Confessions of a Grandma

A bright sun rising woke me up at about 5:30 this morning. (Note to self, close curtains at bedtime.) By the time I actually got out of bed, there was such a thick grey haze that I thought maybe I had just dreamed that sun. If you looked straight up into the sky, the bright blue was there, but the haze was all around...smoke from Canadian forest fires that is blowing across northern New England. I went out for my walk, but I don't know that that was the healthiest exercise to do today. I could actually smell the smoke. We worked on the deck for a bit. Otherwise it was a quiet, largely unobserved Memorial Day for us. We had our picnics while camping earlier this week and I went to the cemetery yesterday. Given its purpose, I wonder why some people so happily wish us "Happy Memorial Day" but at least I have not seen Memorial Day greeting cards. I kind of like the Rolling Thunder idea as a tribute. As a kid, we had to memorize Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Now I have re...

Oh. boy! It looks like we are in for some nice weather in the coming week. I skipped the deck today and mowed the lawn instead. Mike spent the two plus hours it took me to do that scraping the deck and helping me "help" him. First, I could not get the lawn tractor to start. I checked the fuel; I tapped on the carburetor; I tried again and again; I walked away and then went back and tried again. Nothing. I finally went to get Mike and told him I couldn't start the lawn tractor. He stopped his scraping and went into the garage--that darn tractor started with his first turn of the starter. He went back to his job; I could not get the tractor to move. Once again, I interrupt him. The parking brake was on. I did not even know the lawn tractor had a parking brake. After a half hour of mowing I went around the lilac bush in the back yard. It's on a small but fairly steep hill. I tipped the tractor into the bush and got it thoroughly stuck. I couldn't back out and I could...

We put in a few hours of deck stripping today. My usual mode of attack is to keep going and going until I can't move anymore, but Mike is all about doing a section at a time and stopping before the job seems overwhelming. This is a good thing in that there are still the other things that need to get done--meals, laundry, basic clean-ups in kitchen and bath. Everything else is going to pile up and I'll need a solid week of housework to tidy up the inside and outside. Cleaning one thing always seems to make something else dirty. We are making progress but it is slow and it is a grind. This may tu rn into a summer long project. Some of my irises bloomed out yesterday. That made me happy. I'm still nursing tomato and cucumber plants in my basement window. At least the deck project keeps me from putting them out prematurely. Mike is sitting down with a beer. I am going to relax by heading out to the garden store for a look around. "Idea" shopping.