2018 Life Logs, Day 139—The Royal Wedding
Date: Saturday, May 19, 2018
Weather: Overcast with Light Rain; High 54, Low 53
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

I’m not usually one to watch things on television like a royal wedding, but I find myself glued to the TV tonight watching the CNN rerun of today’s grand affair. I was at Heather’s for lunch, and afterwards, Heather, Jed, and I watched some of the wedding on Heather’s tablet. I was absolutely captivated. So, I am spending my evening watching the whole thing again. It was obvious from what I watched earlier today that the Harry and Meghan made sure that their wedding made a statement, actually many statements, for what they see as the future. What a fabulous combination the two of them bring together. The setting in the chapel at Windsor Castle was just spectacular, as was the weather. And everything seemed to go so perfectly. Watching this has been such a nice break from what seems to be constant bad news in this country. I thought Bishop Curry’s sermon about love was spot on. Harry and Meghan certainly give me hope for a world filled with love.

My plans for the day included doing a couple of projects at Heather’s and then coming home to do some organizing and cleaning in the basement. But I ended up spending the whole day at Heather’s. Heather is still not able to do simple things like carry a pail of water to use when mopping the floors, so I stayed and helped while Sam and Jed drove off Cape for a soccer game. Before Jed left, he built a new guinea pig home to combine all three guinea pigs. Until today, Ollie’s addition, Zuzu, has lived in his own cage. But slowly they have been introducing Zuzu to the other two, Max and Mort. It is a slow process, but they are hoping the new cage will allow all three to live together peacefully. Tomorrow we will spend our morning and early afternoon at the fund-raising yard sale at the elementary school. It was supposed to happen today but was postponed until tomorrow because of the rain forecast for today. Actually, we didn’t get rain today until later in the afternoon and could have gone ahead with the sale this morning. But, that is not what the forecast indicated. Chances are now that we will get rain tomorrow. But the sale will go on, rain or no rain.

2018 Life Logs, Day 138—Eating Weeds
Date: Friday, May 18, 2018
Weather: Overcast, Windy, and Cool; High 59, Low 46 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

I’ll get to the ‘eating weeds’ part of this log a little later. First, I will walk through the day that ended with me eating weeds. The cool, overcast weather today did not encourage active, outdoor activities, but that is good when you have a lot of indoor activities that need to be done. Today was the day that I promised to get my IKEA wardrobe transformed into a pantry with sturdy shelves, and got it done. I think I have been putting this off because doing it required skills that I have rarely had to use. That is because I always let Mark do all of the building projects with me as a helper. Now that it is just me doing the whole project, it takes me a bit to convince myself that I can do it. But do it, I did today. I removed the IKEA shelves that I had already put in place with the flimsy IKEA plastic pins. They were supposed to hold those shelves in place . . . just not with any weight on them as I quickly learned. I replaced the pins with metal brackets and screwed those in place. This took lots of measuring and drilling, and then screwing them in place. I put the shelves back in place and filled them with containers of food. Sounds easy, but it took me most of the day. Nevertheless, I am proud of the results. I then spent time organizing the rest of the third bedroom where the IKEA pantry is located. It is full of furniture that will go to the East Falmouth Elementary School yard sale that has been postponed from tomorrow to Sunday due to rain, as well as the bit and pieces of things that have not fit in somewhere in the house. I took those things down to the basement and as soon as the extra furniture is out, I can put together this room that will serve as a pantry, playroom for the grandkids, office, and who know what else. We shall see. I then moved outside and filled two more 4 x 4 foot raised beds with the garden soil purchased at Costco. My, those bags are big and heavy! And I just didn’t have the energy to get the 4th bed filled. There is a 5th bed across the walkway, but I have remove the sod inside that one before filling it. Another day.

