Gone 6-28

Just regular day to day stuff going on here...summer has arrived, we are in the 90's every day, but it is a dry heat and if your in the shade and not moving its great! By the time the shade falls across our back patio and the breeze whispers around it is the best place to be.

All of our plants and trees are doing well for their first month in their new homes. We finally have the water amounts and timing dialed in so other than weed management we just get to sit and enjoy the yards.

Andrea found out this week that our new grandchild is a boy. Yay.

I will be out of touch...electronically, for the next four or five days...so you will have to find other reading with your coffee Uncle's. I'll catch you all up when we get back. Have a Great Week!

Hot 6-24

Not too much going on around here, today was in the mid 90's and currently it is 82 at 10:10 p.m. but with a nice breeze.

Yesterday we had a lovely drive to our eye appointments and we both passed! My vision is 20/20 but as it has always been better than that I keep feeling like something is wrong...some things not as clear as I was used to but I guess I'll just have to adjust...smile. I still need reading glasses for some things...makes me look Grannyish.

On our way home and for the first time ever we stopped at Boomtown on highway 80 in Verdi, NV to have some lunch at Denny's, but that was a bust...after an hour's wait and then getting served incorrect orders we left hungry and cranky and didn't get to go into the casino and win our millions! We had a wonderful dinner at the Black Bear Diner in Fernley and it took 37 minutes from parking in the parking lot to leaving the parking lot....how nice.

I have been using Wii Fit every day for a week now and on our walk this morning I noticed that I am now walking with better posture and balance...something I wasn't even aware that needed fixing. Being aware of our centers of balance, posture, lower body strength and cores make for a much happier body. Larry had been doing it too and I have found I am competitive...if his score passes mine, I start working to get back in 1st place...which makes me work harder and longer...good for me and it makes Larry laugh at me.

As a side note, they are working on fixing highway 80 between the border and Colfax, that area that I complained about a year ago or so as being the worst highway we had ever been on. Also if you are driving anywhere in Oregon, the highway speed statewide is 55...used to be 65 and they are happily filling their coffers by writing tickets so beware! It sure makes driving along the high desert highways tedious, especially after doing 70 here in Nevada and 65 in California.

Stuff 6-21

You know you’re a Redneck when you use your boat/trailer to move furniture and your stuff to your new location! Larry called it Yankee Ingenuity and now I’m a little worried that he might have a smidge of redneck in him….Laugh! I can see using a horse or stock trailer…they are empty and have sides, but a boat has seats, the motor, bulkheads and other stuff in the way! But these people just kept going back and forth down our street…I guess it beat a rental fee and their boat looked a little rough anyhow!

Today was a nice day, stayed in the low 70’s and was a little breezy, but the sky in the desert can’t be beat. No smog and the sky is always so blue and with the white poofy clouds floating by, just stunning.

We are having a lot of fun with our Wii Fit. We had a really stressful day a few days ago dealing with DMV issues and later I got busy creating my Mii persona and then Larry wanted to create his too and before we knew it we had been dinking around over an hour making our cyber-selves…too funny. We had to get just the right eyes and the spacing JUST so and on and on…crazy. We are kinda hooked on some of these activities right now…first figuring them out and then improving our scores…it sure does burn the energy!

We worked on getting our soaker hoses adjusted in our planting beds again today, the way we had them wasn’t working the best. I love having bees and birds back in my yard and being able to pick a flower or pull a weed. Have missed that living on the road…a bathtub too!

Our good friends Lou and Vickie stopped and visited with us for the day on Friday…they were on their way home from Idaho. I made my homemade chicken enchiladas and with my fun Fiesta Ware the food and table looked like a picture….a shame I didn’t think to take a picture! Lordy, I can just kick myself when I forget to take pictures…but sometimes life just has to be experienced…not frozen.

This Gerbera Daisy was sitting on my kitchen table today.

Salt Creek Falls and Bad Wii 6-17

Yesterday we left Junction City around 7:30, after Michelle and Seth left for work and pre-school.

We arrived in Fallon at 6:15, it was a looonnngggg day, I wasn't much company, I kept falling asleep. It was a 525 mile trip and we hit just a teeny bit of rain in California...the speed limit everywhere in Oregon is 55 mph or less and was slow and tedious. Larry was glad to finally hit California and then Nevada where we could speed up.

These pictures are of Salt Creek Falls on highway 58 in Oregon, they are Oregon's second tallest falls...we happened to see it from the highway so we turned down into the viewing area parking lot and took the short walk to the top of the falls. The forest along this highway is thick, mossy and has creeks and water everywhere...the Rhododendrons were in bloom and were shining spots of color amongst the greens.

We stopped in Alturas for lunch at Subway...the Black Bear Diner is closed up and there isn't much else to choose from and we fueled up in Fernley.

We spent the evening getting everything put away and checking things out. It was nice to be back in our own bed. It poured rain for about an hour this morning around 4:30 and had rained just a day or two ago judging by the huge puddles everywhere, seems like a wet end of Spring for this area...it has rained quite a few days in the last month.

