TEDCO Refinishing

Teddy has really gotten into the furniture refinishing business big time. She has been haunting all of the thrift stores down here looking for quality furniture that just needs some TLC and this is what she has come up with. If this keeps up we are going to have to get another trailer to pull behind our Cardinal. Seriously though she has come up with some real bargains and has learned a lot in the brief time that she has been refinishing them.

They will go perfectly in the farmhouse when we get back.

Meanwhile back at the farm our contractor has informed us that he is finished with the drywalling. We are excited to see it.

It all started when she found this 48" round oak table at a thrift shop in Pahrump. (see previous blog entry on Thursday, November 18, 2010)

On Dec. 1 we left Pahrump and relocated here in Lake Havasu City. Shortly after arriving she continued refinishing the 48" table. Here, after staining she applies the first of three coats of poly.

After the final coat of polyurethane varnish was dry we wrapped it securely in bubble wrap for it's trip back to "The Farm" in Michigan.
We will use it for our dining room table.

Teddy had enjoyed her refinishing project so much that after a couple of weeks she began searching the thrift shops here for well built furniture items that were also in need of some TLC.

She bought this solid Maple Captains Chair for $5.00 and was soon hard at work This is the result after stripping, sanding, staining and varnishing with 3 coats of poly. It will go into a corner of the dining room back at "The Farm".

I thought that she was done but once the fever had struck
there was no stopping it.

She got this small 24" round table for $15.00 at another thrift store. It is made of solid Oak but someone had finished it with a mahogany almost black stain so dark that you could barely see the grain. Stripping it revealed this beautiful oak grain that was a shame to hide.

Here it is after 3 coats of poly and hand rubbing.

By now Teddy was becoming somewhat of a celebrity here in the park and folks were stopping by to see what she was working on now.

Soon after finishing the 24" table she came

back with this console table which she

picked up for $30.00. It is 16" wide by

49" long and will go nicely against one

of the walls in the dining room.

(that's the pedestal for the 48" table and a wine rack sitting under it in the back of our trailer where it will ride during the trip back)

And now she's working on this solid maple end table which she picked up for $15.00 Here it is after stripping, sanding and applying the first coat of poly.

She plans to use it as a night table in the bedroom.

Teddy has learned a lot since she started, picking up hints from
woodworkers here in the park and by trial and error.

I must say that I am quite proud of her.

Even so she has to stop or we will have to make two trips
to get all of this back to Michigan.  

Still Here

I haven't updated our blog in a while. It's just that when you are having fun, the days just seem to run together. Additionally we haven't been engaged in many activities that I haven't previously blogged about. Every morning I rise at 5am and join a group of guys in the clubhouse for BS and coffee. I generally get back to the trailer at about 7:30 as Teddy is just rising. She then disappears for an hour or so to join a morning exercise group. Then when she gets back around 9 we have breakfast...and so it goes. I know that doesn't sound very exciting but we really are enjoying our winter stay in Lake Havasu City.

For several years now on Saturday mornings from 7 to 9 am we host a breakfast at the clubhouse staffed by volunteers from the park and I, once again am the chief waffle maker making waffles to order. To maintain authenticity, I claim to have graduated from the Waffle Institute in Brussels.
Teddy OTOH spends her Saturdays with a geological club out foraging in the desert for what I call rocks. They sometimes travel up to 100 miles from here in their quest for their stoney specimens. Oh well, different strokes...

My other function here at the park seems to be the court jester, providing comic relief to the other RVers, as in, "What is that crazy Larry Page up to now?".



 I write poems for our semi-frequent buffet dinners, collect and print oddities from the internet, act as the park photographer, maintain a park directory, sometimes MC at the dinners and...

...ham that I am, this year have taken over as the bingo caller on Tuesday & Thursday bingo nights.






Other evenings we generally sit out in lawn chairs with our "Snowbird" friends, sip scotch or drink beer and swap lies.