I switched gears and took off for Heather’s with more of the little plants I have been growing indoors to transplant in her garden. First, I checked on the bean plants I transplanted yesterday and the news was not encouraging. Two of the three are very wilted. So, I didn’t transplant the rest of the beans and the cucumbers. I did plant four zucchini plants and then headed back home. I’ll wait for warmer weather next week to continue transplanting. But before I left, Heather gave me a bag of dandelion greens she picked while weeding yesterday. She knows how much I value eating spring ‘weeds’ as their nutritional content is off the charts. Did you know there are over 250 different species of dandelions? All are edible and there are no poisonous lookalikes, but there are lots of lookalikes. One way to determine a true dandelion is to run your fingers along the main vein on the underside of the leaf. If it is completely smooth, you have a true dandelion. I think the bag of ‘weeds’ Heather gave me might have been lookalikes as the vein felt slightly prickly, and if so, that meant they would be slightly bitter. My mother always said that when you eat spring ‘weeds’ you should mix in a little bacon grease to remove the bitterness. I fought this for many years as an unhealthy practice, but I now agree with her. So, I fried a couple of strips of bacon and then stir-fried the dandelion greens in the same skillet. They were delicious.

2018 Life Logs, Day 137—Low Key Day
Date: Thursday, May 17, 2018
Weather: Overcast and Rainy; High 64, Low 51 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Today I did a little of this and a little of that. I didn’t make a lot of forward progress, but I enjoyed the day. I made a big batch of my favorite veggie soup, using up the last of the chicken broth that I didn’t can on Tuesday. And I did some organizational things around the house. Mid-morning, Karen Baranowski stopped in to update me on what is happening with my neighbors, her aunts. I mentioned in yesterday’s log that the 99 year-old aunt, Doris, had fallen twice in the past two days and that her daughter had come down to take her to the doctor and then spend the night. Karen added this morning that Doris is still unsure on her feet and that they were considering next steps. I am not sure what decisions have been made, but it is possible that Doris’ daughter, Caroline, will take the sisters back to Scituate and get in-home help for Doris there until she regains her strength and balance. If they have to leave, I will miss visiting with them. So I took over some of the soup I had made for their lunch and visited a bit. Doris is such a gentle person and so mentally alert for someone who will turn 100 in October. I enjoy both Doris and Shirley immensely. I also offered the use of the transport wheelchair that I bought for Mark but really never used. The offer was enthusiastically accepted, so I went to Heather’s to get it. I also took three of the six “magic bean plants” and transplanted them in Heather’s garden. If they make it overnight, tomorrow I will take the rest of the bean plants and some squash plants and transplant those. These drizzly days are perfect for transplanting and by Monday, we should have warmer, sunny days which will encourage the growth of the transplants. I have two big jobs planned for tomorrow—putting new brackets in the IKEA wardrobe that will support the shelves with heavy weights and getting all the bags of garden soil in the raised beds. Jed delivered a 6 x 6 today to keep visiting cars from backing in to the raised beds. Thank you, Jed! And tomorrow I hope to go get some 4 x 4’s that Olivia and Terry want to get rid of. Not sure how I will use them, but I know I will find a way.

2018 Life Logs, Day 136—Change of Address
Date: Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Rain Beginning Late Afternoon; High 62, Low 52 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

It goes without being said that when you move, you have a change of address, and you need to contact credit card companies and other vendors to let them know. I have been so busy, however, that I have neglected to make the necessary contacts, so today was the day. Much of this can be done online these days. I tried that, but I ran into one little problem after another, and ended up spending most of my morning on the phone. I still haven’t contacted everyone, but I made a good start. I took a break at noon to go out and empty bags of garden soil into one of the raised beds. The estimate of 5 bags per 4 foot x foot area was just right. While outside, Shirley from next door came outside and I walked over to say hello. We examined the fruit trees in bloom and listened to the very loud birds talking to each other. On Sunday, Heather spotted a beautiful Northern Flicker in my side yard and yesterday Shirley saw a juvenile Oriole. One of these days, I am going to slow down and just sit and do some bird watching. But not this week! Rain is in the forecast through Sunday and I have a huge Must Do list. But back to the conversation with Shirley, she wanted to let me know that her 99 year-old sister Doris that lives with her, fell early morning. She also fell yesterday and even though Shirley called 911 to get help getting her off the floor, Doris was fine. She also seemed fine after this morning’s fall, but best to check. Her daughter drove down to take her to the doctor, but I haven’t heard the result of that yet. Hopefully, all is well.

