What's In The Garage

At age 70, when we first met, my future father-in-law was all about bridge and poker, his stock club and his garden.

At age 87, when Denny and I sold everything and hit the road, it was his stock club and his beloved garden.

At age 95, it was his garden.

At age 97, he slept.

Yesterday I spent a few hours going through Dad's garage, sorting and separating everything in preparation for the house sale. And it was there that I learned of Dad's parsimonious side. Old spark plugs ready to be cleaned and re-gapped, torn bits of netting shoved into a plastic pail to be used and re-used over the lettuce to keep the rabbits at bay, sturdy tools with handles wrapped in six layers of duct tape to keep them from falling apart, buckets of gravel for who-knows-what use. Much of it will simply go to the landfill because it is too old, too worn, too dried out to be of use to anyone.

Denny's dad was a pipefitter by trade, and he has myriad bits and pieces of metal strewn around to show it. I'm finding unusual old amp meters (I'm guessing) and electrical equipment that I vaguely recognize along with huge, heavy pipe wrenches that took muscular arms to heft. If Dad didn't have a tool he wanted, he crafted one by duct taping or soldering together pieces of two disparate items that worked. If something broke, he didn't buy new, but fixed the old. A new picture of my father-in-law is forming in my mind of a hard-working man who cared little about the finer things in life but was only interested in providing for his family and saving his money for them to have after his death.

Who knew that by clearing out a garage I'd find my father-in-law?

Another One

It felt so good to be home; we were unpacked and had finished a quick lunch of ham sandwiches with freshly picked tomatoes on them and I jumped on the computer to check e-mail. Vicki was online so I IMed her to say "hey" only to be told a mutual friend of ours passed away yesterday from cancer.

I met Mike 37 years ago at the Golden Lion, a dance club in Dayton. We shared some dances and went our separate ways, only to meet up again four years later at a Knights of Columbus function. His dad was a member as was my then-father-in-law and they were recruiting a younger generation of men to join up and thus Mike and I "re-met", although I was a married woman now. More young couples joined up and we partied and danced and bowled and had a great time together and then I divorced my husband and fell away from the group.

Vicki came back into my life a couple of years ago and with her came some of the old crowd from the K of C and that included Mike. He was always a skinny guy, but this time when I saw him it was not a good skinny although he was tanned dark as a nut and looked healthy otherwise. But the healthy looking exterior hid the cancer inside which took him at last. And once again I question why this insidious disease takes the good ones, so often way, way too soon. Because we're too young for this sh*t, right?

And hey, Mike? Save me a fast one, okay?

One Thing Down, A Houseful to Go

We've found a buyer for the lawn tractor. As a matter of fact, we've had several people express interest as soon as we sold the darn thing to the first person who stopped by off the road. Denny did manage to get the tractor started after replacing the spark plug, but since it acted up on us once, we figured we'd drop the price and get it out of here. I can't set up all the tools and "stuff" in the garage for a moving sale with the tractor and trailer taking up half the space, so selling it was a good thing. Now if only finding a buyer for the house and land goes that easily....

Denny cut me a break this morning and did my lawn mowing chores so I could start preparing the food for our cookout tomorrow at Mom's house. We're going to grill "beer chicken", which is simply marinating the chicken pieces in beer for 24 hours. The beer pulls the blood from the bones and makes the chicken nice and juicy and of course the alcohol burns off during the grilling. Add a nice barbecue sauce the last few minutes and voila'; beer chicken. Denny said that with all the stuff we're going to be lugging north it would be easier just to hitch up our fifth wheel and take it all with us. I don't think so! But since we're staying for three days to get some appointments taken care of and work done around the house and even a visit or two with friends and family, we're going to be loaded for bear.

Painting-wise, we're still on the back bedroom but it's almost finished. Denny gets side-tracked with little jobs or last minutes patching/repairs so it's not going as quickly as I would like. It will be Tuesday before we get back to painting here, but we'll finish off the bedroom and start on the bathroom. We'll do better once Denny's step-mother moves down to Tennessee, because she doesn't roll out of bed until 10:30 or 11AM which puts a serious crimp in our working hours. Me, I'd be in there at 8:30 or 9 o'clock otherwise, since I'm up at 5:30.

