A Million Things

Today is our day to pack up the house in preparation for our early morning journey North tomorrow, so we have a million small tasks to complete.

Rick is getting the rental car right now.  The linens are changed, and I will complete the laundry one last time this evening.  The garage is ready for the car to be put away for the summer.

I still need to clean both bathrooms, wash out the refrigerator, run the dish washer one last time, and finish packing up the electronics and the suitcase.  Rick has some final outdoor chores to complete.

Yesterday was a busy day also as we went to church and then drove to Jon's house to drop off a key and whatever food we were not going to eat today. He seemed most excited about the cheese and the cookies.

I got a nice surprise when I went to water the flowers in the back yard.  The freesia plant that I potted a number of years ago actually bloomed yesterday just in time for Mother's Day.  The bloom only lasted one day, but it was a nice treat to get a flower on Mother's Day.

The freesia bloomed on Mother's Day.

One blossom was enough to make me smile.

Rick printed our boarding passes, and we have fairly good seating again.  While the early flight means we will be up at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow, that also means that we will be home in Wisconsin early also.  And this time, we do not have to worry about driving from Milwaukee in ice and snow (I hope!)

We'll miss Gladys, but we both are happy with all that we were able to accomplish this past winter.

One Last Time

How wonderful retirement is that we can have days with nothing urgent to complete.  Today was such a day, so we decided to fill it with things we wanted to do "one last time" before we head north.

We DID start with three small "must do" tasks.  The first was Rick's task of spraying the weeds so our fence and yard are not overrun with unwanted grass and vegetation while we are gone.  The second task was running to the bank to cash a check, and the third was filling the whole house with a wonderful smell as I made a batch of peanut butter cookies.  I wanted to use the sugar and peanut butter, and I am sure that my nephew Jon will not mind a few cookies.  If he does, he can just give them to his fifth and sixth graders.  Kids will eat anything!

Although the sign says, "Daylily," that refers to
the spindly little plant to the right of the red
and green leaves. 

After lunch, we decided to go one last time to the Florida Botanical Gardens.  The day started chilly, but by the afternoon we were seeking shade from the too-hot sun.  We smiled as we walked into the Garden because the "Wedding Garden" was gated shut as people inside put white table cloths on the assembled tables for a Garden wedding.  The flowers inside were beautiful, so I am sure that the happy couple will have wonderful wedding pictures to treasure for years.

Is this a variety of an Elephant Ear?

Here is another variation on the
mysterious plant theme.  I think
these are all types of Elephant Ears.

The spring/ early summer flowers are in full bloom throughout the remainder of the Garden.  We saw one plant in various shades of white, pink, red, and green everywhere-- but it was always used as background and never identified.  At first we thought it was variations on Elephant's Ear plants.  And, truthfully, that might still be true.  When I got home I looked in my Florida perennial plants book.  The only other plant that comes close is an angel-winged begonia, but the leaves on the plants that we saw were shaped differently.  So what we really saw is still a mystery to me.  Anyone know what these are?

Now these ARE daylilies, and they are delightful.

We also saw various gorgeous hibiscus bushes in bloom.  I love hibiscus because they can be white, yellow, pink, red, or purple.

The Southern Magnolia tree has gorgeous flowers.

One tree that smells wonderful and is just starting to bloom is the Southern Magnolia tree.  If the trees themselves did not drop huge leaves and make such a mess, I would think about planting one in our yard.  I guess I will just have to be content to look at our neighbor's tree across the street and let him clean up the mess.  The Magnolia trees in the Garden today were beautiful with blossoms that were at least 8 inches across.

Magnolia blossoms are huge.

After the Gardens, we took a drive along the beaches, stopping at Sand Key Beach on the way home. Once again, we came upon a wedding.  This time the groomsmen were in black with deep fuchsia vests and matching striped fuchsia shoes.  The beach was very windy, so I hope that the preacher could be heard by the people sitting in the back.  The wedding area was set up, but we left before the wedding took place, so I never saw the bride.

Today was a relaxing, fun day.  Yes, this will be the last time we go to these places for now, but we will revisit them all when we return to Gladys in the fall.

Starting to Finish

Although the title of this blog may seem weird, we actually ARE starting to finish some of the preparation activities for going North for five months.

We have packed away several items from the garage and rearranged the shelving units. Rick drove the car into the garage today just to make sure that it would fit with our new arrangement.  Hopefully, if money holds out, we might be able to get rid of one or both of the shelving units as we put up elfa shelves from The Container Store.  That is Rick's dream, but the only we we can do so is to wait for them to go on sale in January.  Then we'll see how far our dollars stretch.

We are eating our the refrigerator, planning meals carefully to eat up what is left in the freezer and pantry.  Rick did our final banking today for this season.  We have spent the week making appointments at home, dealing with insurance on automobiles, stopping and staring mail in two states, making arrangements for garbage and water, and tying up other loose ends.  Most arrangements are now in place.

One last task I wanted to do was to finish weaving the placemats that I had on the loom.  I am doing a rose path twill pattern in aqua and white, and I finished the last part of the warp today.  I did not want to leave the fabric under tension for the summer, so I am happy that I had time to finish and to wash them before we leave.  Once they are completely dry, I will cut them apart and lightly press them.  Perhaps we can use them on the patio or in the house this next year.

