Ho. Hum.

Apparently, I have a little spare time on my hands, otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here writing a post about nothing.

When I am feeling bored, it's really just me being lazy.

There is always ALWAYS always something I can and should be doing, and I often complain about never having enough time to do everything.

So, I admit that I am just feeling lazy right now.

Boredom = Laziness

Last night was rather exciting.  Some dark clouds rolled in and gave us some rain.  Not just the usual sprinkling that we normally get - this was a REAL HARD RAIN.  I even observed some little balls bouncing off the picnic table, indicating HAIL.  

No thunder though.

Today brings bright warm sunshine and blue skies.  Of course Weeners wanted to go outside right away this morning after I got up.

She was up to her usual activities, as you can see.

I wasn't around when she tried to bring it into the house, so she left it there by the door and walked off.  I wonder if she has some secret place in this house where keeps all those trophies of hers.

She is a hard-core hunter and LOVES to be out there killing anything that moves.

My deck is littered with dead dragonflies.

Question:  How come she can catch them outside with no problem, but can't catch them when they're in the house?

I took a stroll through my veggie garden to see if they survived last night's storm.

Everything looks okay.

I was pleased to see that my celery is still looking vibrant.  I've never grown celery before, and from what I've read about it, it can be tricky to grow, so this is kind of an experiment for me.

But then again, every year is a trial-and-error experiment with everything I try to grow.

Yesterday, I picked some leaves off and used them as a garnish in my soup.

Yum.

I'll be surprised if I get any tomatoes this year.

Here are examples of my best and worst.

best

worst

How pathetic!

The best one is less than a foot high. They really should be a whole lot bigger and possibly growing flowers by now, but my seeds took forever to sprout (I think it's because I sorta drowned them at first). Anyway, they got a really late start, and our summers up here are so short, I don't think they're gonna have time to produce anything worth eating.

My strawberry patch is flowering very nicely and is getting quite lush.  I have to make it a priority to protect it with chicken wire or something so I don't lose all the berries to another berry thief, like last year.  It's really annoying though, when the hubby says I have to wait for him to pick out some chicken wire for me.  That means it won't get done in time and the berry thief will get them first.

Rhubarb is doing good.  I already got to harvest some.

I see some kind of rhubarb dessert in our near future.

Do you see something wrong with this picture?

We bought this little wagon when our kids were toddlers.  I'd say it's probably about 25 years old.  After the kids outgrew it, it remained in the shed forgotten and unused.  Then I got interested in gardening, and it became very useful for lots of things, especially hauling potted plants from one place to another, moving rocks, and throwing weeds in it and transporting them back to our brush pile for burning.  Anyhoo, I was hauling some heavy pots in it the other day and the front wheel broke off. That was my fault; I had too much weight in it.  So, now it's kinda like shooting a crippled horse.

(this is where you're supposed to hear the tune of "Taps" in the background)

 It's kind of sad to let go of this old friend that has hauled everything from kids to weeds, but on the good side, I knew it wasn't quite adequate for the job of gardening anyway, and therefore Chuck said that he would get me a REAL gardening wagon.

Woo-HOO!

Okay.......when????

Before, or after we buy the chicken wire?

(no pressure.....)

So I suppose I better shake off this laziness now and get motivated.

I have a rhubarb dessert to make, a house to clean, and bright sunshine to absorb, and a dead mouse to discard.  I think I'll let Chuck take care of the mouse.  Surely, he won't put it off until after he buys the chicken wire.

I'm Back! (Wisconsin Trip, 2017)

Okay, so in my last post, I left you hanging with my narrative about the mouse in the house.

I never got the chance to let it be known that the mouse is now only a memory.

We found it really pathetic that our two cats weren't skilled enough to catch it, or maybe they just weren't hungry enough; I suppose they would've gotten it eventually, but we couldn't wait that long.  We bought a mouse trap and set it under the fireplace where the mouse liked to hang out.  It took three tries, but we finally heard the snap of execution.

Poor thing!

Saga over.

Remember that trail I told you about in one of my other past posts?  We decided to take a walk on that trail before we flew home.  It turned out to be shorter than we expected, but it really is a nice walk.  So peaceful.

All right, so those were the pictures that were on my camera before the trip.

Now for the report of my trip.