Our first Super Fantastic variety of tomato is ripe so we're trying that on a BLT for dinner tonight. The tomatoes are still kind of small, but there's some good sandwich sized ones on the vines that should be ripe in a couple of weeks. At that point, we'll be looking to give the darn things away because 19 tomato plants are way too many for someone who no longer cans produce from the garden. After all, how many tomatoes can two people eat? (I know, Nancy, a LOT, right? Heh.)

Well, the ice is melting in my frozen margarita and that's not good. Y'all KNEW it had to be 5 o'clock SOMEWHERE, right?

Gremlins

Denny decided to put his dad's old lawn tractor out in the side yard with a "for sale" sign on it. We jump-started it (bad ignition),washed it, jump-started it again, hitched it to the trailer and drove it to the side yard.

An acquaintance called in the afternoon; he was in the area and would like to see the tractor. Do you think that thing would start???? Not a chance. Our friend cleared out the fuel filter, tinkered a bit, but no go. Dang. I guess the price just dropped on the recalcitrant old thing. Sigh.

We had to tow the old tractor to the back yard with the newer JD tractor. We'll try a new set of plugs today--yet another distraction from our painting duties. Our life is just not going as planned lately.

On another note, the nausea pills prescribed for my mother seem to be working. She said she was able to eat half of the small tomato we brought up from the garden. Major milestone. Denny and I will be with her over the weekend because we're having a cookout in honor of her upcoming 75th birthday. In the middle of all that we have to pick up and install her new refrigerator and take her van in for a recall notice. Thank goodness we're retired because I can't imagine how people handle situations like this while they are still working. We are fortunate in that.

The list of things to do seems to grow longer but for the moment there's a warm cat curled in my lap, a cup of hot coffee in front of me and the early morning sun has painted the sky in the colors of a peace rose. Life is good.

We're BA-ACK!

After three hours the two satellite dish installers finally figured out our problem; we weren't communicating with our assigned satellite. So they arranged a new satellite to be assigned and voila--we are once again online. Finally.

Actually, it was good for us to get away from the Internet for a while and get back to reading a book in our free time instead of hopping online. However, at this particular time of our lives, we need to be able to go online to research medical issues and deal with probate estate issues, etc. so it's good to have the service back.

In the garden we're picking Early Girl, Better Boy and Super Fantastic tomatoes, although the Super Fantastic (my pick) isn't ripe enough to eat yet. I'm anxious to see what it tastes like since it's a new variety for us. We've got some good sized tomatoes ripening on the vine so we're happy. We're also picking lettuce and broccoli, so tonight we'll have a salad made of those two items with some bacon crumbles and some diced onions and cashews thrown in along with a dressing of mayo and vinegar. Pretty yummy on a hot, muggy summer night.

Tomorrow I'm going back up to Kettering for a post-ER visit to the doctor to have him check Mom's injured back muscles and perhaps see if we can get something prescribed for her nausea. She's not keeping any food down at all and I'm wondering at what point the fool doctor will start to show some concern about her condition. Arrggghhh.

Life was so much simpler on the road.

A Quiet Saturday

It's been an up and down day for my mother. She's tolerating food better today than she was yesterday, but the muscle relaxants and pain medication cause severe nausea for her. I took her out to her favorite Chinese restaurant for lunch just to get us both out of the house and she's been sleeping most of the afternoon since we got home. Which means she'll be up all night. The good news is that she's able to walk a little and at times she feels good enough to smile.