So you see, we do keep busy with our little make work activities but even so I do manage to sneak in an afternoon nap just about every day.

Lake Havasu City

We are in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. On December 1 we pulled up stakes and migrated down here to Lake Havasu City. Night temperatures were getting a bit too chilly for our "snowbird" taste. Lake Havasu is about 200 miles further South and more importantly about 2000 feet lower in altitude. That makes for about 10 degrees of temperature on the average.
We were warmly greeted with hugs & kisses by all of our fellow Havasu RVer friends from previous years that were already here, however several of our friends also wait till after Christmas before coming on down from the Northern climes.
Since arriving we have been busy visiting with old friends and Teddy is still working on refinishing her table. She has re-stained all of the parts and has just finished applying the third coat of poluurethane varnish. I think that it will look good in our summer home at "The Farm". She has also renewed her membership in a local rock & gem society and has been going with them on geological field trips every Saturday morning,
I have rejoined my fellow early risers for our morning coffee bull session every morning from 5:30 to 7:30 am. I know that it sounds nuts but there are about ten or twelve of us that show up and we always have a jolly good time swapping lies and solving all the problems of western civilization.  ;-)

Teddy’s Table

Last week Teddy and her friend Eva Syberden spent an afternoon visiting local used book and thrift stores. She came back all excited about a round antique DR table that she had spotted at a thrift store. She thought that it would be a perfect fit for the dining room back at “The Farm” in Michigan. She wanted me to go and look at it to access the quality of the table and to determine the feasibility of transporting it back to Michigan.

So the next morning we drove over there to look at the table.

It was a solid oak 48 inch round table. It was on a hexagon pedestal with solid oak hand carved claw feet. It was a leafed table, however the leaf(s) was/were missing. It was marked at $60.00 which I thought was a real good buy. I figured that I could make an expansion leaf or leaves and decided that transportation would be no problem as we could store the top in the trailer and the pedestal and legs in the basement cargo bins.

But…there’s always a but…when I attempted to open the table to determine how much it would expand, it would not open. There was no visible locking mechanism but it would open approximately one inch and solidly stop. Thrift store personnel could do no better than I, so declaring that the table was hopelessly defective we offered them $20.00 and they accepted.

Upon getting the table back here at the park my friend Hank Syberden and I determined that the previous owner had inserted two drywall screws into the expansion slides, apparently to lock it closed as there was no expansion leaf anyway. We removed the screws and it works beautifully.

Teddy could not wait to get started and before day’s end made a trip to the local Ace Hardware and loaded up on refinishing supplies, zip strip, sandpaper, steel wool, scrapers, etc.

She has been hard at it ever since and is making good progress as the following photos will attest.

Pedestal stripped & sanded ready for staining.

Claw foot legs stripped & sanded.

Strippin the sides

...and the top.

I expect that after she is done we will be able to take it to the “Antiques Road Show” where we will be told, “If I had this in my shop, it would definitely be worth $(put your guess here)”.

;-))

Halloween at Nevada Treasure

Halloween being primarily a children's holiday, doesn't usually get much attention in most of the RV parks that we visit because most of the RVers are usually older citizens. However we have also observed that there is usually at least one site in every park that seems to enjoy decorating for holidays whatever it be. And Nevada Treasure is no exception. We remember these folks from last year and this year they really have went all out. Their exhibit went up during the first week of October and is lit up every evening.

Teddy went over there last evening and sapped these picts.

When I ride by on my Segway I trigger a voice that says, "Where ya goin'".

We never see them to talk to and just wonder where they put it all during the rest of the season.

Oh well...we do enjoy their display(s).

The annual move to the Southwest

With winter rapidly approaching we vacated our summer digs in Leelanau County, Michigan and fled to the Southwest for the winter. We left "The Farm" on September 20 and traveled through Michigan's Upper Peninsula,

stopping for the first night in Escanaba at the home of our good friends, Dan & Pat Martenson. Pat as usual treated us to a first rate dinner complete with apple pie, my favorite.


