Still waiting

 We are still waiting on our furniture to arrive....and as you can see the two little dogs are waiting, and waiting and waiting.  The latest news is that it was to be loaded today and should be here between the 23rd and 28th.  Our fingers are crossed and I am sure that our landlords here are as anxious as we are as they have relinquished their bedroom so we would not have to deal with stairs. 

 The photo of the fern above is for my friend, Bonnie and is as tall as my shoulders.  Erica has a multitude of these in her back yard along with several other varieties.  We worked over at the house today.  As I told friends on many occasions, we were looking for a place with a small yard and that did not happen.  Priorities in other areas took precedence in the decision to purchase this place. There are no stairs to deal with, a great fenced yard for the dogs, a much smaller home, updated for the most part, a nice quiet neighborhood, lots of shade trees in the back with a low deck and a large garage.  But the yard is not small, so the Mr. bought a self-propelled mower.  We teased him today as he did try it on the lawn and nearly had to run to keep up with it (not really)~~no pushing this one!

Erica is a gardener and above is the garlic that she just harvested.  It will dry this winter and she uses it all year long.  She also makes lots of vinegars...something that I haven't tried. She didn't harvest all of her carrots and they have gone to seed which she is saving.  Here another later crop can be sewn and she purchased some starts last week and put them in...beets, etc.  You can get a good fall crop here. We are supposed to be getting some rain finally so it probably will start just as our furniture is due to arrive. Keep your fingers crossed.

"What garlic is to salads, insanity is to art." ~ Augustus Saint~Gaude

If a tree falls..Does it make a sound?

 So I placed a 2 cup measuring cup beside the strainer of blackberries which were picked last week to compare it with the container. Erica has a huge bush in her back yard and it is thorny and invasive.  We can get this many at least a couple of times a week as they seem to be ripening continually.  I have also picked blueberries.  But I wanted to share these two pictures below.  Jeffery took us to another nature park a couple of weeks ago which is  Springwood park.  It was developed a few years ago by a family named Zable who collected varieties of Rododendrums from all over the world.  I am not sure of that spelling?  But when they passed, it was donated to the city of Olympia.  I am told that in the spring, it is just gorgeous and in the past had been visited from people from several countries. There is much more to the story of this park which is about 3 1/2 acres I think.  There are trails throughout the park and I am anxious to see it in bloom.

 The picture above shows a fallen tree with it's top rootball exposed and you can see the remains of the trunk where Jeffrey's hand is resting. The second photo shows the underside of the root system and really, it was a very shallow root system. In fact, where it fell away from the earth, you cannot really see any roots.  In the first picture, there is a untility pole behind this area which may give a better perspective of how thin these root systems are.

We have been over at the house working (there are always things to be done)..and waiting for news of our furniture delivery which is still unknown.  We have met our neighbors on both sides, about our age and seem really nice!

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now." ~ Chinese proverb

Tulip House?

Shall we call this the Tulip house? Yesterday was scheduled for the official walk through for the purchase of the new home.  This is the front door as we stood in the family room.  The double doors are flanked with stained glass windows ~"tulips"~to match the ones in the doors.  Having done some stained glass work in the past, it seemed meant to be.  We met our realtor but the lock box had no key in it, just a note that the key was on the side garage door.  Unfortunately, there was no code for that box but we did finally receive a code.  Again when our realtor opened it, no key.  After a couple of calls, we were told that the plumbing contractors had lost it in the crawl space and they would send a locksmith over.  He spent time on the front door, the garage walk-in door and the garage overhead door and did not want to drill if it wasn't necessary and FINALLY was able to open the back door off the deck. The previous resident did not leave any keys at all. All of the repairs have been made..new roof, new carpet, new appliances, updated kitchen and bathrooms, electric upgrades and plumbing and duck cleaning.  There will still be things to do.  Above, the family room is about 6 inches below the other floors and it has lots of windows. (doesn't really qualify as a "sunken" room), but does add a little charm. Now we have all of the locks re-keyed also, but have no idea about receiving our mail, so you will not get an address until we contact the post office. Things are done a little differently here.  We will sign papers today, then this sale has to be recorded downtown, and we will receive the "key" the following day.  We have a call in to the mover and have all of the utilities in our name now, so things are progressing.  We will need washer and dryer, (those go in the garage and almost all do here) and a microwave and we will probably have too much furniture since we downsized and have one less bedroom and bath. so..........'til I know more.

Just a little news

No pics today....just a little news to keep all updated.  I do have some snaps but need to download them.  We are having some hot weather and I still have no moss growing on my back yet.  I keep hearing that it will rain, but not so far.  We will be closing on our home this week.  Walk through is scheduled for Wednesday.  It was exactly one month ago Friday that we closed in Cheyenne and just 3 weeks Saturday since we have been here at Erica and Jeffery's.  We still have to find out when our household contents can be delivered so we may be here for a while yet, but at least we can tell people that we will have an address.  I will not post this on the blog, but will get it in a few days to whoever wants it and to share with friends as you see fit. We are slowly finding our way around and went to the Thurston County Fair on Friday.  One thing that we noticed was how different it was from our local fairs, especially the one in Carbon County.  Farm animals and FFA members were very much a big part of the fair...pigs, rabbits, sheep, (lots of goats), chickens and ducks seemed to dominate the animals..not so much cattle as in Wyo ranching country.  Also, flower arranging was huge and very little needlework with the exception of quilts. I was so pleased to see so many quilts and spoke with some great gals from 2 different quilt guilds.  One guild meets at night, another in the mornings and there was a modern quilt guild which I did not take the opportunity to speak with.  They actually were doing a lot of wool applique demonstrations.  Our home is very close to the fair grounds it turns out, so that will be nice in the future.  Not much to relate just yet, but will take more pictures on Friday.  We know we will need a washer and dryer, microwave, sofa and hope to ditch at least one snow shovel.  So....until we know more.....