Tomorrow I'm going "home" to Cinci for two days before I have to return to take Mom to the doctor for a follow up visit to check her back. I'm hoping my brother will check on her tomorrow after I leave and Monday my aunt and uncle will be stopping by for the afternoon. Beyond that, I have to play it by ear. I've filled Mom's freezer with meals, bought her a fresh can of coffee and she has her cigarettes, so she's set for a while. But I'm watching her disintegrate before my eyes and that's hard for me because she has always been so active and vibrant. Now she's just a tiny, sick old woman who only occasionally shows a spark of the woman she once was. That's what I'm having trouble dealing with at this point.

On a different note, the Hughes installer should come Monday to fix our satellite Internet system so once again there will be no Lazy Sunday post. My heart just isn't in it this week anyway.

P.S. Deana, thanks for the offer on the "It's 5 o'clock Somewhere" garden flag. I saw an even cuter one on a website and didn't bookmark it like a dummy. That one had the parrot, margaritas and a couple of Adirondack chairs on a beach. My idea of heaven, to be sure.

It's 5 O'clock Somewhere, Right?

My dear friend Vicki and I have been looking for a decorative outdoor flag that states "It's five o'clock somewhere" that we can plant outside our respective trailers because we love cocktail hour. Today by 1:30PM I knew it had to be 5 o'clock SOMEWHERE!

It all started at the ENT's (Ear, Nose and Throat specialist) office where I had taken my mother in an attempt to figure out why she is suddenly suffering from balance problems. While there Mom suffered a coughing fit (she's a life long smoker who now has COPD) and almost fell to her knees in pain when her back spasmed. I got her home and in bed, but when she tried to get up to walk to a chair she was unable to straighten up due to the pain in her sides and back and was unable to walk. Naturally, when I called her doctor's office I discovered he was on vacation so I called an ambulance because I didn't have the strength to carry her to the car and she couldn't walk. Long story short, the x-rays showed no fractures and it was deemed a lumbar strain/sprain and Mom was sent home with pain meds and muscle relaxants.

Since we were in the middle of a garage sale, we were fortunate that my aunt and uncle were there to help us run the sale as they had to take over for us. Another aunt had come along to be a "watcher", one who keeps an eye out for thieves, so it was good that my aunt and uncle had a third set of hands to close the sale down and carry everything into the garage to lock up for me. My brother left work to sit with me at the ER since Denny was stuck in Cinci without the truck (I have it while staying with my mother) so Don was able to stay with our mother while I picked up prescriptions and something to eat that might perk up Mom's appetite, although that's a losing battle too.

So, at 6:45 after a shot of morphine and a dose of muscle relaxants my mother is down for the count and I'm hoping she'll be able to sleep for a few hours. I'm kind of wound up, so I'll go out in the garage and start sorting and separating those items we're going to donate to charity that haven't sold at the last couple of garage sales and pack away the rest for another time. A little mindless entertainment like "So You Think You Can Dance" will round out the evening and then I'll crash too.

And tomorrow is another day....

Offline for the Rest of the Week

Finally, finally, FINALLY we were contacted by an installer so we could make arrangements to have our Hughes satellite Internet system reinstalled and checked for problems. The bad news, he can't come until next Monday. At which point it will be a full month since we've had 24 hour a day Internet access. Can you say "severe withdrawal pangs"? Sigh.

I'm in Kettering at my mother's house to assist her with her garage sale while Denny is down at his father's house where we are starting to prepare for painting the interior of the house. Denny, his sister Connie and I all believe that the interior has not been painted in the 37 years his dad and step-mother lived there, other than the one time Denny repainted the living room and kitchen area. So we have to wash all the walls and ceilings first, plus patch all the holes and cracks that have developed. It's going to be a long summer. I have volunteered to hold a moving sale for Denny's step-mother who will be moving to Tennessee next month--I'm such a masochist. We'll have plenty to keep us busy, so we'll need to remember to take some "us" time because as I said to Denny a couple of weeks ago, it's been a long time since we've had fun. I think we're due, even if it's a goofy movie at the afternoon matinee. Mindless slapstick is probably just what we need right now, as a matter of fact.

So the next few days up here will be busy and then I'll be heading back down to Cinci to rejoin the other half of the currently stationary RV Vagabonds. We'll play catch up then, okay?

