Third week in June

Last Sunday was Father's Day which I completely forgot to mention last week!  Elise was in town and she and Beckie helped us celebrate (remember Steve had to cook his Father's Day hamburgers in the rain?)  After dinner, we enjoyed a great game of Qwirkle.

We went to Menards Monday afternoon and bought Steve's Father's Day gift from the kids - a modular fence to protect the blackberries from possums and rabbits.  We will put a net over the top to keep the birds out, as well.

In spite of hardly any rain and having to water all the time, everything is growing beautifully.  Including weeds.  I finally finished pulling the weeds (again) and placing mulch in the front beds.  

The yellow cosmos reseeded itself in the bed by the street and it is blooming like crazy!

I used to have the bird feeder here by the turnaround and some volunteer sunflowers popped up.  So far, the squirrels have left them alone.

And my beans are looking great.  Blossoms have appeared so I hope to be picking by the end of next week!

The week was a good one to catch up on lots of little projects that have been waiting to be done....I pulled down the shower curtains and washed them - the fabric ones in the washing machine and the plastic liners on the driveway with a bucket, scrub brush and a hose.  I finished transcribing two pieces of music into Finale.  I worked on the eulogy for my sister's funeral this Friday.  I wrote many notes and cards to people.  I worked on civic orchestra business as I prepare to hand off the administrator job to Jennifer sometime in July.  I actually practiced instruments this week.  I tried to find in the Mojave area a cello to use for the funeral and have pretty much come up empty.  I have one last person that I am waiting to hear from but, in the meantime, I explored the possibility of bringing my own as a checked piece of luggage (that would be the LAST resort) and I reached out to one of my Anthem students and he is very happy to let me use his cello.  I would rather not haul a cello across the desert in the middle of summer but I have a feeling that is what I will have to do.  Thankfully, Amy's car has room for it.  Elise came back to St. Louis Wednesday evening to take a live CPR class (as opposed to virtual) Thursday morning.  She needs this class to finish up renewing her Indiana teaching certificate which will hopefully facilitate getting a job in Columbia Public Schools next year.  She and I played duets while she was here (viola / bass  and viola / violin).  Steve and I worked in the temple baptistry Thursday evening in a shift trade with a couple who will work for us the first Saturday in August.  It was a busy night.  We had a peaceful Friday night and we watched an old Disney movie called Third Man on the Mountain.  It came out in 1959 and Steve and I suspect it was in conjunction with the opening of the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland since the movie was about scaling the Matterhorn for the first time in the 1800's.  It was a good movie but watching the climbing scenes was really tense!  How can people do those kinds of things????  I finished the book All The Light We Cannot See Friday night, as well.  What an amazing book about a horrific time in the history of the world!  Saturday morning, Steve and I pumped up the bike tires, installed the bike rack on the Kia and drove to the church parking lot where we took a ride along the Des Peres River parkway path.  We need to do that kind of thing more often!  We had Ed and Mona (our "neighbors" to the east) over for dinner in the evening.  They told us all about their most recent trip to their new villa in Greece.  Eventually, they will move there permanently and use the house next door as an air BNB / a place for them to stay when they come to the States.  Work on their place east of us has been on hold for a couple of months but they hope to resume in July.

Not Your Typical Week

We were still in Indiana when we started our week.  Monday was "work in Julina's yard" day.  I pulled up unwanted weeds that were popping up through the yard cloth and gravel covering the bed up against the north and west side of the house.  Steve raked all the collected leaves from the yucca bed by the street.  We worked all morning, took a break mid-day, and I went back out in the evening to finish.  The weather was surprisingly cool and overcast throughout the day making the work more tolerable.  And, throughout the day, the refrigerator in the guest room was unplugged and being defrosted.  The freezer had gotten to a point that hardly anything could be inserted inside.  It took all day Monday and through the night to finally thaw!  Below are photos from our time there, including one of Sally hogging Steve's bed pillow and of yucca blossoms that are really quite beautiful closeup whereas, from afar, I really have no liking for the plant.

I took the below photo after several hours of thawing.  I tried inserting a Yankee candle to help the process along.  It really didn't help that much...

Weed free!!!!!

We left for home Tuesday morning by way of Danville, Illinois - a slight detour north - because we wanted to walk the Kickapoo Rail Trail Bridge just to the west of Danville.  Below is an internet photo of how it looks.  

It is a fairly long bridge but we made it across and back.  It is also quite high above the ground - so much so that we were above most of the tree tops!  Below are my photos...