I had a 2 pm Physical Therapy assessment and hurried off to that. I was very impressed with the two therapists doing my assessment. There was a young woman named Hannah who must be in training because she was under the constant direction of Tom. The two of them worked for an hour isolating every issue that could possibly impact my left knee. I will continue with training appointments for the next month and then hopefully will just have to keep doing the exercises at home. I left there and drove straight to East Falmouth Elementary to pick up Jonah and Ollie. I was there until 7:15 pm when everyone but Ollie and I returned from soccer practice and a make-up soccer game for Jonah. Ollie and I stayed home and worked on a project. Ollie has been wanting to make a huge gods eye or Ojo de Dios with multi-colored yarn. But since he has never made one before, we watched a how-to video on YouTube and then he was off and running. I got him started but he needed no further coaching. The only help he needed was when we switched from one color yard to another. The multi-colored yard was beautiful, but we found that we needed to unravel and then rewind each color separately, so he could change colors when he wanted. It was a fun project and brought back memories of the first time I made gods eyes. That was with Heather when she was two. I still have those gods eyes and put them on my Christmas tree each year.

2018 Life Logs, Day 135—Great Evening with Friends
Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Rain Late; High 69, Low 53 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Our Newcomers dining-in group met at Bruce and Jane Woodin’s this evening. We spent time catching up on happenings in each other’s lives, feasted on fabulous food, and ended our evening with Terry teaching us how to make origami paper cranes. It was a delightful evening. Thanks to Bruce and Jane for hosting.

The rest of my day was on the busy side. I started out by trading cars with Heather and Jed and then made another trip north to Costco to buy more bags of organic garden soil in their van. I needed to pick up more than I did yesterday and there was no way my car could handle the weight. After picking up the soil, I then rushed home to meet with the home insurance inspector. She was doing her yearly inspection but now that I am living here, she needed to coordinate with me. I then spent the rest of the afternoon getting as many of the fifteen bags of soil out of van as I could, fixing a salad to take to tonight’s dinner, and canning chicken broth. I got one batch done before leaving for dinner, but am listening to the jiggle of the pressure canner as I write this log. The second and final batch is almost done. Jed came over after work and got the last three bags of soil out of the van. To distribute the weight, the Costco helper put them in the middle of the van and I just couldn’t man handle them. Jed placed all the bags where it will be easy for me to fill the raised beds. Thank you, Jed. I will slowly fill the raised beds with the bagged soil over the next couple of days, weather permitting. Rain is in the forecast, but I hope there will be periods of time when I can work outside. But if not, I have plenty of inside jobs to keep me busy.

2018 Life Logs, Day 134—Search for Organic Garden Soil
Date: Monday, May 14, 2018
Weather: Partly Sunny; High 66, Low 52 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

I now have raised garden beds, but they need to be filled with garden soil. And I am resolute that it needs to be organic, and it is not easy to find organic garden soil that is affordable. Jed sent me a source on the Cape, a family farm, but I called numerous times today and didn’t reach them. So, I took off for Costco which has the cheapest organic garden soil that I have been able to find. I knew I was going to made two trips to get the 25 bags I need. My little car could hold all 25 bags even though they are very large, but they are also VERY heavy. I called Costco this morning and they promised they would help load the bags onto a cart and then put the bags into my car. But I had no idea how much the bags really weigh (at least 50 pounds since each bag hold 55 quarts of soil). I decided to get 14 bags, but the young man loading them into my car stopped at 10. The weight had lowered the car as low as he thought was safe. So, I left 4 bags and will borrow Heather and Jed’s van and return tomorrow to get those 4 bags plus 11 more. I drove VERY carefully all the way home and was somehow able to pull those bags out of my car. The bags are awkward to handle because they are almost 4 feet long, but I persisted and got the job done . . . for today. The saga will continue tomorrow.

