Preparations for Winter

October 18th - Cloudy and Cool

We have returned home from our trip to the Wine Country.  We certainly enjoyed our time spent touring the area.  I had not mentioned that we also spent time at Sampson Naval/Air Force Base.  There is now a Museum there where there once was a "brig".  I know very little about the Navy, so found the museum very interesting.

The entrance to the Museum

I found this picture interesting, as when Al and I visited Sarasota, FL the last time, there was a huge statue of this scene.

When Lou and I came back on Friday night after having dinner with Ande and Dennis and their granddaughter Jaimie we found the campground had filled up completely.  The pumpkin man was next to us.  The majority of the people were square dancers and they were there for a weekend of square dancing.  We went up to watch them dance; however, they were having a meeting and we had to check out by 1:00, so didn't get to see them.  We did see several couples that we knew.  We would have stayed a little longer, but we had told Brion and Janet we would be home for the weekend, as Spencer and Meredith were coming up.

We had breakfast with them on Monday morning as they were heading back to Virginia.  Lou and I had not met Meredith before and enjoyed getting a little acquainted with her.

We spent the early part of the week getting the RV cleaned up and winterized and back into the barn, thankfully we had good weather to accomplish that project.  Lou went back to working on his bank project and building the stone wall.

Lou working on the flower bed.

Lou has worked on this bank off and on for the five years that he has lived here and now has the idea of making a stone wall and adding dirt to it from a ditch that he is going to dig that will house a sluice pipe.  Then we can plant more wild flowers in the spring.  Many years ago this was a dump and Al and I have picked junk out of here and hauled it away for years, we cut down trees  the year before Al died, I have picked rock, Susie came over and helped me pick rock, Estee and I dug up weeds, it has been a constant  project, and you can see it shows progress.  Lou has mowed a lot of it and what he doesn't mow, I have a couple of guys that use their weed eaters on it.

The next project is putting in the sluice pipe that Lou has at his house.  We have to wait for Brion to bring it over on the trailer, then we can start on it, hoping to get rid of the flooding we have every time we have lots of rain.  My brother thinks Lou likes to dig ditches!!

While Lou was doing this, I cleaned out the spouting on the garage and when I did that I noted some shingles on the coal shed had come off, so I got Krista to nail new ones on for me.  I can not hammer due to my shoulder, so she took care of that job for me.  I made a new roof for a bird house and painted it and got it back up.  Seems good to get some little jobs done.  Krista also helped us get our treadmill set up in the garage and I am really enjoying using that each day.  I thought I would be sore, but am in better shape than I thought.

New shingles in place

Susie had her surgery on Monday and got the final biopsy back late yesterday and it was cancer free, praise God.  She is pretty miserable pain wise, but coping by doing some of her knitting, but certainly she is not used to having to stay at home.

Yesterday, I did three pressure cookers of beets, so that takes care of the rest of the things in our garden, and now we can get it rototilled  and it will be ready in the spring.  Hopefully, it will do better next year.

Next week will be busy, we have appointments at the Bath VA and in Carlisle, but doesn't sound like weather that we could work outside.