Story time

Lots of little stories this week....

The Tale of the Fruit Trees

We had the loveliest pie cherry tree in Columbia.  It was extremely low maintenance and yet it produced fruit every year.  It was sad to see it plowed under by the foundation repair folks the year we moved.  And we vowed we would plant another one here in Saint Louis.  Only, apparently, they are hard to find.  Same with apricot trees.  Our down-the-alley neighbor has a mature apricot tree that survived the spring frosts two years ago and produced a lovely batch of fruits that our neighbor was not interested in so he let us pick them.  I grew up with two apricot trees in my back yard in El Paso and loved them.  We tried growing one in Columbia but it died.  And, they are hit or miss as far a bearing fruit but I was inspired by our neighbor and decided to plant one here with the hope that some years, we would have fruit.  So, in early January, I went to the Starke's Nursery website and ordered a cherry and an apricot tree and was told they would arrive sometime in March or early April.  But, we have had such a mild winter that I guess Starke's decided to ship them last week (Starke's is located just north of Saint Louis) and we planted them yesterday.  High hopes here....

I realize they are just little sticks so they are hard to see but the cherry is in the foreground and the apricot is beside the firepit.  If you look closely, you will see my daffodils in full bloom waaaaay in the back by the garage.

The Tale of the Study Desk

Steve has a special "man cave" down in the basement where he has his model train set up and all his sports pictures hung.  It is also where he does his daily scripture study at a card table he set up.   On a particularly cold day this winter, he decided to move temporarily up to the kitchen table where it was warmer and he was surprised that his back didn't hurt after his studying.  It turns out the the kitchen table is 30 inches high and the card table is only 28 inches.  So, the quest for a better, taller study table began.  We visited the local St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store a couple of weeks ago and didn't find anything.  Yesterday morning, we mapped out a plan to go looking again at several local thrift stores but when we stepped into the first store, TA DAAAAA, we found the perfect table.  It is actually 31 inches!  It is a lovely little antique desk and it was only $20 dollars.  SOLD!  (I love the wood features on the front) (Linus decided to be in the photos)

The Tale of the Two Closets

We love our little house but two of the closet rods were up too close to the closet shelf which made putting on hangers very difficult.  We bought some wood, Steve made the cuts, I painted them last week and this week, I installed them and now, putting on hangers is a breeze.  You can see from the photo how close it was before....

The Tale of the Two Chairs

Back in Columbia, we had two wooden folding chairs on our front porch.  They were ones we got for free from the law school probably twenty years ago.  We got three.  One is now in our bedroom and the two went to the porch.  But, being in the weather for many years took its toll and when we moved in 2020, they looked pretty bad.  They were still sturdy, though, so I sanded them during the month we hung out in Marsha's duplex before we could close on this house.  Once we moved, they went into the garage and to the bottom of the "To Do" list until last week when I finally stained them black and painted on a coat of clear polyurethane.  They now grace our new front porch.

A Tasty Tale

For Christmas, Elise wanted to give me some gluten-free goodies from the only completely gluten-free bakery in the area, Britts Bakehouse.  Sadly, by the time she got to Saint Louis, they were closed for the holidays and so I got  twenty dollar bill instead.  This bakery sells all kinds of gluten-free baked goods but I feel pretty happy with my attempts at cookies and muffins.  But, not donuts.  And Britt's only offers them on weekends so, as you can guess, they sell out pretty quickly.  Since two Saturdays out of the month we are serving in the temple, I had to plan my trip to Kirkwood for just the right day and time and that happened yesterday morning.  We were there right as they opened at 9:00 and I got four beautiful gluten-free donuts and a cinnamon roll.  YUM!

A Musical Tale

I was in Kirkwood THREE times in twenty-four hours this past weekend.  The other two times were to play in the Saint Louis Civic Orchestra dress rehearsal and concert Friday and Saturday nights. We played two modern pieces by living composers.  We also played the Saint-Saens Havanaise, a violin solo accompanied by orchestra that featured a local sixteen year old violinist who won the concerto competition that the orchestra sponsors every year.   She was an incredible musician and played the piece flawlessly every time she rehearsed and performed.  The final piece was the massive Brahms 1st Symphony.  It was SO much fun to play.  Steve couldn't attend the performance so he went to the dress rehearsal and Emily and Noah, who also couldn't go on Saturday, joined him.  We played in the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center, a beautiful new facility that was state-of-the-art.  

I took these during intermission.  That is my cello, Gertrude, in the bottom left....

The Tale of the Holiday House

On our Wednesday morning walking route, we pass by a house on Leona that goes all out to decorate for every single holiday.  I posted the Christmas decor (remember it looked like Candy Land).  Here are the St. Patrick's decorations.  The little house has been there since Christmas - he just puts up different décor on it, depending on the holiday.

A Tale of Family

We had dinner at Emily and Joe's last Sunday night and here are photos from our time together.  I am so happy to be so close by!

In last week's blog, I mentioned the movies we started watching and we were able to finish "To Kill A Mockingbird" last Sunday afternoon and I finished "Wakanda Forever" Wednesday evening.  We both watched the miniseries "Dr. Thorne".  Well, I watched it more intently because it was a teeny bit like Steve's most unfavorite movie of "Pride and Prejudice".  

Weather has been up and down but it was nice enough for a bike ride one day.  And that is the end of story time.    

 

A Sweetheart of a week

Because I have orchestra rehearsals on Tuesday nights, our Valentine celebration was brief and consisted mainly of exchanging cards and having a lovely dinner of grilled pork steaks.  And Steve gave me a box of chocolate covered cherries.  Tuesday was rainy but the sun broke through just in time for Steve to cook the pork steaks on the outside grill.  A little Valentine's day miracle....(haha)

It was so windy and rainy on Tuesday that Steve took down the flags and I took photos of him putting it back up on a beautiful Wednesday morning...

