Rainy Day Projects

Rain (finally) was predicted for today, so we got up with the intension of getting to the Farmer's Market this morning before the rain fell.  As we got closer to downtown, we discovered that the streets were closed off for a huge Art Fair; however, the Farmer's Market still held their territory right next to the artists' booths.

The sky was threatening, but the crowds forced us to park a few blocks from the festivities.  That was OK since we figured a little walk this morning might feel good.  The crowds were beginning to gather as we reached the market.  We found the bakery booth that we frequent often, and Rick was able to buy the whole wheat bread that he was seeking.  I bought a petite cheese boules which should go well with our Tavernhouse cheese soup this evening.  (Even though the temperatures are still near 80, soup always tastes good on rainy days!)

I had taken the market bag that Stephanie knit for me a couple of years ago.  As I loaded the bread into the bag, the young woman who always waits on us said, "Where did you get that wonderful bag?"  Rick told her that our daughter knit it for us.  "If she would like to make some more," she said, "I could easily sell them for her here at our booth. They would sell in a minute."  We smiled and said we would deliver the message.

So there you go, Stephanie.  In your "spare time" you can supplement your income with knitted market bags! :-)  Actually, we use and love both the knit market bag from Stephanie and the big lemon beach bag from Lindsay.  Sometimes just the right bag makes a world of difference.

We walked back to our car and within two minutes of getting home, the skies opened to a good thunderstorm.  While I feel bad for the people who are trying to sell their wares at the Art Fair and the Market, I am not sorry to see the rain.  The grass and flowers need it.

Yesterday and especially today, we have both been busy in the afternoons working on projects.  I am sewing Christmas bags to hold small goodies, and Rick has finally found time to work on his baskets.  He finished the smaller round cane Nantucket basket weaving today and took some time to continue his work on Stephanie's walnut basket.

Rick works on weaving the cane into the small
Nantucket basket.

The cane basket still needs its rim and handles to be complete.  Rick is not thrilled with the shape of that basket as it came in a kit and is not the quality of the other baskets he weaves; however, I can always find a use for a good basket!  His work on Stephanie's walnut basket is producing beautiful results.

The finished weave, off the mold, still needs the
rim and handles to be complete.

So as the rain continues to come down, we are spending a peaceful time inside creating new items.  The music is playing, the crafts are progressing, and our new bottle brush tree is growing.  I think we both needed this peaceful, rainy day.

Escher Enjoyment

Rick and I ventured down to St. Petersburg today to return to the Dali Museum.  We have seen the Dali exhibit numerous times, so we did not spend any time in that part of the Museum.  Instead, we devoted the day to seeing the visiting exhibit of the works of M. C. Escher.

I have long been a fan of Escher; in fact, I have several books on his works back in Green Bay.  I used some of Escher's famous illustrations -- including "Relativity," "Heaven and Hell," "still Life and Street" and "Drawing Hands" -- when I taught a unit on perception in Oral Interpersonal Communication.

One of Escher's most famous works.

Seeing Escher's work in real life was delightful.  The exhibit covered each period of his life and included all of his most famous works. He was a master at manipulating shapes, at illustrating what is physically impossible, and at creating images that challenge the viewer to figure out what is "figure" and what is "ground" since the image and the background change depending on where one looks.  What really surprised me was the size of some of his woodcuts and lithographs.  He had more smaller works (around 18 x 24), and most of his larger works were no more than 3' x 4'. What amazed me was the amount of detail that he was able to put into each piece.

One self-portrait of him looking into a reflective sphere was probably only 5 inches across!  I had heard that his woodcut "Metamorphosis II" covered an entire wall, and it did. The print is 33 blocks combined to stretch over 12 feet.  But once again I was surprised to see that it was only about 8" tall.

After an audio tour of the exhibit, Rick and I went to the car to get our picnic cooler.  We learned on our first trip to the Dali that their cafeteria offered a small selection of mostly Spanish cuisine that I did not care for, and it was terribly expensive.  Since the Dali is right on the bayshore, we walked a little away from the Museum toward some shady benches.  Sadly, once we got there, we discovered a disheveled homeless man sleeping on the benches.  We did not feel comfortable eating our lunch there, so we retreated back to the Museum grounds.  Lunch outdoors under a big umbrella on the Museum terrace with a wonderful cooling breeze blowing was delightful.