Continuing towards St. Louis, we next stopped in Monticello, Illinois where our long-time friend Beth Seibert lives.  She moved there after she separated from her husband back in the late 90's.  Her home is the one she grew up in and it is beautifully preserved.  And her garden around the house is so beautiful!  We went to lunch at nearby Allerton Park and Retreat Center with a gorgeous mansion (which we weren't able to tour), lots of statues and gardens.  It was great to spend time with Beth and catch up.

This photo reminds me of maze scene from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

You can see the dogs were with us and, combined with the long walk on the rail trail bridge and all the paths we walked around Allerton, poor Linus just slept all day Wednesday he was so pooped.  So was I on Wednesday.  

Thursday morning, Steve and I met Emily and kids at the Missouri Department of Conservation Powder Valley Nature Center (located at the conjunction of I-44 and I-270 in the greater St. Louis area) for a donut/hard boiled egg/ banana breakfast, an explore of the center, and a little hike.  Temperatures were pleasant and the we had a nice time.  

Friday evening was an Art Night.  We were using acrylics to paint yellow tulips but the blue background was taking so long to dry that the yellow tulips were starting to turn green.  Therefore, we all just took our half-finished pieces home to complete.  But, it was fun to get together...

Saturday was a temple baptistry and Southerland lessons.  Elise came into town that evening and she will go home Monday evening.  Beckie joined us for a Father's Day dinner of hamburgers.  And, Elise, Steve, and I watched the new Dungeons and Dragons movie last night.  It was SO fun!

It finally rained today and I dumped out almost 4 inches!  Prayers answered!

Probably most important happening this week was that my sister, Judy, passed away on Tuesday morning in Mojave, California.  She had just turned 88 on Saturday.  I got to talk to her on Sunday and she sounded pretty good.  She was recovering from hip surgery and it was not going smoothly.  The surgery was back at the end of April and she was still not ambulatory.  Evidently, her heart must have given out because she never woke up Tuesday.  Her funeral will be on Friday, June 30th in Mojave.  I am planning to attend (fly out Thursday the 29th to Phoenix where my sister Juli and niece Amy will pick me up and we will drive to California together.  We drive back to Phoenix on Saturday and I fly back to St. Louis Saturday evening).  I am to give the eulogy / life history and to play a musical number on cello.  The challenge is finding a cello.  I hope to have that figured out by next Sunday's blog...

Below is a photo from March 2022 when I last saw my sister, Judy.  The three sisters, Jeanne, Judy, and Juli.  Judy was 20 years older than me.  And, a curious fact is that my mother, my sister Jerri, and now Judy all died at age 88....

 

Flowers!

Some photos of the flowers  currently blooming in my garden, including an Easter lily that I planted from an Easter gift a year ago....

Sarah painted me a water color bouquet for Mother's Day this year and I framed it and hung it above a stitched flower bouquet I made for my mother fifty years ago...

I honestly have not much to write about this week.  Monday we visited with our Edward Jones person in the afternoon and savored Baskin Robbins baseball nut ice cream cones next door afterwards.  I remember getting baseball nut ice cream when I was a little girl living in El Paso.  Back then, we called it 31 Flavors and our family would go there now and then.

Tuesday morning I drove to Ballwin, not to visit Emily and family but to check out  the Parkway South High School orchestra room to determine if it was suitable for the civic orchestra rehearsals.  Before Covid, and before I was in the group, the orchestra rehearsed in another Parkway school.  Covid prevented us using any public school building so we had to resort to an old gym in Overland that has horrible acoustics and no percussion equipment.  Usually Steve and I go to the temple on Tuesday mornings but we went in the evening that day.  

Wednesday morning was Happy Hookers and Steve and I attended a funeral for a neighbor that evening.  Thursday we bought groceries, I taught lessons, we dusted off our bikes and took a ride in the evening and watched Cat Ballou afterwards.  What a silly movie!  It was made in the mid-sixties and was a spoof western.  I think Steve was singing the theme song a couple weeks ago so I decided we needed to watch it.  Friday was more lessons in the morning while Steve went to Caliber Collision to get an assessment of the damage done to the Kia (see last week's blog) and to pick up his new continuous glucose monitor.  Since he has started going to an endocrinologist, things have been happening to get his diabetes under better control:  going on Ozempic, using a different insulin, and now this monitor.  Hooray!  We had friends over for dinner and, after they left, we caught the pen-ultimate episode of the Mandelorian.  Saturday we headed to Indiana after I attended a baby shower from 1:00 - 2:30.  We got on the road at 3:30 but dead-stop traffic just outside of Effingham delayed us for over an hour.  We still are not sure if it was construction or an accident but we were surrounded by 18-wheelers going nowhere.  Then, once we hit Indianapolis, another detour slowed our arrival yet again so we didn't pull into Julina's driveway until 10:00 pm EDT!

