Ooooh!

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It’s drizzle-y, windy, and too cool this morning. The high today is supposed to be 57. Right now it’s overcast and 47 degrees F. I was ready for cooler weather, but this is ‘too much of a good thing.’

We will join our friends for Lunch Bunch in about half an hour. It’ll be good to catch up with what has been going on for each of them. We have been having lunch together every Friday for about 20 years now. How many changes! We have shared good and bad things, laughter, hugs, and tears. Some of the faces have changed. We’re never sure how many will be there, but the core group is three of us: Linda, Kay and myself. My husband was accepted as an honorary member of the group several years ago. He sits at one end of the table looking at his “harem” he says. We have told him that he is welcome as long as he behaves…

Unless it’s pouring after Lunch Bunch, we will scoot to Walmart afterwards to replenish some supplies. We plan to stay in the rest of the day, warm and dry. I’m putting the electric blanket on our bed today when I put fresh sheets on.

I’ve been adding new products to my Etsy site – Handmade Haven by Linda. Please take a look if you have the time. :0)

To those of you who have been following the blog, I FOUND the gallon container of mold/mildew/algae/elephant remover! As soon as the weather is dry and sunny, I’ll put some in a spray container and hose down the greeter robot yard art at the bottom of the driveway that I’m trying to refurbish. When I get the green and other dirt off of him, I can prepare to freshen his paint.

Thoughts on a Thursday 6-24-2021

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Our heat index this afternoon will reach the triple digits, so I’m going to get our to the shop pretty soon to continue work on refurbishing the ‘turkey’ yard art critter I started yesterday. I’m hoping he can go back out to his place at the base of a tree beside the driveway by the end of the day. I forgot to take pics of the ‘before’ on the turkey. He was basically just super dirty and desperately in need of new paint. I’ll take pics to share when he is back in place.

Did I tell you I HATE automatic Windows updates? For some reason they always cause us problems. We can’t NOT do the updates, but it’s sure a pain to deal with the havoc they generate. Yesterday it was one of our printers that suddenly won’t print plus our personal DVD computerized collection isn’t opening as it should. My husband fought with it most of the day yesterday to no avail. He wrote Microsoft and is hoping they have some help for us. He also talked to our son via a conference call, in Thailand. Hopefully, answers will come today.

Tomorrow at Lunch Bunch we’ll celebrate the birthday of one of our core members. Our friendship – going on 20 years now – is priceless.

My husband has been celebrating the lack of rain lately. He’s been praising the ‘brown and crunchy patches of grass in the yard, meaning he has to mow less. I told him to enjoy it while he could. Rain is due this weekend.

My spring garden is about to come to an end. I got what is probably the last of the yellow squash, leaving only sweet onions. I’ll probably pull the onions soon, leaving them to dry on the trailer bed and clean up the garden. On the good side, though, we had the first two ripe tomatoes of what I hope will be a wonderful season. My husband and I shared them for lunch yesterday. They were delicious. I hope we get enough that I can share them.

Every year about this time I wish we had been able to build the pool we wanted when we built the house. Since we’re on top of a ridge line, we had to do a lot of blasting to build a house amid all this rock. We blasted for the septic tank, the basement, and then blasted the whole back yard for the pool. We ran out of money before we got to the pool, though, so it never got done.

I worked every summer from the time I was 14 through college teaching swimming with my 6th grade gym teacher to make money for college. I really miss the great exercise I got. I tell myself that if we had a pool, I would go out and swim every possible night before bed. The reality of that would probably be that I would gritch and moan about having to get my exercise cleaning the pool, rather than getting to swim in it. I would have to fight for space to swim laps, having to dodge raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and other critters I don’t want to think about who thought we had built the pool for THEM…

Stay cool and safe!

Box Turtle Refurb – Before

Years ago my husband and I start playing in the shop, making yard critters out of scrap metal. We chose the pieces as we decided what we were trying to make. If we couldn’t find it, my husband made it, such as cutting the feet on this box turtle out of scrap metal we had.

All this has become much harder because salvage yards and dumps don’t allow people to wander around anymore. There are liability issues, so it’s very hard to find scrap metal and parts.

We had a wonderful time making these critters and deciding where they would ‘live’ in the yard.

Sun, water, and temperature extremes take their toll on metal yard critters, so every once in a while, we take them to the shop for some much needed attention.

This is a “Box Turtle.” The pictures don’t show all the damage, but his eyes fell off, his ‘nose’ is peeling badly, and he has a lot of rust.

There is a lot of peeling paint on his back, and his feet had to be hosed down to get rid of ‘critters’ who wanted to live there.

More rust on his tail.

I spent 2-1/2 hours in the shop working on him this morning, and he is drying now. I spent quite a while washing him. I then freshened his paint, paying particular attention to all the peeled spots. I made him new eyes and glued them on. I will spray him later today with polyurethane to protect the paint as much as possible. I’ll take a pic or two and then we’ll put him back in his spot in the yard and I’ll start on another critter.

So far, my husband has put 9 critters in the shop for refurb and there are more than that to come. It’s a good thing I enjoy painting!

Cute Stone Critters

August Grove-Droziers Dog-Wayfair.com

Rebel Undone

Rock Craft Ideas

Post for Irene

These are the two owls I was talking about in my post about Fritz the Cat as our current mailbox decoration. Each is about 2-1/2 feet tall and about 18 inches wide.  We put them on top of posts on either side of the driveway toward the bottom, where we have a bar we can use to close the driveway.

 

This is the picture I SHOULD have posted, where you can see one of the owls and just a hint of the one on the other post.

I hope you’ve been having a wonderful day, Sweet Irene!

 

New Gloves for Everyone!

In my travels around the yard recently, I noticed that the robots on either side of our garage door needed some refurbishing. Each had a pair of gloves that had almost rotted off with the combination of wind, sun, and rain. I got a couple of pairs of old gloves from the shop, laboriously stuffed the fingers and palms of each with plastic bags, and they sat on our table waiting. Yesterday was the day. My husband did most of the work on getting the new gloves on once I removed the old ones with a combination of a screw and wire. I then added duct tape around the top of each to prevent wasps from building nests inside the gloves. (Lesson learned the hard way.)

This one is a “Cleaning Robot.” He has a broom in one hand and a ‘dust pan’ in the other, ready to do a quick clean-up when needed. His bow tie used to be bright red. Since his has really faded and is also rotting, a new one is on the way. He is made from a combination of an old propane tank and scrap metal, plus an old set of fireplace tools.

 

This is our “Gardening Robot.” He’s ready to help with mowing, planting, filling holes, mulching, and more in his tennis shoes and overalls and heavy gloves. He wears a bandana around his neck. We’ll get him a new one at Yeager’s today, I hope.  He is made from an old propane tank, a metal box for his head, tube iron and scraps.