Sod King

For those of you who have been following this blog, you will be amazed to learn (as was I) that this is the 300th blog posting for Sherry's Second Wind.  I started this blog in May of 2011, creating it mostly to keep all of my friends and family abreast of our remodeling progress on our recently purchased house in Florida.  I hope you have enjoyed following the ups and downs of that (and other) adventures I have recorded.  If not, why are you still reading this?

Last week we went to Minnesota to visit Stephanie.  We planned to leave early on Friday.  Intrigued by news reports that morning of long lines outside of phone stores since the Apple iPhone 6s and 6+ were being released that day, Rick said that he was going to "take a detour" to see how long the lines were outside of our Verizon store here in town. OK.  Fine.  It was only a couple of minutes out of our way, and I have learned long ago what issues were worth objecting to and which were not.  This detour was not what I had planned, but it was no big deal, I thought.  Boy, was I wrong.

When we got to the store, we saw lots of cars parked on the side of the building, but no lines and only a couple of cars in the front.  Neither of us could believe what we were seeing, so I agreed that we could go in to see when new phones might be available.  Rick has been having problems with his 5s phone dropping calls, so we had planned on getting new phones after we were in Florida.

We walked into the store to find a full staff of almost-bored employees, and only a couple of customers.  Brian, our employee who waited on us, told us that the pre-orders were huge and already taken care of, and that they had an ample supply of phones if we wanted new ones.  They also had a promotion going on with unheard-of deals on iPads.  Long story short, we now are the proud owners of new 6s iPhones which we miraculously were able to secure on their release day, and we have a new iPad to play with also.  The only drawback (other than the sucker-punch to our budget) was that we got off to a very late start for Minnesota. However, the visit went well, and Stephanie was there to help the old folks figure out how to configure all of their new-fangled electronics.

My ever-calendar conscious husband has reminded me numerous times that we only have three weeks left in Wisconsin.  This summer has been delightful -- a little warmer and somewhat drier than normal, but pleasant nonetheless.  This fall has had record-breaking temperatures in the high 70's and low 80's, so it seems that summer has hung on.  Last night, however, a cold front came in, so fall is definitely in the air.

The cooler weather prompted me to bring in the patio small tables and to bundle the rest of the patio furniture together under secured covers.  It will winter nicely under the covers on our covered, screened-in patio until the spring thaw.  I usually do not put the furniture away until later in October, and I generally freeze my fingers getting everything under wraps.  After all of these years, perhaps I have learned my lesson.  Besides, I still have chairs on the front porch if I want to enjoy sitting outside, and they will only take 30 seconds to bring into the house once we are finished with them for the season.

This week started with Rick getting a bee in his bonnet to sod the remaining part of our lawn that the City dug up when they put in a new section of curbing.  Yes, the City came around, threw in 2 inches of dirt, and dusted the disturbed area lightly with the grass seed.  Ha!  I think it's a little late in the season for grass to germinate, especially since temperatures are supposed to drop into the high 30's overnight by the end of the week. On to Plan B...

Rick called around the city until he found a nursery that still had sod available.  We picked up three rolls, Rick dug out the pathetic soil that the City provided, and he laid down the new sod.  Now I admit, the sod this time of year would not make it to the pages of the Sod of the Month magazine, but it still has a better chance of growing than the seed the City provided.  We'll just have to keep it watered, pray for warm weather, and hope for the best.  If nothing else, the sod will keep the dug-up area from turning into a giant mud patch until we can pay more attention to it next spring.

The strip of sod is not the best I have seen,
but it is far better than the pathetic seed the City
provided to fill in our yard.

Other chores yesterday included taking an inventory of our freezers to best plan how to eat everything before we leave, sorting items that we want to ship down to Florida, and washing both the truck and the car.  We both slept well last night.

Today we tackled the back yard with the first leaf-blowing session of the season.  We have four bags of sticks and leaves that we need to haul to the yard-refuse area tomorrow... if we can get out of our driveway.

Today also marked the first day in weeks that men have returned to finish resurfacing our street.  This work originated on May 28 of this year, and they may actually grind up the old street tomorrow.  Perhaps by the end of the week, we will have a newly-asphalted street.  They started the street two weeks after we came home in the spring, and they will finish the street two weeks before we return to Florida for the winter.  Well, if nothing else, they balanced the construction with our calendar.