Getting it in Shape

Well, now that we are on our site for the summer, we can ‘make it our own’. The laundry facilities here are not real good so we have ‘cooked’ a deal with our daughter to do our laundry at her place in exchange for a little gardening around her house. She jumped at the offer so about every 10 days or so, we’ll drive into the ‘big smoke’ of TO, do our laundry and Barb will get her gardening fix (she loves to weed etc). So, our first time, we offer to thin out some of Terri’s perennials ;) and dispose of the cuttings (grin) – can you say giant Hosta worth a few bucks?

Now we have some plants to design a little better outdoor living area here. A short stop off at Walmart and a few bags of this and a few bags of that and we’re set. Luckily (?) the terrain here is part of the Niagara Escarpment and we have ‘easy’ access to lots of rock to build garden edges etc. So, once back with our bags of landscape stuff, we’re off to pick up some rocks and build a garden! We don’t have to go far – about 50 feet for an abundance of stone. This would be so much easier if we were 20 years younger. In fact, when we  owned stix and brix, we would round up our 3 girls and find a farmer that had a rock pile that he wanted to be rid of and we would pick the pile clean to build many, many rock walled gardens around the yard. That was easy back then – we were young and we had 3 girls that just loved to pick and lift rocks with us – it was one of those memorable family outings!

Anyway, all is good here except Barb & I are a little sore from the lifting and then arranging them critters into something that looks nice. Then comes the planting and mulching. Now we have to design our ‘deck’ area – the owner will supply the landscape fabric and the crushed lime stone to put on top of the fabric but we have to get his ok to our design. Timing is everything – apparently we were lucky that he allowed us to use the rocks for our garden edging, he refused others and some didn’t get to design their deck area so I am hovering so to approach him at the right time.

Wow, he okayed our plan and since we offered to do all the work (hoping that we can get it done earlier than he would have) he will drop off the fabric and we will shovel and rake the stone into place. We wait for his schedule again. In the meantime, life goes on – Barb is in her glory with her sewing centre set up. She is busy working on different projects that are haunting her and she is looking to join a quilt guild nearby. I am finishing little tasks to upgrade the  look of the rig on the outside. Back at Chanute, we decided to modernize the exterior by use the vinyl screw covers that the factory uses today to cover the screws on the outside. Not a big job, just finicky and I am also changing out the incandescent running lights with LED types.

 

Barb & I took a couple of days off to visit with our other  daughters and grandkids. Nate and Dean had just gotten back home from a little fishing trip up to Rice Lake with a generous feed of Walleye. Apparently, Nate (7) was the real fisherman and caught all the fish. We had a great lunch and visit on their side deck under beautiful skies. As we were leaving, Dean gave us the fish Nate caught – thanks Nate they were delicious!

 

 

The next day, we wandered down the road to Wellington to visit with Dawn and her family and the 4 grandkids. It was a nice relaxing day catching up under the market umbrella on the back deck. We had dinner and Tiana had to rush out to go to her soccer game. She has a passion for soccer and wants to be in a more competitive league. Unfortunately, we were unable to go watch with a 3 hour drive ahead of us but hopefully next time.  We could not believe how much Jessica and Lilly have grown.  It is amazing the changes over the winter months.

 

 

 

 

The owner dropped off the fabric AND put it down, soon after, he delivered the lime stone for us to spread. It wasn’t much but when we were finished, Barb & I were reminded of some of the muscles we haven’t used in awhile! So, now we have a deck/sitting area and imagining the site with grass in the other areas. There is no promises of when the sod will be delivered but we wait. During one of our walks around the park, Barb noticed a wild rose growing in an area that would soon be leveled and with sod and we thought to save the fragrant wild flower – spoke with the owner and said sure so with shovel in hand, we start digging. It wasn’t without some excitement – I had uncovered a large ant hill under some of the rock. The scene was similar to the one from Indiana Jones – large red and black ants everywhere wanting to carry us off to there nest! But we survived and now have a new wild rose bush to plant.

Until next time….