We left Escanaba very early the next morning and headed for our RV dealer in Appleton, Wisconsin where we had an appointment for some minor RV repairs. We spent the next four days in Appleton, our old home town, visiting friends & family and checking in with our family physician for annual physicals. I had my three year colonoscopy scheduled for friday the 24th and everything, literally, came out ok.
On Saturday the 25th we continued traveling west across Wisconsin and Minnesota overnighting in Albert Lea, MN. On subsequent days we overnighted in Council Bluffs, IA; North Platte, NE; Laramie, WY; Evanston, WY and Cedar City, UT arriving in Pahrump, NV on Friday, October first for a two month stay here at The Nevada Treasure RV Resort.

We happily settled into the very same site, 9-4, that we had last spring. We love this park for its beauty and many amenities and were pleasantly surprised to find that they had lowered the monthly rate.
Life is good. Happy happy, joy, joy.

Moomers

Our time here in NW Michigan is coming to an end for yet another season. Next Monday September 20 we will depart for the Southwest to escape the revenges of another Michigan winter.

However, we could not leave without a last visit to our favorite summer "watering hole", Moomers Ice-Cream parlor.

Voted "Best Ice-Cream in America" in an ABC "Good Morning America" contest, Moomers specializes in homemade "farm fresh" Ice Cream from their adjacent creamery and dairy farm.
In our frequent trips to Traverse City from our summer home here in Cedar we usually take a route that will take us past their store. In the dead of summer there is usually a line snaking out the door but the wait is well worth it. With over 100 flavors to pick from the most difficult part of the visit is deciding what flavor to try. At the beginning of last summer I vowed to try every flavor but in the last two years I haven't made much progress. Reasons being that...
1.  I keep going back to my favorites.
2.  They keep adding to and/or changing the flavors.
3.  The calories, OMG the calories.

Oh well, It was a noble aspiration.

Here we are on our final stop of the summer of 2010 on our way back from a Traverse City grocery run.
Me with German Chocolate and Teddy with Butter Pecan.

Following is a listing of their advertised flavors
In addition they will make custom flavors by request.