While we ate lunch amidst the Museum gardens,
I noticed this well-behaved lizard that heeded
the advice on the sign and climbed on the sign
itself instead.

After lunch we returned to the Escher exhibit to watch the entire hour-long movie. The exhibit was a delight to see, and since Escher lived into the 1970's, the movie that the Museum offered about his life contained several clips of him working and talking about his work.

Seeing how his work was influenced by the locations in which he lived was fascinating.  Some of his best work came from his time in southern Italy, but the family had to flee from that country as Italy's politics got swept up in the late 30's with the coming war.  Moves with his young family to Switzerland, Spain, and the Netherlands all resulted in different types of works and levels of production.

If you are unfamiliar with Escher's work, do yourself a favor and look at what he created. I am sure you will like something that you like.  He never considered himself an "artist"; instead, he was trained and made his living as a "graphic artist" for over 50 years.

M. C. Escher's 1937 woodcut "Still Life and Street."

  

Trail Troubles

Rick and I had planned this morning to FINALLY get on our bikes and really start to ride.  We tried to time the ride so we could leave about 9:00 AM after the traffic cleared from taking kids to school and driving to work.

Once we were in the garage, Rick started to add a little air to our tires since we had not ridden for a couple of days.  Problem #1 presented itself when Rick tried to put air into the second of my three tires.  He had changed one of my tires a few days ago because the valve stem leaked and it went flat.  When he tried to add air to the second tire, he noticed a large bulge at the bottom of the valve stem.  "This one is going to blow if we don't change it," he said.

By the time he finished changing my second tire, he was already wet with sweat.  He finished pumping up the third tire and then all three tires on his bike.  That, itself, was a workout.

We have never ventured further than a couple of times around the block this year, but we decided to go down the trail to see how far we could get.  We got on the trail by San Salvador and made it almost all the way to Michigan Avenue.  I had ridden ahead the first part of the trip, but we stopped to get some water and I told Rick to go ahead of me.

That is when I saw Problem #2.  Rick's right front tire was nearly flat.  I let him know and we pulled off the trail just short of Michigan Avenue.  He had a pump with him, but the pump and his valve stems do not match.  After much digging in the bags, he found the converter but still was having trouble fitting it onto his tire.  (Hand pumps are notoriously a pain in the rear to use anyway.)

We decided that I should ride home and get the car.  I came home as quickly as I could, getting a call from Rick just as I was turning onto our street.  Once home, I called him back.  He said that he had gotten the pump to work and was slowly making his way home.

Although this turned out to be a good workout for me (even I am sweating), this is not the way we wanted to enjoy a nice ride on the trail! I predict a trip to the bike shop to get all new inner tubes for our tires before we venture out again.

Before and After

Yesterday was a productive day as far as decisions are concerned.  I wanted to clean the weeds out of the new corner garden even though we probably will not be able to plant anything there for a while.  We need to have two trees removed from our front yard and then a literal truckload of black dirt delivered to re-contour the yard and to have enough black dirt to fill in the base of the corner garden.  In time, that will come. For now, though, I just needed to have the garden free of weeds.

The garden before we attacked it with shovels
and trowels.

The garden ready for clean topsoil and a
couple of beautiful plants.

Today we have lots of small errands to complete.  We talked more yesterday about pouring a patio/shed foundation and came to the same conclusion we had reached earlier.  If we want the slab poured the way we know it should be done -- complete with rebar on a well-graded base -- we still have to get it poured all at one time, and that means calling in a professional with a truckload of newly-mixed concrete.  So that project is once again on hold.

And that is OK.  We have lived this long with the back yard as it is, and we can continue to do so.  Maybe tackling the trees out front, the yard in the front and back as we distribute a couple of tons of black dirt, and a new little garden in the corner will be enough.  We still will have to see if our money will cover the materials for us to lay a paver-block sidewalk.  That, too, must wait until the trees are removed.

So where does that leave us?  With time to start to enjoy Florida.  We have projects here that we want to complete before Christmas, we have small festivals we want to attend, we learned of a local weaver's group that we may join, and the temperature and dew point both have finally dropped enough that we may be able to ride our bikes or enjoy other outdoor travel and activities.  Isn't that what a person is supposed to do in retirement?