Today I pulled weeds out of the flower beds and deadheaded the flowers. I unpacked the Wii Fit that I had purchased in Oregon...everyone has been telling me how much fun it is and others have been wishing they had it. WELL, after getting it all set up and synched up I found it wasn't as fun as I was told...the thing WEIGHED me, told me I was overweight AND then gave me my REAL age in fitness years...turning 50 this year is a milestone enough without finding that I am older than that in lack of fitness years!!!! RUDE! So I made my goal, stamped my calendar and got started on my fitness program...guh. It does seem fun and I am not very good at some of the stuff so it will be interesting to see my improvement.

More Fun! 6-17

These are just some more fun pictures!

Happy 5th Birthday Seth 6-17

Seth's 5th birthday party was on Saturday afternoon, the weather co-operated nicely, especially as a couple gifts were water related! The boys had a blast on the slip and slide and in the funky Zebra pool.

The girls wanted a picture of the three of us together and out of a gazillion shots there were a couple where we all three looked okay.

Getting caught up! 6-17

I'm back, sorry you've had to go without my witty repartee for soooo long!!! Laugh!

I am getting caught up in segments. This post is pictures of our trip from Bend to Junction City last Thursday.

We stopped by Fish Lake where Larry had this lovely snake cross his path and then it very kindly posed for me. This lovely lake is seasonal and by the end of summer will just be a large grass filled meadow instead of a water filled lake.

Oregon is just so very green and all the more so when one lives in the earth toned desert. It is very lush right now.

The boys were glad to see us and especially each other. They had a great time playing with each other...saved us!!!

Trip to Oregon 6-9

Yesterday we left Fallon about 6:50. It was a nice day for a drive. We stopped in Fernley at BK and got a breakfast sandwich and headed for Reno. From Reno we got on 395 north and headed for Oregon. At some point in Oregon we picked up highway 31 to highway 97 to Bend, Oregon.

It was a beautiful drive, lots of green with all the rain this whole western area has been getting, wild flowers and wild life. We saw several herds of Pronghorn antelope along the way. I saw a big Coyote racing for his life across the highway In front of our truck, he was going so fast that Larry was looking out his side window at something and never saw the Coyote. The racing animal never even slowed down as he hit the dirt and by then we had moved on and I couldn’t see it any longer.

Up in Oregon we saw a family of Sandhill Cranes, they are big birds and a Ferruginous Hawk that we mistook for a young eagle until I looked up the spelling for the Abert Rim and they (the hawk) were mentioned in the article and I read about them and thought, ah, that is what we saw.

The first couple of pictures is of the Abert Rim, one of the highest fault scarps in North America. It is the longest exposed fault scarp (you can “wiki” to see what the heck a fault scarp is) in North America. I just think it is pretty and interesting; it rises 2,500 feet from the valley floor and it is a popular place for hang gliders in the summer.

We arrived at Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Gene’s around 4:25…it was a long drive, but uneventful and scenic.

Today while Auntie and Uncle were at the gym, we took a walk and gosh darn we ended up downtown at Starbuck’s…amazing. I found these gorgeous hybrid Lupines on our walk. The Dahlia’s are on our front porch here and it was a lovely sunny morning and then in the afternoon we had a major thunderstorm/hail event.

We went out to watch the hail fall and like most storms we have ever seen we expected it to be over quickly, but not this one. It lasted for over a half hour, the temperature plummeted and the hail kept building up like snow, lots of thunder and lightning. The hail pieces averaged large pea-size and the cars left deep ruts driving through it. It has been about an hour or more since it started, it has pretty much quit raining, it quit hailing after about a half hour and the roofs, lawns and vehicles are still coated in white ice. I’m too lazy to put on my shoes to slip and slide out to the truck to see what the temperature is…but it is cold. We’ve never seen anything like it and we have seen some doozies in the mountains.

We saw on the news later that the thunder storm just stalled over Bend instead of passing through like most thunder storms do.

Finishing projects 6-7

Yesterday we brought home a bookcase from Walmart, put it together and loaded it up with my books that were in boxes taking up space in Larry's garage.

I went back to Walmart later and bought frames and framed up four pieces of my watercolor artwork. They aren't matted and the frames don't exactly "fit" but the paintings are protected and are easier to hang. Today Larry hung them for me and he worked on cleaning and organizing the garage.

My postings might be erratic this week, tomorrow we head for Oregon for a week...to Bend for a few days and then to Junction City for our Grandson Seth's 5th birthday. Andrea and Ian will be there too so a nice family gathering and we get our Grandson snuggles!

Rainy, Cold Day 6-5

Yesterday we had a field trip to Greenville, Ca., Larry had some business to take care of and I went along for an appointment with my massage therapist and to have lunch with a friend…both were wonderful. It was cool, cloudy and thundery over there and they had a really good downpour in Greenville, the creek was raging and really muddy with the runoff. We got home about nine.