Flavor Descriptions

• Amaretto Cherry - amaretto flavored ice cream with real halved Northern Michigan black sweet cherries, cherry swirl and chocolate chips
• Apple Crisp - dutch apple pie flavored ice cream with chunks of fresh homemade apple crisp
• Apricot - Apricot flavored ice cream with fresh apricots
• BPSwirl - peanut butter flavored ice cream with peanut butter swirl and pieces of Reese's Peanut Butter cups
• Banana Bread - Banana flavored ice cream with homemade banana bread pieces
• Banana Peanut Butter - Banana flavored ice cream with peanut butter swirl
• Bear Paw - chocolate ice cream with a caramel swirl and chocolate covered cashews
• Black Cherry - black cherry ice cream with halved Northern Michigan black sweet cherries
• Black Raspberry - Black Raspberry flavored ice cream with a black raspberry swirl
• Blue Moon - blue moon flavored ice cream
• Blue Raspberry - blue raspberry flavored ice cream
• Bubble Gum - Bubble Gum flavored ice cream with pink bubble gum flavored dip swirl
• Brownie Batter - brownie batter flavored ice cream with brownie pieces
• Butter Brickle - Toffee flavored ice cream with toffee brickle pieces
• Butter Pecan - butter pecan ice cream with halves & pieces of butter roasted and salted pecans
• Caramel Apple - caramel flavored ice cream with a caramel apple swirl
• Carrot Cake - carrot cake flavored ice cream with pieces of carrot cake and cream cheese frosting swirl
• Cheesecake(blueberry, cherry, raspberry, caramel apple, pumpkin, lemon, strawberry, turtle) - cheesecake flavored ice cream with the fresh fruit pieces or swirls throughout and chunks of real New York cheesecake
• Cherry Brandy - Cherry brandy flavored ice cream with a cherry swirl
• Cherries Moobilee - black cherry flavored ice cream with chunks of black sweet cherries, red tart cherries, chocolate fudge swirl and chunks of homemade brownie pieces
• Cherry Pie ala Mode - Vanilla ice cream with pieces of our made from scatch cherry pie pieces
• Cherry Praline Pecan* - cherry flavored ice cream with local black sweet cherries and candied praline pecans
• Chip Chocolate - chocolate ice cream with white chocolate chips
• Chocolate - Moomers homemade premium chocolate ice cream
• Chocolate Almond Brownie - chocolate ice cream with chunks of homemade brownies and pieces of fresh butter roasted and salted almonds
• Chocolate Cabernet - chocolate ice cream with a bottle of local Cabernet wine
• Chocolate Caramel - chocolate ice cream with creamy caramel swirl
• Chocolate Caramel Nut - chocolate ice cream with fresh roasted and salted Spanish peanuts and creamy caramel swirl
• Chocolate Cherry Pecan - chocolate ice cream with chopped chocolate covered dried cherries and roasted pecans
• Chocolate Chip - vanilla ice cream with miniature chocolate chips
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough - vanilla ice cream with pieces and chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough
• Chocolate Chocolate Chip - chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips
• Chocolate Chocolate Waffle Cone - chocolate ice cream with pieces of broken chocolate dipped waffle cones
• Chocolate Cookie Monster - chocolate ice cream with Oreo cookie crumbs and chocolate chip cookie dough
• Chocolate Malt* - chocolate ice cream flavored with malt extract
• Chocolate No Bake - chocolate ice cream with homemade pieces of no bake cookies
• Chocolate Nuts To You - chocolate ice cream with loads of roasted almonds, butter roasted pecans, pistachios, walnuts, spanish peanuts and cashews
• Chocolate Orange - chocolate ice cream with an orange juice background
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Chunk - chocolate ice cream with pieces of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and creamy peanut butter swirl
• Chocolate Raspberry Cabernet - chocolate ice cream flavored with a bottle of local cabernet wine
• Chocolate Raspberry Chunk - chocolate ice cream with raspberry swirl and chocolate flakes
• Chocolate Silk - a light chocolate/caramel flavored ice cream
• Chocolate Turtle - chocolate ice cream with swirls of chocolate and caramel and pecans
• Cinnamon - cinnamon ice cream
• Cinnamon Bourbon* - cinnamon ice cream with 1/5 bourbon per 10 gallons
• Cinnamon Pumpkin Crisp - cinnamon ice cream with pieces of pumpkin crisp
• Coconut Almond Delight - coconut ice cream with flecks of sweetened coconut, miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips and pieces of fresh butter roasted and salted almonds
• Coffee Caramel - coffee caramel ice cream with a rich caramel swirl
• Coffee Toffee - coffee ice cream with pieces of Heath candy bar
• Coffee Fudge Swirl - coffee flavored ice cream with a chocolate fudge swirl
• Cookie Monster - vanilla ice cream with Oreo cookie crumbs and chocolate chip cookie dough
• Cookies & Cream - vanilla ice cream with Oreo cookie crumbs
• Cosmo - chocolate ice cream with swirls of chocolate fudge, marshmallow and caramel
• Cotton Candy - cotton candy flavored ice cream (color may vary)
• Cow Tracks - vanilla ice cream with pieces of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and chocolate fudge swirl
• Cranberry Walnut - cranberry flavored ice cream with cranberries and walnuts
• Creamsicle - vanilla ice cream swirled with orange sherbet
• Cupcake - cake batter flavored ice cream with pieces of "cake pieces" and rainbow sprinkles
• Double Chocolate - (raspberry, cherry, chunk) a dark double chocolate ice cream can be used for a base for any chocolate flavors, with the fruit swirl
