindness

Pastor and Kathy singing as they often did throughout their five year ministry with us.

Pastor Keith singing Thank You by Ray Boltz

Lou with his new toy that Janet and Brion gave him for Father's Day

Close examination of the Power Mulit-Tool

Finally have the fountain operating

Clematis

Lou used his new power tool with the sanding wedges on this and removed all of the rust, then used the saw blades and cut the legs off even, painted it and we purchased a plant dish and planted flowers, added a hummingbird feeder.

We stained all of the decks, railing and all of the deck furniture after the ceiling and all were scrubbed down, this all took several days.  I sewed new cushions and pillows.

Lou made a marker for Estee's gravesite and planted her favorite flower, pansies.  She would eat them as fast as we could give them to her.  He did the engraving himself and used his new tool to polish the rock.

He continues to haul rock from the bank, to enable mowing an easier task.

We made a new flower bed in front of Lou's work shop.

The bank where we have planted lots of new wild flowers and they are coming along great.  Lou faithfully waters them daily.

Lou, Krista, Matthew and I went to our cemetery and to Whitneyville to run the weed eater  as they just are not kept the way we would like to see them kept, and we water the flowers weekly also.


We have a lot of other things that need to be done here at home, we have work on our spouting scheduled for this weekend and am hoping that it isn't as hot for the guys to do the work.  We are going to get the barn painted and want to do that when the humidity isn't high.  Krista and Steve with help with that.  Last time that was done, was the year before Al died and Krista and Steve helped me do that.  We sprayed it and plan on doing it the same way, so you can see things are progressing along.

Have to get our  work done before the first of August, as we will be gone for the entire month and we are certainly looking forward to that.

A Day in the Blueberry Patch

June 24th - Monday Hot and Humid 85 degrees

Lou and I both had appointments for our annual physicals this morning, and as soon as we finished there, we came home and changed our clothes and met Preston and Susie at the Homestead, as they drove up from Tyrone.  We decided to have a quick lunch first then tackle the job of taking the old netting off the blueberries.  Like most jobs that you think will be easy and quick this job started at 1:00 pm and ended at 8:00 pm.

Taking the old netting off and gluing the PCP Pipe in place

Pulling up the old wire along with weeds

After the old wire has been removed, weed eater run, old netting pulled down

Getting ready to put up the new fence

New fence post have been driven, starting to put new fence in place

Fencing is done, now for the ropes on the top

The finished product

Up close 

Good job done and now the blueberries can ripen ready to be harvested!!