In the meantime, here's our new location; parked in the back yard of Denny's dad's house with a couple of acres of his woods behind us.

Patches now has her own exterior feeding dish (KIDDING!!!!!!) She loves to watch the birds from our bedroom window and of course she is never staked out this close to the feeder normally.


I miss my little flower bed around the tree at our campsite already, but my mother-in-law does have a couple of pretty hibiscus plants nearby.


Denny's dad always told us that tomatoes ripen best at the full moon and we're due for one on the 18th. As you can see, we are going to have a couple nearly ready to pick and there's a plethora of tomatoes on all nineteen of our plants. There's no such thing as too many tomatoes, right?

Still Offline

Although we've moved down to Cinci and we're all set up in the back yard of my father-in-law's house, we've not been able to get our Hughes.net system to work yet. Currently I'm online through dial up and it is too slow to deal with for my tastes, plus I'm infringing upon my mother-in-law who can't understand the concept of dial-up Internet.

Now that we're down in the area where Denny grew up I'm hearing stories from his childhood that I've not heard in the 26 years we've been together. It's been an interesting week. Tuesday I'm heading up to Kettering to my mom's house for four days while I help her with her garage sale, then it's back to Cinci to help Denny paint the house. I don't think the interior has been painted in at least a decade--we'll have to confirm that with Denny's sister. Regardless, we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

The tomato plants are chock-full of tomatoes and we're waiting to see how much they ripen after the full moon on the 18th. Sweet corn is in and we've had our first BLTs of the season and life is good, albeit very busy and filled with travel. Unfortunately it's only local travel and not exploring new places. Although I will have to learn the Cinci area now, figuring out where my favorite stores are and how to get to them.

Sometime this week an installer should get out here to see what the problem is with our satellite system and we'll be back online. Eventually there may even be Lazy Sunday pictures again, who knows?

Touching Base

First of all, thanks to all of you who left us a kind word after Denny's father passed on. It helped.

We picked our first tomatoes two days after Dad's funeral. I'm sure he was watching and appreciates that fact that we're going to have a bumper crop this year.

Denny's step-mother will be moving to Tennessee in August to be closer to family, so Denny and I will be putting a temporary 50 amp line in down at his dad's house so we can set up our trailer there while we make all the necessary repairs for putting the house on the market. It will save us many, many miles of traveling back and forth and we'll just make one trip a week up to my mother's house to handle things there.

Our Hughes.net system is still not functioning and we're going to have to call in a technician to troubleshoot it as we've run out of ideas of what to do about it. So posts are still going to be few and far between because between dealing with Denny's dad and worrying about my mother's health writing the blog isn't as important to me as it once was. I'm sure that once Denny and I get into the actual physical work on his father's house I'll find taking a break to blog will be a welcome relief, but for the moment my heart isn't in it.

Right now, it's lunch time and since I'm still on soft foods due to my gum surgery I have to figure out what might be edible in Mom's refrigerator. Only six more days until I can have Marion's pizza or any of my favorite foods that I have to chew. Sigh.

Hiatus

I won't be posting for a few days. Denny's father passed away Thursday night.

Our satellite modem decided to act up this past week also, so we are without Internet access until further notice. So there will be no Lazy Sunday post and not a lot of blogging in the immediate future.

Y'all go on ahead, we'll catch up with you down the road....

An Animalistic Lazy Sunday

It's been an emotional roller coaster ride this week. Hospice brought over a hospital bed for Denny's dad and they will start sending a nurse over once a week to monitor his health status. Dad stays in bed most days now; we're hoping a tomato or two will ripen in time to brighten his eyes once again.

I took Mom to the hospital for a MRI of her head this week; she has been staggering, kind of slurring her words and seeming kind of out of it ever since Denny and I arrived in Ohio and I'm thinking that when she fell in March she either had a stroke, or the stroke caused the face-forward fall she took or something. Something is badly wrong with her and the decline in her health since we saw her last at Christmas is appalling. And I can't seem to get her doctor to see that for some reason.