We also visited the orchid display at the Missouri Botanical Gardens that day.  Notice that one of the orchids is named "Steve"...

Wednesday afternoon, I got my haircut and I also picked up an Element-full of mulch for the yard.  I think I have mentioned this before but we get it free from the city.  It seems to be mostly "clean" and you can't beat the price!  It was so pleasant that day that I was able to distribute it on the back 40 in just a long-sleeved T-shirt.  

And, then, in typical Missouri fashion, it turned REALLY COLD on Friday.  Today, it will get up to the 60's.  So crazy!

We had an art night on Friday and we painted a giraffe in acrylics.  Well, as you can see, one of us (Merilyn) painted an octopus.  Karen, on the far left, painted her giraffe the most true to the YouTube tutorial.  CeeCee in the middle did a more modern take and I tried to make mine less "pop-art" and more fine art.

I painted primer and the color coat on the new little wall enclosing the water heater and I cleaned up and re-organized the whole play area.  I had to buy a new pole lamp because the old one's base was broken up.  Some kind of plaster of Paris is used to create the weight at the lamp bottom and I think the water seepage we had last summer due to some really really heavy rain caused the plaster to break up.  

We started watching two movies this week.  I started "Wakanda Forever" on Wednesday night while Steve was at youth activities and caught a bit more last night while Steve was taking Fred to an urgent care for a UTI.  Steve is not interested in seeing this film.  Then, we started "To Kill A Mockingbird" last night but Steve was nodding off and, since it is his February movie, we decided to postpone until probably today.  

 

To Indiana and back

The new water heater is now installed!  Hooray!  Here is what the area looks like now with the bumped out wall and what it looked like before.... I hope to paint the little bit of side wall this week.

Although the groundhog saw his shadow last week, it has felt a bit like spring this week.  I loved the clouds with the stormy ambiance over the cemetery on my Thursday morning walk.

It felt like a short week.  That is because my entire Monday afternoon was filled with watching the new Avatar movie with Beckie.  Whoeee, it was a long one!  I liked most of it although I thought the battle scenes and the hunting of the "whales" scenes were pretty intense and longer than necessary.  The overall visuals were incredible and I found myself watching the first Avatar later this week just to review the story and to immerse myself into that world a second time.

Wednesday afternoon found us delivering Valentines to the people we minister to (I painted little hanging plaques with the saying "home is where the heart is") and the evening I drove to Ballwin to give the Southerlands some Valentine sugar cookies. It was my busy lesson Thursday that happens every other week.  And, on Friday, we traveled to Indiana to spend the weekend with Julina and Alex.  So, I had to try to fit into the remaining hours of the week all the regular, routine chores I do.   Only, some of those chores just didn't happen and life will go on....

We spent Saturday helping Julina put away Christmas.  Steve baked a batch of homemade bread and he helped Alex with some of his train projects.  Steve and I took Shiloh to lunch at Qdoba with dessert at Handel's Ice Cream.   

Linus and Sally LOVE road trips...

We got back to Saint Louis right around lunch time today and so the week has begun....

 

Forty eight years!

 Steve and I celebrated our forty-eighth wedding anniversary on Tuesday, January 31st.  We actually celebrated on Monday, the 30th, too since I had a cello lesson, a meeting, and an orchestra rehearsal on Tuesday.  We had dinner Monday night at Sam's Steakhouse and I ate filet mignon for the first time.  Wow, it was amazing!  

Emily took this photo on Saturday.  She still had the background up for Valentine mini-sessions.  Since we had a Valentine theme for our wedding reception, it was perfect.  Steve's mother worked at J.C. Penney's and she enlisted the store window-dresser to do the decorations in the church's cultural hall.  He did a lovely job.

Our "romantic" gift to each other was an electric air pump with gauge that will allow us to fill our bike tires to the proper PSI much quicker than our hand air pump can do.  Whenever we want to ride bicycles, we always have to check the tires and sometimes, getting them filled can take up to fifteen minutes which takes away from the time to ride.  We didn't get to try it out until Wednesday because the temperatures were so cold most of the week.    In fact, we had a light skiff of ice covered with snow Monday morning that was actually was MORE slippery on Tuesday.  

Sally got groomed on Wednesday.  It has been so cold I just hated to have all her warm fur removed so, on a whim, I asked for a poodle cut.  I think she looks so cute and silly at the same time.  

Our twelve year old water heater started acting up (again) a week ago causing us to have to take bucket showers with water heated on the stovetop.  I called a plumber early Monday morning and the earliest someone could get out was Wednesday.  Because this isn't our first time with water heater issues in this house and, because the heater is so old that most plumbers won't even look at it, I determined that we better get a new one.  Thankfully, we had just made our last payment on our HVAC system so monthly money was freed up.  The plumber checked things out and reported that new water heaters are wider and we will have to bump out the wall to fit the new one.  He was also able to re-light the pilot light.  He left with us needing to find someone to take out the wall before he could start doing anything.  

There is an older man in our ward who Steve grocery shops for and his son, Ken, is a handyman by trade.  I texted him and he not only can bump out the wall, but he can also install the new water heater and haul off the old one for $500 less than just having the plumber install the heater!  Needless to say, we are going to go with Ken and he will start tomorrow.  In the meantime, Steve has been able to restart the pilot light so we have had intermittent hot water throughout last week.  It is pretty incredible how much markup the plumber was going to charge on a heater and how much he was going to charge for his labor.  

We watched "Groundhog Day" on Thursday, of course.  And we watched "Glass Onion" last night while we ate pizza - Steve some homemade meat-lovers and me some enhanced (with meat, onions, mushrooms, more cheese) Costco gluten-free puzza  And that is all, folks.....