Just before sunup we had another rainstorm, a whole week of daily rain…weird for here. It was jeans and long shirt weather today…brrr.

Larry worked on an outlet for the trailer and I did a lot of miscellaneous things. We went into town…Larry to the hardware store…he has been there at least once and sometimes more a day and while he was in there I schlumped around in the Dollar Tree…I am putting together fun bags to take to Oregon for the Grandsons.

I thought I would throw in these pictures of our rainy landscape and our wet and forlorn new patio furniture.

Easy Day 6-3

It was cloudy most of the day today and windy all afternoon.

We started our day with some stretching and then took a little walk...working our way back into our routine. We haven't taken a walk since we started shoveling the rock, we had to check out the neighborhood. Roses do really well here and they are in bloom everywhere...I don't know how I resisted putting any in our yard because I love them.

Today's big excursion was to Walmart where we found a small patio set of four folding chairs and a small square tempered glass table...perfect for us and not very expensive, because the sun here is brutal and I bet that things only last a couple of seasons or so being outside all summer.

We were busy all day but not anything very memorable apparently.

Fine Food 6-2

Cooler today and for the fourth day in a row, afternoon thunderstorms with rain…it is making it hard to figure out the timing on our water system for when it gets hot and dry again. Larry finished it all up today and with Mother Nature watering we haven’t had to.

We get some weird funky winds here…dirt devils….the other day there were a half dozen tumbleweeds spiraling around in the sky like birds and they stayed up there a really long time. The wind can go from zero to 30 mph in a blink. I try never to leave the windows open when we leave the house for very long because the wind can come up so fast, blowing dirt and before you know it you have sand drifts in your house…well that might be a bit of an exaggeration….but you get my point.

In celebration of finishing the yards we went out to lunch…we were told of a restaurant in a converted Victorian house that has been open about a year and uses locally grown produce and the beef is Angus and local too…so with high expectations we found it and it was fabulous.

They consider the Sandwich an art form and it was the best sandwich ever. The flavors just blended, nothing attacked and they were prepared so well that they don’t all fall apart. Larry gave their hamburger two thumbs up and the fries were even good. The do dinner on Fridays and Saturdays so we’ll give that a try one of these days. They also have salads on the menu, they have specials, wine and a full bar.

I had the Cottonwood which was turkey breast, roasted garlic salsa, melted dill havarti cheese, avocado, tomato and mayo and it all just worked together…you weren’t grabbed by dill or garlic, it was just smooth and instead of slices of avocado it was made into a spread so the sandwich didn’t slide apart and I had it on sourdough….yum, yum, yum.

It is called the Slanted Porch and so far the only decent place to eat here. Fallon has all the fast foods but that gets old after awhile so it is nice to have somewhere nice to go and to take friends or family when they visit. Behind the restaurant is a great gift shop called the Red Zinnia and on Saturday’s there they have a farmers/art market, so we’ll have to check that out too.

It is on South Taylor Street also known as the Schurz Highway or to anyone looking at a map Highway 95…south if you are leaving Fallon or north if you are coming into Fallon from Las Vegas….clear as mud right. We have had to learn the local names for these roads.

We gave our second backyard tour today…we may have to put up a ticket booth…smile!

Figuring out the irrigation 6-1

Today we worked on figuring out the best way to irrigate our plants. We laid out two soaker hoses in the backyard and then went to town. I got a latte at Starbucks and then we went to Ace hardware for dripper stuff. The man there was very helpful.

Then after getting home we were studying on the large bed in the front yard and it was giving Larry fits because I had put more plants in the bed which messed with his irrigation plans…and I had put dry loving plants next to plants that needed more water…but that was when I thought he was doing individual drips…but with all the plants I had put in he told me it would look like spaghetti in there, so he decided to use a soaker hose…they don’t fail as often as drip emitters can, which in talking to different people is a problem and in this dry, hot area, deadly quick for plants.

So I moved the need little water plants together and put all the (6) extra plants in the back bed by the patio which is already laid out with a soaker hose. I haven’t taken the time to look back in my blog because I can’t remember when we planted the plants but they all have their new little white roots growing out from their root balls.

Larry fussed around with the water system most of the day and we have almost drowned the plants testing, but tomorrow he will probably have it finished.

The last few days, every afternoon the thunderstorms build up and by evening it is raining…very unusual for here, but good for my plants. It is just making it hard to get the water timing figured out; not to mention it gets cold,…. getting acclimated to this heat and it turns on us…I know…poor, poor us.

Most every day we have had at least a couple people stop and tell us how much they like our yard! It is very gratifying…maybe it will start a trend…I know lawns keep the temperature down a couple of degrees, but the water and chemicals needed to keep it healthy are wasteful and expensive. People can plant groundcovers and plants for the green and use so much less water! It is the desert for crying out loud!

That was our day; work for Larry, discussion and compromise but whatever it takes to “Get’er Done”.