The five placemats, just cut from the loom,
rest across my desk before I washed them.

A close-up of the placemat shows the
rose path twill pattern.

After the storms on Wednesday, much cooler weather arrived yesterday.  Today the temperature has dropped even more, so we are in the mid 70's with lots of bright sunshine.  The day is so nice that Rick and I just came back from an hour-long walk.

During our walk, we looked at a few homes in our neighborhood that are for sale.  The housing market is making a slow but steady rise.  We experienced a slight dip right after the first of the year, but housing right now is going well.  How do I know that?

Our neighbor, Ken, is a real estate agent, and he has been sending us daily e-mails with MLS listings of houses in our neighborhood.  We saw that two houses on one street in the neighborhood were for sale, so those houses (and good exercise) were the objects of your walk.  When we finally reached the houses, we found three of them for sale all in one block.  The houses were not as nice as our neighborhood since they were smaller, older, and none of them had a garage, but they were still listed in the $175,000 - $200,000 price range.  They also seemed to need a wee bit of tender loving care.

Of course, the real fixer-uppers (of which there are many in Florida) are the first ones to sell.  Flippers are buying these wrecks for $95,000 - $120,000, preparing them for $40,000, and selling them in the low to mid-$200,000 range.  I remember working all year for $50,000, and these folks are turing that kind of profit every two or three months.

Ken told us that our house, with all of our improvements, would easily sell above $200,000.  We believe him.  Since the original price was low and we have just matched the price in remodeling costs, if we were to sell today, we could make a nice little profit on this house.  And Rick mentioned that the concrete work we just completed would probably help raise an asking price even more if we wanted to sell.

Other homes in our immediate neighborhood have been getting or exceeding their asking price. Just up the street from us, a corner house was listed for $214,900.  They sold it for $220,000.  Another house listed for $265,000 and sold for $285,800.  We have no intention selling Gladys, but we are happy to know that if we (or our children) sell her someday, all of our hard work and improvements will not be in vain.

Stormy Weather-- At Last!

Rick and I both worked hard yesterday morning to finish scrubbing our white vinyl fence.  It needed the bath badly as pollen, dirt, bird droppings, and brown spots (gecko poop?) were all over the fence. We even went into our neighbor's back yard to scrub that side of the fence before he rents out his house to a new tenant.  By noon yesterday, the fence gleamed. (Smile.)

Dunedin has been in a draught lately.  While severe storms have traveled in waves across the United States, all of the storms have flowed to the north of us, reaching only as far south as the Florida panhandle, if even that far.

The heat and draught have taken its toll on area vegetation.  Our bottle brush tree started to lose all of its leaves.  The Nursery people told us to water, water, water it.  We have done so each day, and it is starting to recover a little.  We also have watered our flowers on an almost daily basis just to help them get established.

Yesterday we checked Steve and Chris' house.  Most of the potted flowers are dead with the exception of one hearty bloom and the cacti.  Even the cacti, however, looked like they could use a good drink.  The weeds, of course, were hogging whatever moisture was available in the gardens.

One stubborn plant still is green and growing
in one of the back yard pots.

TV weathermen (and women) have been promising rain today, and at last, it finally arrived!  We awoke this morning at 5:46 to flash after flash of lightening.  The thunder arrived shortly thereafter as the storm rolled in off the Gulf.  Then came the winds, some gusting as high as 60 miles per hour.  Torrential rain lasted for at least half an hour, resulting in our back yard and the street in front of our house both becoming large, deep puddles.

Thankfully, the new patio did not pool too badly in the low corner, and no water remained anywhere near the house.

Oh, and as for our clean, gleaming fence?  It is now a splattered, muddy mess.  We knew that would happen, but that's OK.  With the pollen and other debris washed away yesterday, the mud can easily be hosed off once the rain stops for good.

At this point, the skies are still dark with low-hanging storm clouds.  Further storms are promised for today, and that's all right.  We'll take as much rain to replenish the aquifer that the sky can deliver.  Gladys needed a good bath, and we're happy that she at least took a quick shower today.

Last on the List

Rick made a list of things we wanted to finish before we head North this summer, and today we tackled the last two items on that list.

Very warm weather has prevented us from working past noon recently, but today was both breezy and cloudy, so the outdoor temperatures were a bit more tolerable.

Rick started by washing the car while I did a bit of washing on the bathrooms inside.  While the car dried, he began to wash the north side (facing our neighbors) of the north fence. As the sun became warmer, Rick parked the car half in the garage for shade as he worked on putting a good coat of wax on the car.

Meanwhile, I took a bucket of car-wash water and a good scrub brush to continue washing our white fence.  I love having the fence for the privacy it gives us and because it will not warp, rust, or decay in the sun, but with all good things comes maintenance.  We washed the fence a couple of months ago, but the dirty job of digging up the back yard for the patio and the incessant birds who love to sit (and crap!) on the fence meant that it was ready for a good scrubbing again.

I finished both the north side and 3/4 of the east side of the fence before the weather just became too warm to continue working.  We'll try to get outside early tomorrow to finish the rest of the back and then the south side of the fence.  We have to work in the morning in the back yard while the whole thing is still in the shade.

The weather tells us that we should be heading North for the summer, and since the car and the fence are the last two "to-do" items on our list, we are almost ready to do so.