Weekend Chores

First, a shout out to our nieces Lilly and Caitlin. Both graduated from colleges in the last 2 weeks. Caitlin was the student speaker at her graduation, and we watched that event on streaming video. Caitlin (AKA: Cat) did an excellent job. Congratulations and Good Luck to both young ladies.

Lilly and Caitlin’s mom, Becky, deserves a tribute. A single Mom, Becky put her two daughters through college and upgraded her job skills at the same time. Not an easy task. Way to go, Becky!

Weekends are generally busy around our place during good weather. We get out to run the dogs, do chores around the yard, and do routine maintenance.

We started this weekend by cleaning the gutters.

Jerry cleaning out some gutters.

Jerry got out the “big” ladder and cleaned out all the leaves, seed pods, and “stuff” that had clogged the downspouts. Between the garage and house he repeated this routine 4 times.

Another project for this year is to repaint parts of the house and garage. We had painted the place shortly after we bought it in 2006, but some of the trim, in particular, was getting a bit shabby. Jerry started paining the west end trim on the garage and the walk-up ramp leading to our deck.

Jerry painting trim on garage.

Pam generally paints the trim around the windows, but Jer does the prep work, scraping and wire-brushing.

Jerry preps window trim for painting.

This is what the place looked like when we bought it:

House was dusty blue when we bought it in 2006.

This is what it looked like when we finished painting:

House painted 2007 and new gutters in 2008.

We did get other chores completed: weed-wacking, mowing, and planting some more flowers. It was a busy couple of days! Still, we had time to sit on the deck, run the dogs, and do our grocery shopping.

The lilacs are blooming, the iris are just about ready to pop, and the white lilac we planted on Mother’s Day (Pam’s gift from Jer) has new growth coming up from the base, so it looks like it will do OK.  Our tree peonies are  in bloom, or at least 2 of the 3 plants have blossoms on them. Weather is still unsettled, as we had temps well below normal (but above freezing) last week.

The next month will be very busy, starting with Jer’s trip to Wisconsin later this week, followed by a visit from Jer’s sister, Kitt. Jer next heads off to California for a motorcycle rally during the 2nd week of June, followed by another rally in Colorado – he is the co-sponsor – in Durango over the 4th of July weekend. We have been identifying potential land parcels to look at, and hope to get over to the Divide area, west of Colorado Springs, to look at some of them. We will be puppy-sitting Mr. Biggs for a week in June as well.

Last bit of good news…we have heard that Tabitha has managed to get her last foster puppy adopted. That makes 17 puppies adopted this spring! Now that’s an accomplishment.

Late-braking news…we learned late last night that Pam’s Aunt Angela passed away. Angela was 90, and had been living in her own place in Oxnard, California. We are hoping to get more information from her daughters,  Joan and Barbara, in the next couple of days.

That about wraps it for this post. Since Jer will be on the road quite a bit this week and next, the next post may be more than a week away. Thanks for looking in on us.