We continue to have rain here, although not in the amounts of late spring and certainly not as bad as Iowa and other states have had. Our lettuce seeds have finally spouted enough to be able to transplant them and the strawberry picking season is over early due to the rains. We may be able to pick the broccoli this week and possibly even the cauliflower and it's still hard to keep up with the grass cutting at the rate it is growing with all this rain.

Don and Vicki will be leaving in a couple of weeks, so we have to get in a trip to Fort Ancient and possibly Serpent Mound before they leave. The two of them are happily planning their travel route for the rest of the summer and I have to admit, Denny and I envy them. With what is going on with our parents, I'm not quite sure when we'll be able to get on the road again.

Enough of that. The robins are outside the window by my desk singing to greet the morning, the hummingbirds have been sucking down the sugar water from the living room window feeder since before dawn and Denny is finally stirring. All the animals are up (sorry, Denny) so today's Lazy Sunday pictures are of animals we've seen on our travels.

We first met Penelope the pot-bellied pig in Ehrenberg, Arizona and then later again in Cambria, New York. I made a special effort to make over the dog in the pen, since Penelope seemed to get all the attention from the other campers and the poor dog was exceedingly grateful to be noticed.

After I fell and broke my kneecap in 2006, we had to store our fifth wheel in the back field of a friend's stables. When we needed something from the trailer, Denny would load me in the back seat of the truck and take me with him so I could watch the horses while he did his thing in the trailer. There were several foals at the stables and I loved this little guy who used his mom's tail for protection from the biting flies.

This is an Imperial Moth. He was sunning himself near the front door of the campground office. He looked so soft it was hard to resist touching him.

I have to admit, I did not take this picture and I don't know who did; the picture was sent to me in an email. I just thought it was a lovely shot.

This is Harley, one of a pair of Mini-Schnauzers owned by Melissa and Mark. Melissa used to work with me at the PD and now lives in South Carolina where her southern accent finally matches her environment. Hi Missy!

Could there be anything cuter than a wheelbarrow full of Papillons? I think not. A friend of ours breeds them to sell, but somehow one puppy from every litter manages to worm his way into their hearts. It's not hard to see why.

Meet Noel, who owns Rene and Barb who are "retired" RVing friends. As in retired from RVing, as well as employment. Noel, while a true lady, did NOT like the pink bows placed in her fur after her grooming and they soon disappeared.

Oh So Late on Lazy Sunday

Again, my post ends up being the week in recap. We did get the air conditioning repaired and found an honest RV repair business in the bargain. The service technician there actually repaired the air conditioner instead of just replacing the entire unit with a new one, which meant a less expensive bill for us. And I'm all for less expensive bills! It works fine and he'll be added to the businesses we trust page on my RV Vagabonds website. Soon.

The garden has broccoli sprouting and the fence is up and beeping at us but so far both Denny and I have refused to be the guinea pig who touches the electrified fence to see what type of "jolt" the deer would get if they tried to reach through or over it. I got knocked on my rear end once when my first husband improperly rewired a 220 volt outlet for the dryer so I'm a little cautious around electricity now. The proverbial once burned, etc.

Today is Father's Day so Darb stopped by for a visit this morning. Speaking of guinea pigs, I tested out a variation of Vicki's "Drunken Arnie" drink using my homemade bitter lemon as well as my new "Raspberry Tart" drink. Not bad, even if I do say so myself. I also may have spoiled his meal with his in-laws by feeding him strawberry shortcake made with our freshly picked berries. But then again, at times I think he has a hollow leg. For food and drink. Don and Vicki hadn't left on their bike ride yet, so they got to see Darb for the first time in 22 years. It's so hard to reconcile the adult children we now have with the small blond boys we remember playing together. As the song says, "I don't remember growing older--when did they?"

Sigh. Enough of that. Random stuff here today folks, so here goes:
St. Augustine is a pretty classy place downtown, but on the way to historic St. Augustine you have to pass this huge car wash made to look like a giant paddle wheeler. Who thought of that one?

