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May 27, 2016

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Saturday we headed up to Glenwood, Washington to visit with Dave's cousin, Pat Wyers. She and her husband Teunis are planning a trip to Amsterdam and wanted to pick our brains from our trip. They are staying with relatives and have their whole itinerary planned. After they leave Holland, they are flying to the islands of Guernsey and Jersey to visit more friends. We had a nice visit and Pat had fixed us a nice lunch. We spent a couple of hours there before heading down the road to visit Pat's sister, Connie who just lives down the road. On the way, Dave had to stop and take a picture of the entry sign at BZ Corner. It is just a wide spot in the road but he remembers it as a kid when his folks use to bring him to the area and he has always loved the name. We forgot to take pictures of either of his cousins, but we got a picture of BZ Corner instead.

We drove back as far as West Linn where we spent the night. we had promised our granddaughter Jadyn that we would attend her dance recital on Sunday in Canby. The show began at 1:00 and went until 6 that evening. That's a long day for us, but we're so proud of her that we wanted to see it all. She was in five separate productions and did such a nice job with her dancing and singing. She is a very talented performer and I think we might have a budding star in the future. We left after the show and drove home. It was after 8 when we finally pulled in the driveway.

The weather has been pretty good so I have been busy around the place all week. First of all, I cleaned all the brush from around my shrubs by the church. I have this wild cucumber vine that engulfs everything. It is also called the "old man in the ground" as it has a buried tuber and it won't go away no matter what I do to it. It was choking out one bush in particular, so I tackled that monster. Between the ivy and this wild cucumber vine, the plants don't have a chance around here and I have to keep on guard all the time if I want anything to survive. Speaking of survival, my green beans that I had planted had just started to appear when the slugs got them! So after replanting them I got the old slug bait out and that put an end to that! They were working on my lettuce too but I caught them before they could finish that!

Dave has been feeling pretty good for the past couple of weeks and has finally felt like tackling some of things on his "honey do" list. Since he now has the tractor up and running, I got him to pull out this huge fern that had outgrown its spot. We tied a chain around the base and Dave yanked it out with the tractor. Then we thought, "What do we do with it now?" That fern was so heavy that we couldn't even lift it once it was pulled out so we had to use the tractor to drag it over to the edge of the driveway until we could get it down to the burn pile. Since we were on a roll, we tried to pull a second fern from alongside the driveway but - even with the tractor - the fern won that battle. I see a chain saw in its future.

We finally hitched up the trailer - which was loaded with yard debris - and with the help of three strong guys who were there to mow the lawn, mounted the fern on top of the pile and off we went to Kahrs' burn pile. Once we got there, that fern was even heavier getting off the trailer because - even though we had gravity on our side - we didn't have the three strong guys helping any more. The two of us tugged and pulled and we finally ended up getting it to the point where we could roll it off the back. Of course, it then rolled to the wrong place and we couldn't get it over to the burn pile. Dave had to come back the next day and chain it to the hitch of his car in order to drag it onto the pile.

I am enjoying the birds and squirrels that have been visiting my feeders this spring. We did have an unusual sighting the other day though. I was looking out my kitchen window and this huge gray squirrel was eating from the plate of seeds that I keep on the ground. I have never seen this kind of squirrel around here before and it is a lot bigger than the little chestnut squirrels I normally see. Although I will have to admit he wasn't as big as the squirrels (I call them rabbits) our friends Ed and Diane have over in Dexter. This guy was big enough, though. I left the pie pan in the picture just to show how big he is.

We are hopefully having some granddaughters come and visit us over the Memorial Day weekend. The weather forecast calls for a chance of rain on Friday but it should be nice again by Sunday and Monday.