• Egg Nog - egg nog flavored ice cream with nutmeg
• French Vanilla - french vanilla ice cream
• German Chocolate - chocolate ice cream with chunks of homemade brownies, caramel-praline swirl, butter roasted and salted pecans and flaked coconut
• Ginger* - ginger flavored ice cream with grated gingerroot
• Ginger Snap - ginger flavored ice cream with pieces of ginger snaps
• Grasshopper - crème de menthe ice cream sprinkled with pieces of Oreo cookies
• Green Tea* - green tea flavored ice cream
• Irish Coffee - Irish cream flavored ice cream with irish cream liquor
• Just Caramel - caramel flavored ice cream with caramel swirl and pieces of chocolate covered waffle cone
• Lemon Custard - lemon custard ice cream
• Lemon Dream - a refreshing lemon flavored ice cream with lemon zest
• Lemon Poppyseed Muffin - lemon dream flavored ice cream with lemon poppyseed muffin pieces
• Licorice - black licorice flavored ice cream (white ice cream)
• Mango - mango flavored ice cream with mango puree
• Maple Walnut - Maple flavored ice cream with walnuts throughout
• Marshmallow - marshmallow flavored ice cream
• Mint Chocolate Chip - crème de menthe ice cream sprinkled with miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips
• Mocha Almond Fudge - mocha ice cream with fresh butter roasted and salted almonds and chocolate fudge swirl
• Mocha Mudslide* - mocha flavored ice cream with caramel swirl, chocolate swirl and chocolate flakes
• Mooberry - vanilla ice cream with red raspberry and tart cherries swirled throughout
• Mr. Monkey Tail - banana flavored ice cream with crushed peanuts and a chocolate swirl
• No-Bake Cookie - vanilla ice cream with chunks of homemade no-bake cookies
• North Star Hat Trick* - white marshmallow, wild cherry and blue raspberry ice creams swirled together
• Nuts To You - hazelnut ice cream with loads of roasted almonds, butter roasted pecans, pistachios, walnuts, spanish peanuts and cashews
• Oatmeal Cookie - cinnamon flavored ice cream with homemade oatmeal cookie pieces
• Orange Pineapple - orange pineapple ice cream with bits and pieces of orange and pineapple
• Oreo Mint Meltdown - mint flavored ice cream with Oreo cookie bits and chocolate fudge swirl
• Peach - peach ice cream with bits and pieces of peaches
• Peach Reisling - Peach ice cream with bits and pieces of peach and a bottle of local reisling wine
• Peanut Butter Oreo - peanut butter ice cream with Oreos cookie pieces
• Peanut Butter No-Bake - peanut butter ice cream with no-bake cookie pieces
• Peppermint Stick - white peppermint ice cream with pieces of red and green peppermint candy
• Pink Peppermint Fudge - pink peppermint flavored ice cream with a chocolate swirl and red and green pieces of peppermint candy
• Pistachio - pistachio with fresh roasted and salted pistachio nuts
• Play Dough - blue moon flavored ice cream with pieces of brightly colored sugar cookie dough
• Pralines and Cream - french vanilla ice cream with fresh butter roasted and salted pecans and creamy caramel-praline swirl
• Pretzels Plus - vanilla ice cream with pieces of yogurt and chocolate covered pretzels and a caramel swirl
• Pumpkin - pumpkin ice cream made with canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices
• Pumpkin Chip - pumpkin flavored ice cream with chocolate chips
• Pumpkin Roll - pumpkin flavored ice cream with a cream cheese frosting swirl and cake pieces
• Raspberry Chocolate Chip - raspberry ice cream sprinkled with miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips
• Raspberry Truffle* - Vanilla ice cream with a raspberry swirl and raspberry filled chocolate cups
• Raspberry White Chocolate - white chocolate ice cream sprinkled with miniature white chocolate chips and fresh raspberry swirl
• Red Pop - red pop flavored ice cream
• Rice Pudding - vanilla ice cream with real homemade rice pudding, golden raisins and cinnamon
• Rocky Road - chocolate ice cream with marshmallow swirl, miniature marshmallows and Spanish peanuts
• Rum Raisin - rum flavored ice cream with rum soaked gold raisins(made with real rum if requested)
• Russ' Cookie Jar - vanilla ice cream with pieces of broken cookies
• Sherbet - flavorful orange, lime, cherry lemon or red raspberry sherbet
• Smore - vanilla ice cream with a marshmallow swirl, graham cracker pieces and cream filled chocolate cows
• Sorbet - red raspberry, peach, orange, strawberry, lemon, lime, cherry, a non-dairy product)
• Spumoni - an exquisite combination of chocolate rum, pistachio and cherry ice creams, swirls of marshmallow and plentiful chunks of pineapple, maraschino cherries, mixed nuts and pistachios
• Sticky Bun - light cinnamon ice cream with chunks of homemade sticky buns and cream cheese swirl
• Strawberry - strawberry ice cream with pieces of fresh strawberry swirled throughout
• SuperMoo - blue, red and yellow flavored ice cream Flavors may vary
• Sweet Tart - vanilla ice cream with local black sweet cherries and local tart cherries
• Toasted Coconut - toasted coconut flavored ice cream with toasted coconut and macadamia nuts
• Toffee Heath - toffee flavored ice cream with Heath candy bar pieces
• Vanilla - Moomers homemade premium vanilla ice cream
• Vanilla Fleck - Moomers homemade premium vanilla ice cream with vanilla bean fleck
• Vanilla Malt* - vanilla ice cream flavored with malt extract
• Very Cherry - wild cherry flavored ice cream with chunks of Northern Michigan black sweet cherries, red tart cherries and maraschino cherries
• White Chocolate Oreo - White chocolate flavored ice cream with pieces of Oreos