2018 Life Logs, Day 133—Happy Mother’s Day
Date: Sunday, May 13, 2018
Weather: Overcast and Cool; High 54, Low 47 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

It was a Happy Mother’s Day here and I hope that all of my favorite mothers out there had a great day. For me, it is a great Mother’s Day when I get to spend time with my children. That’s a little hard for me since Justin lives in Puerto Rico. But Justin called this morning and then took Jo, Ziggy, and Coco to his office late this afternoon so they could make a Skype video call. They had to go to the office because the internet signal there is strong enough for video. It was wonderful to see them, and on this end, I had Heather and gang here. So, I was surrounded by my children, despite the distance. For Mother’s Day, Justin and kids gave Jo tickets for a summer trip to England, stopping here for a week-long visit on the way home. That will be in July and I can’t wait to have them visit!

Heather, Jed, and boys returned from their two-night camping trip late morning. They were planning to come over to help me put the raised garden beds together, so I invited them to come a little early and have lunch, as well as dinner, here. We had a nice lunch and then launched into our projects. Heather and Jed helped me decide where to place the raised-beds and then the boys helped with the assembly. You can assemble the cedar raised-beds in different ways and we considered all sorts of configurations. But in the end, we decided on a simple design. I ended up with two 4 x 8 foot beds and one 4 x 4. It will cost a small fortune to fill them with organic garden soil, but I am determined to use only organic. I am very happy with the look of our design and am anxious to fill them with soil and plant the seeds and seedlings. The boys also assembled a tiny greenhouse I bought at Job Lot and I hope to take the plants that we started inside out to the greenhouse to harden them off before planting in the gardens (Heather’s and mine) over Memorial Day weekend. It is such a nice feeling to be gardening again. That wasn’t possible on while living on Windbird except for pots of basil and it wasn’t possible at The Studio. But now that I am in a home with a yard, I can go for it. The soil here is sand, thus the need for raised-beds. I’m not sure how successful my gardening attempts will be this year, but I will have fun trying. Thanks to Heather, Jed, and boys for pitching in and helping me today.

We had artichokes and baby back ribs for dinner, ending a wonderful day. I had hoped for some sunshine, but the only sunshine came from watching my family in action. I’ll take it.

2018 Life Logs, Day 132—Shopping, Cooking Day
Date: Saturday, May 12, 2018
Weather: Overcast, Afternoon Drizzly Rain; High 54, Low 48 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

So the Goldstones took off late yesterday for a two-night Cub Scout camping trip despite the forecast for cool, rainy weather today and tonight. The rain held off until the afternoon, so hopefully they got to go biking as planned. But in their absence, my first job of the day was to go to Heather’s to feed the guinea pigs, Max, Mort, and Zuzu and to stop at the Post Office to pick up some Amazon packages. My next stop was the lumber yard to figure out what to buy to bolster the shelf strength in the IKEA wardrobe I am converting into a kitchen pantry. I installed the shelves I bought at IKEA last week, but I have been worried that the little pins that hold up the shelves are just not strong enough. And indeed, I was right to worry. During the night I was awakened by a loud bang. I immediately checked the IKEA shelves and one had fallen. I was not surprised, but this moved that project to the top of the list. I decided on installing brackets, bought the supplies, and traveled on. I had to go downtown to a couple of shops, made a stop at the grocery store, and made another stop at the hardware store to buy some organic garden soil and potting soil for tomorrow’s project. When I finally got home, it was time for lunch. I made chicken salad with the chicken I roasted last night, baked beets, and got the chicken mineral broth burbling. I also assembled a little two drawer kitchen organizer that arrived from Amazon. By the time I got all of this done, it was 3:30 and I wanted to go to Waquoit Feed and Seed to check on the price of organic garden soil there and then I went to Williams Sonoma in Mashpee to set something I needed from there. So goes a day. Tomorrow the focus is on gardening and I am looking forward to that.