Not that this is Denny's best side or anything, but I wanted a shot of him walking the Oregon Trail. To walk on the actual wagon ruts created by all those pioneers sent a frisson down my spine.

Zion National Park's Court of the Patriarch Mountains. Such a beautiful, magical place needs to be explored more thoroughly on foot someday.

One of the most scenic golf courses Denny and I have ever played was the Sky Mountain Golf Course in Hurricane, Utah. Watching the play of the sun and the shadows of the clouds on the mountains was a serious distraction from my golf game. Not that it could hurt it any worse than it already is.

The view from the summit of Stinking Water Pass. From the air conditioned cab of the truck we couldn't smell the sulfur that gave the pass its name.

This common poorwill or nighthawk (I'm not sure which it is) sat so still for so long when I first notice it that I thought it was ill or dying. A quick check of my bird book informed me that it is a nocturnal creature that slept during the day. I just couldn't figure out why (s)he was doing it on a fence in the the 90 degree temperatures of broad daylight instead of finding a nice shady tree.

Coffee, tea or me?

The Mobile Money Pit

Even though our rig is tucked away under a canopy of trees, when Ohio temperatures hit the nineties and the humidity is high it's pretty darned miserable. Yesterday we turned on the air conditioner in the living room and all was copacetic until the sound of the unit's motor changed and all of a sudden warm air was coming from the vents instead of cold. Uh-oh.

We turned on the bedroom air conditioner which fortunately is also vented through the whole ceiling of the trailer and I started looking for mobile RV repair people. Two were listed for the area, neither answered their phones. Great. This morning I arranged to take our rig to Springboro to have it worked on since they could start on it tomorrow. Once the temperatures hit 90 around here they don't go down for a while so we need to get this problem fixed as soon as possible. We'll just bunk at my mom's house for the duration. Mo' money, mo' money going out da do'.

On a different note, last week I was feeling crafty so I finished off some incense burners. Denny drilled holes in the wine bottles for me and I painted them. Blue wine bottles are just too pretty to throw away.
The trillium bottle was for me. I discovered a whole wash of them at the back of the campground the first week we arrived here and I knew it would be a good flower for the bottle.

Last week ended the first full year of life on the road for Don and Vicki, so I made this blackbird design for their "anniversary" gift.

This particular wine bottle was a strange hue, so I thought a cardinal would brighten it up a bit.

Warm days make me wish for the ocean, so this former ice wine bottle ended up with a dolphin.

Wednesday and Thursday are yard and garden days for us so no blogging will be done on those days. Catch y'all later.

It's a Hot Lazy Sunday

Another week has flown by. The electric fence isn't operational yet and Denny hasn't yet figured out what the problem is. He's hoping to get that done this coming week. I managed to get a pretty good sunburn while cutting the grass in Cinci, since it's been so long since we've had an extended period of sunshine that I have lost all my tan base. Next time I'll take along the sun block. We're getting things done at our parents' houses and in the evenings we relax and share our day's activities over cocktails with Don and Vicki. A nice routine.

That being said, we've not gotten out anywhere special and no scenic pictures have been taken, just pictures of the garden and of the cat. So we're going back to 2006 for this week's Lazy Sunday pix.

Vicki arranged a night out for pizza with friends. Back in the dark ages of the 70s we were the younger generation of one of the K of C groups and created a lot of good memories together. We will not bring up the "Rocky Top" incident anymore though, right Phyl and Vicki? Seated left to right, Phyllis (my former sister-in-law and always friend), her SO Pat, Tom, Don, Denny, Me, Vicki and Sue.

Bell Rock near Sedona is a popular climbing and hiking attraction. Its immense shape and size belies the ease of walking on its rust red surface and you'll always find people perched on ledges eating, reading, taking pictures or just enjoying the sun.

One of the loveliest flowers blooms on one of the ugliest of plants--the prickly pear cactus.

