Time and Money

As the title of this blog suggests, we have been spending a lot of time getting Gladys set up for the winter and a lot of money doing so.

Our ventures today started with a trip down to a palm tree nursery we found last year where we want to get the palms for our front yard.  Currently our front yard is decorated with an almost dead bottle brush tree and a half-dead Queen palm tree.  We made arrangements yesterday to have both trees removed.  Sadly, the tree service says that they are booked for about five weeks, so we are looking at the week of Thanksgiving to have the trees removed.

In place of the bottle brush, we would like to plant two palms with a small
garden between them.  Where the palm is in front of the house, we would
like low bushes to hide faucets and to bring color to the yard.

Our trip south to the nursery was to see if that schedule would put us too far into the winter to have a couple of foxtail palms planted.  We are "colder" here in Dunedin than are communities further south, so we had some questions as to how cold-tolerant foxtail palms would be.  The person who waited on us assured us that the foxtails would be fine.  However, he wants to send someone out to our house to help us plan our palm tree garden.  (Read: talk us into more vegetation than we want or can afford to plant.) Anyway, the nursery is supposed to call us on Monday to make arrangements.  We'll see...

From Seminole we crossed over the I275 long bridge into Tampa to visit the Container Store.  I bought a couple of small items for Gladys.  We then had lunch, found a salon that sold the shampoo and conditioner we wanted, and headed back to Pinellas County.

Our final stop of the day was in Seminole to see my nephew Jon.  He has moved into a new house as he begins his second year of teaching.  His house has a great layout and a cozy charm to it.  We took him some homemade cookies and had an enjoyable visit with him.  I know that he is crazy-busy, so we hope that we left him with enough time to get some correcting completed before tomorrow.

We are looking forward to church tomorrow as we meet our new pastor for the first time.  Our old pastor retired, and the new pastor is supposed to be young and energetic.  That is just what the congregation needs.  Maybe we will get some younger people to join the church and get some life back into the elderly congregation.  I'm interested in what changes he has made to the service and to the routine of the church.

As usual, after dinner this evening we went for a walk.  We wanted to really look at landscape to see what other people did with their front yards.  Those who have had professional help with their yards are obvious.  I want to try for variety, texture, and a little color in our garden to give Gladys some curb appeal.

She herself is looking fairly good.  Yes, we need to give Gladys a good bath with our power washer to remove a layer of dust, but overall she has weathered the wet summer well.  With some new plants and flowers at her feet, she should be beautiful once again.