Next May when we return for another summer, Moomers is sure to be one of our first stops.  ;-)

Summertime is tomato sandwich time!

One of my favorite summertime treats is a big sloppy, with juice running down your arms, tomato sandwich made with fresh ripe tomatos straight from the garden.
Through the years I have perfected what I consider to be the ultimate tomato sandwich as follows:


A. The Ingredients

1. Tomatoes: You must start with a summer-ripened tomato. Any color will do, but it has to be dead-ripe, succulent, and bursting with juice. It should never be refrigerated. 

2. Mayonnaise:  You need mayonnaise, NOT ‘Miracle Whip’…Miracle Whip is a nice condiment for making potato salad but should never be used on sandwiches as it’s strong flavor overpowers the other fillings. I f you don’t have any mayo on hand, STOP now and go to the store and get some. Mayo is part of the magic of a perfect tomato sandwich.

3. Bread: Two lightly toasted slices of that soft and squishy bread that you never admit buying. You don’t want highly flavored bread that detracts from the filling.  

4. Onion: Sweet onion sliced, preferably Vidalias if in season.

5. Last but not least, salt.

B The Assembly:

While the bread is toasting, use your sharpest knife (if you don’t have a Cutco #1721, you should get one it is the best tomato slicing knife in existance) to slice it vertically in 1/2 inch slices & then cut off the tops of the slices that have bellybuttons where the stem was. Peel the onion and slice it horizontally in 1/8th inch slices. Slather the mayonnaise on both slices of the toast, making sure it flows all the way to the edges, perhaps with an artful drip over the edge. Artfully fit the tomatoes onto the toast cutting it to fit the best you can. Lightly salt, put the top on and VOLA!

C The Eating:

Sandwich in hand, you may now move to the sink and start eating. Grasp the sandwich with both hands, shielding the backside as the tomatoes sometimes try to escape by squishing out the back. Have plenty of napkins or paper towels handy, as the juice will run down your chin or your hands. Optionally put your sandwich on a plate and eat at the table, don’t forget the paper towels.