I didn't take very many pictures this time because our trip turned out to be very different from our previous visits.  We usually try to take a "mini vacation" somewhere, and this year we wanted to visit the UP in Michigan, but on account Dad's passing, it wasn't gonna happen.

We spent the first 2-1/2 days sitting in hospice with Dad.  A person can sit and watch someone suffer for only so long, so on Thursday afternoon, we headed east to Plover to visit Chuck's mom.  She has Alzheimer's, so it meant we were going from hospice to a nursing home.  What a fun vacation this was turning out to be! 

After visiting her for awhile, we spent the rest of the day with Chuck's sisters, which was a nice change of atmosphere.

Unfortunately, we left their house too late.  It was getting dark on our drive back to Marshfield.

The deer like to come out at dawn and at dusk.

We hit a deer on the highway, but luckily Chuck was paying attention and swerved the car.

We heard a big thud on the back of the car and worried about the damage it caused on our rental car.  We stopped at a gas station to assess the damage, and guess what?  There wasn't any!

There was no evidence at all that we hit a deer except for some little tufts of hair wedged in the mudflap.  We lucked out.  If Chuck hadn't swerved when he did, we're pretty sure the car would've been banged up.

Can't say for sure what happened to the deer though.  We didn't see it laying on the side of the road, so we don't know if we killed it, or injured it.

Friday morning, we went the funeral home and talked to someone there about preliminary funeral arrangements because we knew his time was near.

What a fun vacation this was turning out to be!

Friday afternoon we drove up to Ladysmith to visit Chuck's sister, and when we got close to their house, we had to stop because this doe crossed the road in front of us.

And this is what followed her:

It had to be brand new cuz it was pretty wobbly, like it was just learning how to walk.

It was SO cute!

Mama and baby made it safely to the other side.

I was designated to write Dad's obituary, so while were at JudyBug's house, I got to work on her computer, typing out my first draft.  He was getting weaker by the day, so we knew we needed to get things ready.  

What a fun vacation this was turning out to be!

(did I already mention that?)

JudyBug wanted us to spend another night with her, but we wanted to get back to Marshfield so we could go to church the next morning.

Sunday morning, we take my mom to church.  Halfway through Bible class, Chuck gets a call on his cell phone.  It's my sister.  "Dad passed away 10 minutes ago".

So we leave and go straight to hospice and see him lying there, finally looking peaceful.

His suffering was finally over.

When we were ready for them to take him away, we couldn't go home and just sit there.  Instead, we took my mom to the park and made a lot of phone calls.

Then she wanted to take a nap, so we took her home and me and Chuck went for a long walk.

Later, we took my mom back to church for Sunday evening services.  They had a singing devo that night, so it was nice and uplifting.

We needed to make final plans for the funeral, but Monday was a holiday so we couldn't do anything until Tuesday.  I don't remember what we did on Monday.

On Tuesday morning, we went to the library so I could finalize the obituary.  We went back to the funeral home and spent the whole afternoon there and made plans for a Thursday funeral.

Me and Chuck were originally scheduled to come back home on Wednesday, so we had to extend our stay there until Friday.

On Wednesday, there was nothing more we could do, so we took my mom out for awhile.  We did a little shopping, and then we drove through Milladore and my mom showed us where her grandmother lived, and where her mother probably went to school.

Thursday.  Funeral day.  Ma wanted to keep the funeral real simple, with just a visitation and graveside services, so that's what we did.  The visitation was in the morning, and that was actually kinda fun because there were a lot of relatives there that we hadn't seen in a long long long time.

The graveside service was an hour and a half away, so mostly it was just the immediate family that made the drive.  It was kept very simple.

Afterwards, we all went to Chuck's house for a BBQ.

We had a really fun time there.  It's been 27 years since we were all together in one place, so despite the funeral, it was a really fun day.

And now I am back at home trying to recover from a sore throat.

I don't eat right when I'm away from home, so I suppose that makes me vulnerable to virus exposure.

It's so nice to be back at home again, in my own bed, with my warm fuzzy puddy tat, and eating healthier. 

AND!

I got my garden all planted!  Yay!

Well, except for the peas, but I can't plant those until Chuck finishes making the last garden bed.

Last year, I didn't use all my garden space, but this year I'm using up all of it.

Plus, I've been reading about how you can (and should) plant flowers in with your veggies to help ward off unwanted pests.  So I am researching and working on a list of different varieties of flowers that I need to buy.

But I will bore you with that in another post.