We awoke to rain this morning and supposedly St. Louis was also supposed to get rain.  I sure hope so.  I am weary of watering.  AND weeding.  I finally tackled the bed behind the garage that was just riddled with bindweed and cleaned it all out and spread mulch.  The last main weeding battle will involve along the western fence.  I will hopefully get that done this coming week and I will post photos of the growing garden for my next blog.  Until then, have a great week!

Water and weed

It seems like all I did this week was pull weeds and water!  We have not had decent rain for a couple of weeks and, with everything starting to grow - including stupid WEEDS! - I have spent more time than usual out in the yard/garden.  One happy planting, though, was my Mother's Day dogwood tree!  The kids all donated money and I was able to buy a pink dogwood tree.  The white one I planted last year did not survive the winter and, after consulting this week with the nursery where I got my new one, I probably didn't water it enough in the fall to prepare it for the difficult winter we had.  Notice the little white fencing - that is to keep Linus from peeing on it like he did with the old dogwood (which also probably had an impact upon the demise)

Another happy planting was the replacement raspberries.  The first ones did not fare well at all so Starkes sent us some new ones.  We have great hopes for the new set....

We started out our week with Memorial Day Monday.  Steve and I visited Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery and seeing the thousands upon thousands of flags set next to each gravestone was an impressive sight.

We invited Sam Carpintero and Emily Hughes from church over for hamburgers and s'mores for dinner.  

That Monday evening was the end of a long line of dinner-hostings starting with Wednesday, May 31st when we fed the missionaries.  Elise joined us for dinner on Thursday and Friday.  Elizabeth Crippen came Friday and stayed through Monday morning so she was a guest at our table through Sunday evening when we also had another guest, Kim, from our ward.  Then, Monday with Sam and Emily!  

Wednesday night, as Steve was returning late from youth activities ( they went to Shakespeare in the Park at Forest Park), he was side-rear-ended by a jerk who was racing another car.  Both passed Steve at high speeds and the first car barely managed to avoid a head-on with a vehicle coming the opposite direction.  The second car, though, had to dodge back into his lane behind Steve and didn't quite make it and side swiped our left back bumper.  And, of course, the driver did not stop to exchange insurance.  It is extremely fortunate, though, that there was not a huge crash involving the two cars and Steve.  Below is the damage...the body shop cannot get to the repair until August - I guess because the car is still drivable.

Hot weather has descended upon Saint Louis but Linus still gravitates toward sunny spots in the house to take his naps, like a cat.  I guess his summer haircut is too short...

Sally, on the other hand, likes the cool leather recliner in the TV room...

Emily, Quinn, Larkin, Beckie, Steve and I had a fun adventure Friday morning at the Miniature Museum.  We parked at a nearby tiny park with this interesting monument that had a lot of Bosnian businesses listed on plaques on the sides.  It was likely connected to the Bosnian Chamber of Commerce office across the street.... 

The museum is housed in a rather non-descript building so we expected to be in and out within an hour.  Oh, no!  It is just chock full of miniature displays of all kinds on two floors!  Jaw dropping displays.  By the time we got to the second floor, we had already spent over an hour and Emily and I - both miniature aficionados - were just too overwhelmed to finish looking at everything.  We saw perhaps a third of what was upstairs.  The gift shop was also pretty incredible.  So many miniature things to buy!

Saturday was a temple baptistry day and we drove over to Southerlands afterwards where Steven had joined Joe for some soccer watching.  After a yummy build-your-own sandwich lunch, I gave the kids piano lessons.  

Today, Sunday, after church, I joined some of my fellow cellists from the Civic Orchestra to listen to one of our own, Daniel, play in a recital in Webster Groves.  He played Bach and the last movement of the Dvorak cello concerto.  Three other musicians played on the program, as well - a pianist, a violinist, and a percussionist and all four performers were SPOT ON!  I did not hear a single bad or hesitant note.  Daniel is probably 20 years old and the other three were high school age - around 15.  Their virtuosity was just amazing and the acoustics were brilliant.  

Below is me, Daniel, Jennifer, and Nancy.  Jayne was off visiting with someone at the back of the church. 

 

After I got home and we had dinner, we had Nate and Maddie Victor over for cookies.  A very nice young couple and it was great to get to know them better.

So, I will close with a movie report.  Wednesday evening, while Steve was watching Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, I watched the 2021 musical version of Cinderella,  I enjoyed it.  Thursday night, Steve and I watched Trouble With the Curve and, unlike Mr. Baseball from the previous week, this was a good watch.  And, on Friday and Saturday, we watched two more episodes of Mandalorian.  So fun, especially seeing Jack Black and Christopher Lloyd in episode six.