The first bite is all about texture—the soft bread, the velvety emulsion of mayonnaise, the luscious tomato, bursting with juice – a unique and wonderful sensory experience. By the third bite, be ready for the harmony of flavors in which yeasty bread, creamy mayonnaise, crisp onions and tart-acid-sweet tomato come together, accentuated with the salt. Don’t hurry. Savor the flavors.

Tomato sandwiches are about as basic as you can get, every one of them is delicious. In the summer I eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or in between. And every last one of them is perfect. At dinner the perfect accompaniment is a cob of fresh buttered & salted sweet corn.

A Prairie Home Companion

Getting ready for the show

Last Tuesday evening, Aug. 10, Teddy, Teddy's sister Deb, and I had an entertaining date night at a "Prairie Home Companion" show with Garrison Keillor at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. It was a sold out crowd of us an 3,997 other (mostly over 50) folks at Interlochen's 4,000 seat Kresge Auditorium. 



It was the first stop in their month long, twenty-three city "Summer of Love Tour".

Shuffling scripts

We joined host Garrison Keillor, Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins, the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, and sound-effects man Fred Newman for tender duets and ballads, poetry (Poe, Shakespeare, Anonymous), stories of passion and marriage.  

Garrison Keillor & Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins

 During the intermission Mr. Keillor entertained the audience with a walk through sing-along of “Unchained Melody” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” All this and favorite elements of A Prairie Home Companion — Guy Noir, Dusty and Lefty, the News from Lake Wobegon.


It was a fun evening and bought back many memories of when I was on the staff of Interlochen in the 60s, both as a recording engineer and ultimately Chief Engineer of their Radio Station, WIAA. I left in 1968 when I became "The Director of Broadcasting" at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI.


Teddy and I have decided that from now on we will make sure to attend at least one major venue at Interlochen each summer.

Wha's Up

Now that we are done with the inside remodeling, at least for this season, our attention is now directed toward our outside activities. 
Couch potato that I am...hey, I do run the garden tractor to mow the lawn but anyone that knows us knows that "outside activities" means Teddy's outdoor activities and busy she has been. When we began moving into the farmhouse last summer Teddy set about cleaning up the yard and flower beds and as these photos show, this summer she went at in full attack mode.  (Click on photos for larger size)

One of her first projects, started last summer, and continued this May was covering the cistern mound with iris bulbs. Although now done blooming they were in full bloom in late May.

Next she cleaned up this old rock garden that had been neglected for several years as her aging parents could no longer tend it.
Teddy's dad never threw anything away, he just stored it. She found a lot of old farm relics in one of the farm outbuildings including several old tractor seats, wagon wheels, an old kitchen sink, a hand pump, hand tools, & a hand cultivator  and has themed her gardens with them.

She also planted a variety of flowers along the front of the house.
These marigolds have been blooming all summer.

On the north side-yard of the house she made another flower garden and populated it with some more of her picks.
She isn't done, by a long shot, she scours the country side with her sister, Deb for old abandoned ghost farms where vintage flower bulbs might be ripe for transplanting. I often look out the window and there she is digging up another section of lawn.  ;-)

My outdoor efforts on the other hand have been more utilitarian.
When we arrived here in May we found that our cell coverage out here in the country was not reliable enough for internet use so I subscribed to HughesNet satellite internet and it works well. I am on a 24 month contract but can put it on time out winters when we are not here. (Oh..oh that means that it'll be about five years before I complete the 24 months)

Secondly, Teddy had been wanting an outdoor clothesline for some time so I had a welder make up this post from 3" pipe.

I told him that I wanted the cross section to be 4' long but neglected to specify the vertical length and when I got it it was 10' long which meant that I had to dig a 4' deep hole to plant it.

This did not turn out to be an easy job as he had welded two 12" cross members on the bottom to stabilize it. With Teddy's help we got the hole dug but it took about three hours. I mixed up a 50 lb. bag of concrete mix to set the pipe and this baby isn't going anywhere. Teddy spray-painted it green while  I lagged a 2 x 6 between two trees for the other end and we now have a first rate solar clothes dryer.