2018 Life Logs, Day 131—What a Beautiful Corner of the World
Date: Friday, May 11, 2018
Weather: Partly Sunny; High 73, Low 45 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

I spent time yesterday taking photos for a book about Woods Hole for a great niece’s first grade son and I spent much of today publishing it as a CVS photo book. By doing this, I was able to order the completed book and have it printed at a CVS in West Virginia where it can be picked up after 10 am in the morning. Good thing since it is due at school on Monday. But the point I want to make is that in doing this, I was once again reminded of the beauty of this corner of the world. As I was taking photos in Woods Hole yesterday, I was constantly distracted by the distinctive call of nesting osprey. They were everywhere. And where there are osprey nests, there were egrets, red-winged blackbirds, and swans. All so beautiful. In the book, I toured Woods Hole and then followed the Falmouth Road Race course back to Falmouth. Some of the views from that course are just breath taking.

I took time out this afternoon to walk next door and visit with Doris and Shirley. They returned from their stay in Scituate on earlier this week and I haven’t had a moment to properly say hello. Shirley and I had a nice conversation and I look forward to spending more time visiting. Heather and gang took off late this afternoon for two nights of cub scout camping and biking, but it is possible they will return late tomorrow if the rain that is forecast becomes a reality. I have a lot of small jobs and errands to run tomorrow and plan to start setting up the raised beds in my front yard on Sunday. Sounds like a low-key weekend, but we’ll see if that really happens.

2018 Life Logs, Day 130—Another Busy One
Date: Thursday, May 10, 2018
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High 68, Low 51 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

If yesterday was busy, today was even busier. I attended the Newcomers Installation of New Officers Breakfast Meeting this morning. It was at the Flying Bridge on Falmouth Harbor and it was a lovely event. I only took one photo and that was of the carved fruit decorations, but every detail was perfect. A great big pat on the back to Jane Woodin, co-chair of the Program Committee, who arranged this affair. It was delightful.

I left the Flying Bridge and went on a three-hour explore of the Woods Hole area with Flat Stanley. Since moving, I get my mail at a PO Box and because I have been so busy, I have only checked the box twice. I get most notices electronically, so there is rarely an important piece of mail. But this Tuesday when I got the mail, there was a very important request. It was from Kit, the son of my sister’s granddaughter. Kit is in second grade and his class is doing the Fla Stanley Project. This is an educational project started in 1995 in Canada. It features a paper cut-out of a character from the 1964 children’s book called Flat Stanley. “The project was designed to facilitate the improvement of the reading and writing skills of elementary school students, while also promoting an interest in learning about different people and places.” So today I took Flat Stanley on a tour of Woods Hole and all of my favorite stops from Woods Hole back to Falmouth. We had a great time. Then I drove north to Mashpee to meet my neighbor from The Studio to pick up a kayak that she was selling. By the time I dropped the kayak off at home, it was time to go to the Goldstones to stay with Jonah and Ollie while Heather took Sam to an after-school appointment.

But this was not the end to my day. I then met Jane Woodin at the West Falmouth Library for a talk by author Jacquelyn Mitchard. It was interesting talk by an author I am unfamiliar with, but I bought a book to get acquainted. Then I went home with Jane and we put together a combined dinner. I brought lettuce and some of Heather’s quinoa salad left over from yesterday’s teacher luncheon. Jane added sautéed chicken, mushrooms, and asparagus. Dinner was delicious and it gave us a chance to catch up on recent happenings.