On the Street Where We Live

My walking partner is at girl's camp this week, so Ed has been going walking with me in the evening after work. The weather has been so beautiful, in the low 80's and the humidity has even gone down. It's been almost spring-like. I never get tired of just walking down our street. It is so beautiful, with all the tall trees. At at the end of it we have reservoir on both sides of the road. Coda, who we adopted three years ago yesterday, loves walking in that obsessive way that only dogs can express. It makes it even more fun!

Bloomin' Yard

The back yard has some beautiful flowers right now. The butterfly bush is doing its job attracting butterflies. You can see five in just this section of it. It's so pretty watching them flutter around.

Our trumpet vine has produced it's first two blooms in the two years since we've planted it! They're a beautiful orange color! Hopefully, next year we'll get four blossoms!

And the black-eyed Susans have exploded into a mass of color! It's cooled off a little and we can even go outside and enjoy them a little!

Another Birthday for Miss Carol

We celebrated Miss Carol's birthday a few days late this year. We tried a new recipe for the occasion--pecan encrusted salmon. I'd give it a thumbs up, but as I was the cook, I'm a little biased. Ed did a great job on the grilled veggies.

Miss Carol was born in 1928, so she's doing great to be independent still. She even had enough energy to blow out the candles on her cupcakes.

Kay dropped by to fill us in on Lenny's condition. He had a little bout with his heart again, but is going to be okay. I love this picture of Miss Carol and Kay going home in the golf cart afterwards. Notice the cane and the birthday flower in the back basket!

House in the Woods

Saturday we went to a house-warming for Ed's friend, Stan. They live outside the town of New Windsor. It was surprising following the instructions and ending up on a remote dirt road, only to find several beautiful houses on large, wooded lots. His house even had a modern in-law suite for his wife's parents, complete with their own kitchen and basement. They need a big house, as they have 5 of their 6 children living at home. (Surprisingly, they are not Mormon!)

Hot Car, Clean Temple

On Friday Ed and I went down to the temple to help with the semi-annual spring cleaning. Ed waxed stair railings, and they should be nice and slippery when the temple opens up this week! I learned how to clean silk plants by just blow drying them. It seems to work fine as long as there is no dust build-up. Several years of neglect (as in the case of my house plants) would make that system not as effective.

We gave Joey, from our ward, a ride down. It was a little squishy for him in the back seat. We took the Mini because the Audi was in the shop. Sadly, the air conditioning in the Mini went out as we left the temple to drive home. It was a HOT car, but with the windows down and the wind in our faces, the ride home was tolerable--just like old times. The Audi is now back home with a new set of tires, and the Mini is now in the shop!

A Hundred Years of Shade

It was sad to loose the old silver maple on the corner of our property. But, the good news was, that it was in the county right of way, which saved us about $2000 for the price of taking it down.

It took three days to take it down. The first day was just taking down the wires around the branches.

Today they finished taking the rest of the tree down, and we realized how much we're truly going to miss it. It turned out it was partially hollow inside, which makes it hard to count the rings.

They sawed it off at the base and gave it a little nudge with the front end loader, and that was the end of that! The county even carted off the wood, but left a sizable amount of lawn damage, which they said they're going to fix up for us. I'm cautiously optimistic!

It's Not Bath, but It Will Have to Do

We were hoping to meet my brother David and his family in Bath, NC, this weekend. But, Amanda is playing the harp for a wedding and has to stay in Baltimore on Saturday, so we settled for meeting David for lunch at BWI airport. Amanda (seen in the mirror) took our picture because I thought David and I had matching shirts. But, through the miracle of photography, his looks gray in the picture instead of blue like mine. David updated us on some family stories, which I can't write here, as much as I'd like to. Our lives are not as much of an open book as one would like to believe!