While wandering around the grounds of the Old Santee Canal Park in Moncks Corner, South Carolina I discovered this unusual juxtaposition of Spanish moss and tiny ferns growing from one of the trees in the park.

The Old Santee Canal Park has a nice museum to explore, but the best part of the park is just wandering the trails looking for wildlife and enjoying the lovely fall weather.

I found the tabby walls of this magazine building are almost as study and complete as they were when they were first constructed in the early 1700s. Fort Frederica was both a fort and a town and the National Park service has done a good job of making history come alive as you explore the remnants of the fortifications that have carefully documented markers explaining the layout of the town and the fort.

I am attracted to old churches from an architectural standpoint. Plain or fancy, the older buildings have a simple honesty that I find appealing compared to the behemoths being built today. This is the Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Augustine, Florida.

One of the attractions of geocaching is that the hunt for the caches take you to places you would never find on your own. On this day, we were only five miles from Parker, Arizona but we were also about five miles back into the desert off the main road and we were pretty much the only folks out there. On weekends in the winter this is a popular area due to the Desert Bar, but we were there mid-week and so we were unable to enjoy a cold one after hiking around searching for treasure.

And right about now, with our currents temperatures in the 90s and an air conditioner that just quit, I'd sure welcome some of that "but it's a dry heat" of the desert.

Hot Town*

*Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
---partial lyrics from "Summer in the City" by the Lovin' Spoonful

Summer has arrived with a vengeance in Ohio. Cool one day, barrels of rain and then the thermometer crept into the 90s yesterday with more of the same forecast for the next four days.

Lovely lake, right?
Nope, a local corn field and this one is just one of many. Country back roads are flooded and closed down if they are located next to a crick (creek) and corn and soybeans fields are bogs. Last year Ohio was suffering drought conditions and now this. And oh, the cicadas are here. It's estimated that 2 to 3 billion of the little critters will be coming out of the ground in southwestern Ohio between now and July 4th. It's an Ohio thing.

Time to go cut grass...again.

A Summer-like Lazy Sunday

It's hard to imagine that we've been here in Ohio for five weeks already. I don't know if it's because we're busier at the moment with the garden and two yards to maintain, or if it's because Don and Vicki are next door and so Denny and I find ourselves wandering over to spend time with them. Last year at the other campground Black Beauty and some of my favorite springtime blooming bushes, the blowsy peony. To me, peonies mean Memorial Day, not only because that's when they bloom in Ohio, but we planted them around the graves of family members who had served our country.our RV neighbors either worked (construction guys) or only came on weekends so time sometimes dragged for us.

We haven't been out to sightsee yet, although I think we'll try to visit Fort Ancient and maybe Serpent Mound before Don and Vicki pull up stakes to hit the road in early July. There's the garage sale to work on at my mother's house and I'm going to try to start clearing out paints and poisons from my father-in-law's garage too. We have ambitious plans so far, but we'll see how that goes.

When we arrived here in Wilmington, the area at the back of our trailer looked like this:


Now, it looks like this:

Patches enjoys the "backyard" because there are chipmunk burrows and a robin sitting on a nest and all sorts of small, kitty-sized birds hopping around on the ground to stalk (shush--she's always leashed when she's outside).

Denny still needs to build a protective cover for the power box for the electrified fence and get some wire to ground it, but he'll have it powered up this week. That's a good thing, because one tomato plant has teeny tiny tomatoes on it now. We cheated and bought one plant with blossoms already on it. Notice the oh-so-nicely cut yard, a la Linda. Gotta love those lawn tractors.


Houston (Hi Nancy) we have tomatoes:


I kept forgetting the camera when we drove down I-71 to Cinci, where the highway was lined with huge groves of black locust trees. Black locusts have wonderfully fragrant white wisteria-like blossoms in the spring so they are not only beautiful but it's great to drive by them with the truck windows open.


Black Beauty and some of my favorite springtime blooming bushes, the blowsy peony. To me, peonies mean Memorial Day, not only because that's when they bloom in Ohio, but we planted them around the graves of family members who had served our country.


