June 5th - Swing Set Finished

I finished the swing set today, but forgot to take a photo of it after I added the slide and the ramp. Below is a progress photo from a couple of days ago.

Lydia was here a couple of days this week. Normally Kathy and her went out and picked mulberries and cherries first thing in the morning. They are at the cherry trees in the photo below.

Kathy says that she is done picking cherries for the year. She said she had enough picked and pitted for over 15 pies. Several people from church have said they are going to come over and pick some of those remaining, and there are still a lot of them.

Duck weed has infested our pond. It started before I went to TN the last time. I sprayed it with weed killer 2 or 3 times but it didn't seem to help. The entire top of the pond is covered. Once that happens it cuts off sunlight from getting to the plants in the pond and they quit producing oxygen. A lot, if not all, of the fish have died. From what I have read since it happened you have to use specific weed killers to kill the stuff. Enough for a single treatment for our small pond is $80. It will probably take multiple treatments to kill the stuff.

It rained heavily last night and rained lightly this morning. No rain in the forecast for Saturday (tomorrow) and Sunday. Tomorrow is Lydia's birthday party. Doug & Anthony should be here within the hour. I didn't think I would have time to do mowing over the weekend so I mowed the lawn this afternoon, even though it was wet.

Good night. May God bless you and yours.

June 1 - More Swing Set Work

I didn't do much yesterday after church. We did pick the ripe cherries. There are a lot more still to be picked, when they ripen.

 The mulberry pickers/eaters were at it first thing this morning. Lydia is wearing the hat because the temperature was 57 degrees.

 Sometimes a little help from Grammy, and a lot of stretching, was required to get to the ripe berries.

Sunday afternoon Andy's Dad used his Bobcat to take the blue building off my trailer and put it on the leveling pads Kelsey & I had prepared. I added the platform at the end of the swing set today. It will have a slide going off the far side and a ramp up to it on the near side.

 

Also on Sunday afternoon Andy's Dad helped Andy & Kelsey cut down a dead tree that was in their yard. The brush pile from it is on the left and the food wood is further out in the yard, on the right.

Tomorrow we head into Jefferson City to buy hardware & additional chain, for hanging the swings.

May God bless you and yours.

May 30th - More Birthday Present Work

The blue building is now parked in Kelsey's driveway. I think Andy's Dad is supposed to unload it with his Bobcat tomorrow. Kelsey's "to do" list includes painting the inside, and maybe the outside. I think she added installing some windows to my "to do" list.

 

Yesterday Kelsey and I leveled 4 pads to support the building.

Jack, Andy's Uncle who is only a couple of years older than Andy, came over last night and we set up the A frames and installed the top beam, in the rain. The far leg on the left sits on top of the ground. The near leg on the left is in a 3" hole. The far leg on the right is in a 9" hole. The near leg on the right is in a 15" deep hole. Digging the holes allowed us to get everything plumb and level.

Today I finished "locking" the top beam in place and installed the knee braces at the top.

I thought the knee braces would provide enough stiffness but I was disappointed by how "wobbly" it is. I still have to add a 4' square platform on the left side, for the slide. (Amy & Marshall, Kelsey's Mom & Stepdad are buying the slide.) I'm hoping it will add more stability. If that doesn't work the only other thing I can think to do is remove the existing knee braces and add longer ones.

Kathy picked these cherries yesterday and many more today. She said she has enough picked and pitted for 3 good sized pies.

I hope you all had a great day. May God bless you and yours.

May 28th - Swing Set Building

We have been preparing for Lydia's, our great-granddaughter, birthday on the 7th. We have/had an unused small building at our home in Missouri and Kelsey, our granddaughter, wanted to move it to her house and convert it into a playhouse.

Building before.

Building gone.

and on trailer.

I still have to take it over to Kelsey & Andy's. I loaded it by myself. Andy's Dad is going to take his Bobcat, with forks, to their house to unload it.

Today we went in to Menards and Kelsey bought the lumber for a swing set. She and I put the two end frames together in their garage this afternoon. We are going to have to wait until Andy is available to stand them up and put the 14' long 4x6 top beam in place. Kelsey, Lydia, Kathy & I went out to lunch after getting the lumber. Kelsey bought us lunch as an anniversary present, married 48 years today.

Our dwarf cherry trees are loaded with cherries. We put up some netting but it will be a battle to get more than the birds.

 

 

We went over to Kelsey's for supper tonight. After supper Kelsey put in a movie for Lydia. Lydia was sitting on the couch in the living room, totally engrossed in the movie. We sat in the dining room and watched her watching the movie. She was so cute. I tried to get a photo but the photo was dark.

God is good! If you are as blessed by Him as I am, you are a fortunate person.

May 25th - Back in Missouri

We arrived back home around 3 PM today after our whirlwind trip to Indiana, Michigan & Ohio. It was a good trip.

Desert after lunch on the way to Indiana.

 

 

Gathering eggs at Doug & Anthony's, in Indianapolis.

Heading down to the pond at my Mom's, in Michigan.

