September 2018

Here it is, September 8th and it's cold and damp. It's been a very strange summer weather wise - unusually wet.  I haven't been posting because we aren't doing much. And I thought the other day, well, not doing much can be interesting, too.

We spent the majority of our summer here at the Park house - and we did take day trips over to do some maintenance on the outside of the Lake house. We also stayed over for several days several times. Our major accomplishment was the landscaping.

The front flower bed as you turn into the driveway had been "done" last fall with the spreading ground cover removed and new, small plant put in. This work was done by the local landscaper. 

Some of the shrubs were kept. The tall shrub by the light was just a baby when we planted it back around 2007

The stones you see were covered by mulch and debris. They now add to the landscape

We brought the little pagoda in the middle of the garden when we moved up here full time. 

The evergreens in the garden and by the front steps were also put in after we moved in full time. Several years we put lights on the 2 by the front stairs for Christmas.

Several plants didn't make it over the winter and the landscaper  said they would be replaced. So we decided to focus on first cleaning the beds up from fall/winter weeds and leaves and remove the dead ground cover in the second area on the other side of the front stairs. We purchased some small spreading ground cover and evergreens and when we attempted to clean out the dead shrubs, decided the job was too difficult for us to deal with. So we again had the landscaper clear the bed and plant the evergreen shrubs we had purchased. They did that at the same time they replaced the dead shrubs. That made a major impact - that entire side looks great!  We tackled the raking on the other side of the driveway in two visits. B had 2 tarps that we used to rake the leaves into and then drag them to the back to dump over the edge of the driveway. We consider this returning our leaves to the woods. 😉  So we are enjoying driving into the driveway and seeing a nicely landscaped area. We had purchased LOTS of mulch this year and had about 30 bags to put down at the Lake.  (and now I have to take pictures to show you how nice things look)

The entrance to the house looks considerable better! 


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Honey and Hazel

Here is a short movie of Honey and Hazel.

The first time they met.

I'm not sure just how I got this to work - it involved reducing the size of the video and renaming it. And it took two days of trying and rethinking!

Does this picture upload?

My video didn’t upload. Will my picture?

Ok. Picture works so I guess it’s not me.

Raining today and Honey has been busy supervising me fix supper. Now it’s nap time.

May brings flowers and green grass

After a long winter that lasted forever, spring has arrived! This week has been rainy but hey, who could complain as it was NOT snow!

Right now the windows are open and the sound of lawn mowers fills the air. 

We had winds and rain this week but missed any damage. The sky certainly looked ominous as dark clouds moved in. Honey does not like thunder storms and she was shaking before we heard any thunder. Windows were shut and lawn chairs stacked against the house. We were lucky that we missed the worse winds.

The sky looked menacing 

On a more cheerful note, I purchased a robot vacuum cleaner at Sam's Saturday during their super sale. It was $100 off their normal price and with the amount of dog hair and dirt we have, it was worth a try. After reading the directions and charging the machine, we gave it a trial run today. We also named it Hazel - remember the TV series back in the 60's staring Shirley Booth as a maid? Well, it seemed like an appropriate name! Today we gave Hazel her first run. I was concerned Honey would bark or chase it but she was very laid back.   I had a video of the first few minutes but for some reason it won't play here. For those of you who know me, I did post the video on my FB page.

Honey was curious but didn't bark or step on it. She checked Hazel out as she went around cleaning but never touched it. Finally Honey went to sleep. Hazel continued to clean. Really cool! When it bumps into an obstacle - the wall, furniture and such, it backs up a bit and continues. It did a great job on the rugs and cleaning the tile but missed a few areas. That could have been because the breakfast room chairs were in the way. Hazel got hung up a few times - I was constantly checking on her and most of the time she was busy in another room  I just picked her up and plopped her down and on she went. I'd say she was a success as the floors look good. Dog hair and dirt is gone.  I'm so glad Hazel came to work for us!

Can you believe....we have SNOW again!

After several posts about the continuing snow and cold temperatures, I was anticipating posting about spring. However, that hasn't happened as we are still having SNOW!!  Right now, as I sit in my office and look out the window, big fat flakes are falling. We got snow overnight but it was barely visible on the grass. This morning's news showed school delays for districts north of us including Wallenpaupack. I believe it was more icy than snowy.

We are ready for spring! Last year we found a mulch for the front gardens that not only was reasonably priced but didn't blow away. This year it was again on sale from Home Depot so B really loaded the SUV up several times. Worked out well as we would go to breakfast (yea!) and then stop off at the store and load up. All told we brought 75 bags home. And last weekend, when we had that short warm spell, we cleaned out the bed next to the porch and put down several bags. It's a two step process as there are leaves and such that need to be cleaned out before fresh mulch goes down. And that's not something we intend to do in the snow! So we are looking forward to working on this project soon.

This is the pile of mulch at HD.  We weren't the only ones loading up!