181 - Work, work, work

"The true gourmet, like the true artist, is one of the unhappiest creatures on earth. His trouble comes from so seldom finding what he constantly seeks - perfection." I'm so gourmet it's pitiful because it's true... once you've tasted the best, you are never satisfied with anything less. That's 9/10 of the trouble we've with food around here... just doesn't stack up, and that's why it was a risk to get pizza yesterday, but FINALLY it was a pleasant surprise. So now there are three restaurants we can go to in the vicinity if we want an occasional night out. I guess that's not bad, I just got spoiled living where we did, where there were several good restaurants nearby. In a way it made me fat and lazy though, so I'm not complaining about where we find ourselves now.

Today I mowed almost all of the lawn, just a spot on the driveway where I was parked, the culvert and the propane tank-side of the house left to do. I reiterate - anyone who offers to mow your lawn for free either loves you or desperately wants something from you...

My little birdie friend.

I thought I hit the beautiful and elusive blue and purple bird this afternoon on the way to the hardware store. It flew across the road just as I was approaching, but I didn't hear a thump and there's no body on the road... One day I'll get a picture and you'll see how gorgeous it is. I have serious bird envy.

I also saw... I think... an owl. It had an ivory underbelly that was sort of fluffy, and it was large. That's all I can tell you as this also happened when I was driving to the hardware store and I'm not very good at identifying birds unless I have time to examine their face... I didn't see the face.

So this is my patio tomato plant. Can't recall the variety but it's supposed to be pretty prolific in a pot, and as you can see, there is one baby tomato and two potential tomatoes just on this one branch. I also see a bloom on another branch. I CAN'T WAIT TO EAT YOU.

Probably not a helpful thing to say to a plant. (but true)

And this is Mr. Stripey. One solitary tomato that grows ever bigger, but no more blooms... Lemon Thyme in the background seems to be doing well.

The mini herb garden has perked up and I may be able to harvest my own cilantro and parsley soon. It was really touch and go when I planted them, they were very droopy and I really figured they were goners.

Someday I need to break the lawnmower box down and put it into the trash pile...

The freshly shorn grass.

More freshly shorn grass. It may not look like much but I'm probably mowing close to an acre by the time I'm done.

Those are not aliens on the side of the house, they're satellites. :) I guess this gives you an idea of how slopey the lot is... but really it's steeper than that because I'm at a corner instead of straight on. Trust me... you know you're walking up a hill.

Cool little mushroom. I'd eat him too if I knew I could, but I don't know that, so he gets to live out the rest of his brief life, right there in the grass.

Found some longer screws at the hardware store, with the assistance of the Vice-Mayor. Small towns are funny that way, our Vice-Mayor happens to work at the hardware store and as a first responder/search and rescue.

Unfortunately the screws were about 1/4" too long, which I knew when I bought them, but they only had 1-1/2" or 2", nothing in between so I came up with a solution. Tom had put a nut on one of the screws as a guide for me to cut the screws if I had the right tool... I'm sure Mike does but good luck finding it right now... so in the meantime this is how I solved the problem. Worked like a charm.

Welcome to our basement (I moved the shoes into the kitchen, they just needed to dry out a little so I put them there for a couple of days).

This is the tankless water heater we had installed. We actually have to use the cold water knob in the bathtub now... before, with the electric water heater we just used the hot water and it was almost warm enough for a shower.

I don't have a before picture of the basement, but this is what I managed to accomplish yesterday. I emptied probably six boxes and started collating everything into groups of similar stuff. Anything that I ran across that needed to go upstairs went upstairs, and anything that had a place in the workbench went into the workbench. There were a couple of bag of trash, but only things I knew were trash... there's also an I-don't-know-what-the-hell-this-is pile.

Another view. There was a large box full of coats and boots which went upstairs because clothing, paper or anything susceptible to mildew is not going to last in our basement. Someday we will have to deal with that either by waterproofing the walls, a french drain system, or a combination of the two, and when Mike is home for a few days he'll have to unclog the gutters so the rain will be channeled away from the foundation instead of sheeting down next to it. I wonder if a dehumidifier would work in the meantime or how much they cost... I will check on that after I post.

The water filtration system. We have well water so the far right tank is our pump and the rest is the filtration system. You can see that there is a lot of sediment being filtered out because the furthest right canister on the system started out white. I need to find the manual and figure out how to change it out but I keep forgetting to do that.

This is not a dead mouse but every time I see it I think it is.

Boots. Before we moved they had a great sale on rain boots so I picked up about five pairs of them in anticipation of being here. Ah the good old days when I was the queen of sales and coupons. They will definitely come in handy in the winter. And I found Mike's turtle boots, which he will be happy to know are upstairs now where they will not be ruined.

See? They're okay. :)

So that's it for today. It's been somewhat productive. I'm worn out so I'm going to relax on the couch for a bit before I get bored and find something else to do.