 Swinging with Colton, my brother's grandson.

 A little wading in the pond. She wanted to pet the fish.

 

Petting one of the bears, with help from my sister-in-law, at my brothers.



 Some slide time with Colton, at my brothers.

At my sister-in-law Judy's, and her families, cottage at Hamilton Lake. Doc, the next door neighbor was fishing off the dock when we arrived. He caught several small blue gills, with Lydia watching closely. They decided to switch to balloon "fishing poles". 

More balloon fishing.

And some swimming.

Relaxing on the porch.

Back at Doug & Anthony's.

Anthony doing an "Elsa braid". She loved it.

It was good to get to visit folks, but it is also good to be back home.

Today was Kelsey's, our granddaughter, 26th birthday. After work she and Andy & Lydia came over for a feast of salad, macaroni soup & blackberry cobbler.

May God bless you and yours.

May 19th - Back in Missouri

I drove back to Missouri last Saturday. Rain a lot of the way, but none really heavy, and horrible traffic waiting to cross the Mississippi at St. Louis, other than that the trip was uneventful.

Sunday we had a good Sunday School class and church service. Kelsey and Lydia came over for a couple of hours in the afternoon. It was good to see my "sweeties" again.

Lydia came for the day Monday and helped me unload my truck. She on my lap watching "movies" on an old phone, then she moved over to Kathy's lap.

I mowed for 3 hours but that was about all I accomplished yesterday. Today I need to spend a couple of hours weed eating, but haven't worked up the energy yet.

Weather was nice yesterday and supposed to be even nicer today.

I don't plan on doing much before we leave Thursday for our Indiana/Michigan/Ohio weekend trip. Lydia is going with us. We plan on being back Monday, a short trip.

May God bless you and yours.

May 7th - Back in Tennessee

I drove back to Tennessee yesterday. The weather was beautiful during the trip. Temperatures got up to the low 80's, where they are supposed to be for the next 5 days here. Lows are supposed to be in the high 50's, low 60's. No rain in the 10 day forecast, except for a 30% chance Sunday, Monday & Tuesday.

The flowers are blooming around our pond in Missouri.

Kathy & Lydia were over on the dam checking to see if an egg that had been there for over a week, was still there, it was.

No big plans for TN while I am here. I will put up a few more sheets of drywall and hopefully talk to a guy about finishing the drywall I have up, which would be half the building. I also may try to get a TV antenna up this trip. I had planned on installing a dish here, so that we could make use of the DishTV service that we all ready have. Instead I think I will stick to over-the-air programming until values for "pay TV" improve. I think eventually we are going to get back to "ala carte" availability, like people used to have with the big C-band dishes. You were able to pick the channels you wanted and only pay for them. You didn't have to pay for 5 different channels airing "Brazilian Butt Lifts", while another 50 were nothing more than 24 hour a day commercials. With the over-the-air channels at least if I am going to have to watch commercials I don't have to pay for the "privilege" of doing so.

I had a funny experience last night. At about 12:40 I woke up to an alarm going off. I was still partly asleep and couldn't figure out why an alarm was going off. I wondered, "Has this alarm been going off every night while I have been gone?", which shows how much I was still asleep, since the only alarm I have had here was my cell phone clock alarm. I thought "It isn't that loud so I'll just see if I can go back to sleep and eventually it will quit. I can reset it in the morning." After 10 minutes it was still going off so I got out of bed and tried to find it. For those of you who can hear with both ears this doesn't sound like a big task, for those of us who are deaf in one ear it is a difficult task, since we have no "stereo" hearing we can't tell the direction a noise is coming from. I searched around the bedroom and looking for anything that might be beeping. it wasn't my cell phone, it wasn't my CPAP machine, neither the washer nor dryer seemed to be the source. I wandered out into the living room/kitchen area and thought that it seemed to be a little louder. Then my brain cleared of sleep enough to start working. I had been looking for a radio to have here. It seems that you can't buy a real radio any more. Kathy gave me a extra clock radio we had in Missouri and I to it working yesterday. It never dawned on me that the "default" setting was for the alarm to come on at midnight. It had apparently been going off for 40 minutes before I was awake enough to even notice it. It took me awhile but I finally managed to turn it off and set it so that the alarm would not come back on. After the "excitement" I had to problem getting back to sleep.

A little after 6 this morning I was awake, just enjoying laying in bed and pondering going back to sleep. I heard a gunshot, and then 4 more. After the first one I thought maybe it was a someone hunting turkeys. After 5 shots, in the span of maybe 30 seconds, I'm not sure. If they shot a turkey 5 times it certainly wouldn't be edible. Perhaps it was a frustrated turkey hunter just emptying his gun. No complaints from me, this is just part of rural living.

I sit here drinking a cup of coffee, after eating a good breakfast of ham & eggs, and look out into the woods at the beginning of what looks like a beautiful day. Thank you God for blessing me with a good family, good neighbors, health, food, shelter, and much, much more.

May God bless you and yours.