Instead of a sunset, since unfortunately we haven't had a truly spectacular one here in Ohio yet, we have my little escape artist. Patches was actually trying to catch a bird when she suddenly realized that there was life on the other side of the privacy fence at my mother's house. Immediately after taking this picture she was grabbed and banished to the house.

A Brief Commercial Break

One day last week Denny and I played golf at one of the local golf courses and at the end of our round we were chatting with one of the men who had been in the foursome ahead of us. After a few moments, the man walked to his car and when he came back to us he handed me a bottle of Italian salad dressing. He explained that his brother was a diabetic who had developed his own no-fat, no sugar salad dressings after becoming disenchanted with store-bought brands of low fat dressings. He also mentioned a blackberry/cranberry/raspberry dressing which made my eyes light up, so he brought out one of those for me also. By now he had introduced himself as Ken and I asked if Awesome had a website, which it does. At that point, Denny told Ken that I like to mention local companies on my blog and website when we use and enjoy their products, so suddenly I had all four flavors of their dressings; Italian, Oriental, Sweet & Sour Garlic and the Raspberry,Blackberry,Cranberry dressings. I was set for taste testing!

The first thing I did was go to the store to pick up ingredients listed on the Oriental dressing's label for a salad. The next day I made up a big bowl of salad and took it with us to Don and Vicki's trailer to try, taking along the Oriental, Sweet & Sour and R/B/C dressings. We tried all three and I have to say, for salad dressings that have absolutely no oil, no preservatives and artificial additives, these are pretty darn tasty! Created with diabetics in mind, these salad dressings would be great for those folks following a low fat diet but they are also nice for those of us who don't want a lot of chemical additives on our salads, just all natural ingredients (except for the sucralose for sweetener).

Those who live in the Dayton are can find them at Cubs, Dot's Market and other area stores, plus they are available online at the website.

So thanks, Ken--your brother James Baby makes some good stuff!

Busy Work, Busy Times

Much activity this week. Denny has the electric fence mostly up, which is good since one of our tomato plants has 4 small tomatoes starting. Yay! My mother has decided that we'll be doing our somehow-this-turned-into-an-annual-thing garage sale, so today Denny and I stopped by to set up a table and start arranging some items and clearing space in the garage. This was after we had gone to the annual 20 year retiree breakfast for the police department. We've missed the last nine years so it was neat catching up with a lot of old friends, some of whom we haven't seen since we started our full time travels. Most of us are in pretty good health and things are going well for everyone, which is always good to hear.

Patches Mae proved her huntress ancestry this week when we were spending the day at "Grandma's" house. As seen by the picture above, Patches discovered that if she hid in the ferns and stayed there for a long time, sooner or later the birds would forget she was there. The end result? She gifted us with a baby bird in the living room. The good news is, when I went to pick it up with a paper towel the little critter ran off and tried to fly away. So I was able to take it outside on the other side of the privacy fence and place it near the lilac bush where it flew up into the branches. All is well.

Traded up to a new Razr cell phone today--a whole new learning curve here as well as accessories to buy, of course. So much for a "free" upgrade. Let's see how long it takes me to realize it's my phone ringing since I lost my ringtones; I imagine a lot of the calls will go into voice mail until I remember what my new ringtone sounds like. Old dog and all that...

A Sunny Lazy Sunday

The weather hasn't been especially cooperative since Denny and I arrived in Ohio in April. As a matter of fact, it's been better suited for ducks.

At times, we felt adrift in a sea of mud, wondering if we were ever going to see the light of day.


Day after day passed by and we started to feel very housebound.


But with the arrival of the Memorial Day weekend also came the end of the rain.


The ground has started to dry out and we were able plant all the tomatoes in Dad's garden.


And if we can keep the various reptiles...


...and mammals out of the garden...


...we might end up with a harvest like this.


Denny and I want to thank all those who have served our country so valiantly, making it possible for us to travel freely wherever we wish to go. Have a great Memorial Day (observed) weekend, everyone.