The Great Wall of the Corner

For most of this past week, Rick and I have been debating on what to do with the corner part of the yard.  We have an off-center gardenia tree and lots of weeds in the northeast corner, and we wanted to do something with that area to make it pleasing to view. The gardenia tree is the only small tree left that was originally growing in the yard.  When we bought Gladys, we could not even see the tree for all of the overgrown bushes, but once we removed the brush and unwanted trees, I asked the tree service to spare that one.  It is our survivor, and I am happy that it still stands.

We had some edger blocks that we bought a couple of years ago to edge around the house or the fence.  Doing so would have involved many more blocks, and they have risen in price to the point where that plan is almost cost-prohibitive.  So here we sat with lots of blocks, paver base, and some stone.

Our initial view to see how the blocks
looked standing up next to the fence
and stacked on their sides.

Last week we tried putting a line of the blocks across the corner.  While the idea was good, the uneven terrain (due partially to roots from the neighbor's tree) and the fact that the blocks had an uneven top prevented us from stacking the blocks to get the look we wanted.

Back to the drawing board.  We scrapped that idea and went back to Lowe's and Home Depot to see what other kinds of cement blocks we could use for a convex garden wall.  Sadly, we did not like anything they had to offer.  The blocks were either too big or were the wrong shape or color.  We kept gravitating back to the same edger blocks we had at home.

While we were at Home Depot, though, we found a display of our blocks that someone had put on their sides and built into a wall.  H-m-m.  That was a possibility.  We came home and experimented a bit before deciding to try it.

Yesterday Rick dug out the trench for the first row of blocks.  We got halfway done and then stepped back to look at how the second row would rest on the first.  Because of the convex shape of the wall, the blocks left gaps between them.  We were not sure we liked how they looked.  By that time we were hot and tired, so we decided to "sleep on it" and take a fresh look at the wall in the morning.

We were part-way finished but still undecided.

This is where we left our project for the night.
We needed fresh eyes in the morning to decide
if we should build more or tear the whole thing out.

This morning we got up and decided that the wall would be quaint and rustic.  It would suit our needs, add some visual interest to the area, and would suffice for now.  We did not want to spend any more money at this time, and the wall allowed us to use the materials we had on hand.

The finished garden wall.  Now all I have to do
is put in lots of hard work to turn the surrounded
ground into a real garden!

Will it last for the next 20 years?  Probably not.  Perhaps in the future we will take it down and try something else if we ever find the perfect cement block.  Until then, I look forward to pulling out all of the weeds within the garden, adding some dirt and landscape fabric, planting a couple of flowers, adding some interesting pots, or adding a small fountain, and topping it all off with some pebbles for good drainage.

That will keep me busy until we tackle our next project which Rick already has planned.  He wants to  re-attempt to put down a patio foundation for a someday shed. Now that the weather has started to cool down, we will have the perfect temperatures in which to work. Sigh.

Florida Festivals

Although the heat wave in the north has been replaced by a cold front which brought in more seasonable temperatures, the unusually warm temperatures continue here in Florida.  We can still get outside and do what we want, but we have to take precautions to remain comfortable and hydrated.

Today we had tickets to BungalowFest 2015, a tour of restored bungalows in St. Petersburg's historic Kenwood district.  We bought tickets with Steve and Chris, and we drove down together to save time and parking spaces.  The temperatures ranged into the high 80's today, so we got there even before the festival officially opened at 10:00 am to try to beat the heat.

The Kenwood neighborhood is a remarkable place filled with bungalows and houses built from the teens to the 1940's.  Each house that we toured today was beautifully restored.  We also saw one brand new home that was built to match the bungalow style and one home that contained an artist's studio.

For added fun, Rick paid $2.00 for two chances to win one of two gift baskets.  In order to compete, we had to find a "hidden" item in selected homes as we went on the tour.  We were able to complete the forms, but since we did not receive any phone calls or e-mails tonight, apparently we did not win anything.  Ah, well, we just contributed to the Historic Kenwood Neighborhood Association. They do a great job of preserving a part of old St. Petersburg.

It was interesting to see the woodwork, the built-ins, the period stone and woods, and the porches and other elaborate systems some of the houses used to keep cool before the days of air conditioning.  Some houses were better restored than others, but all tried to preserve some parts of the by-gone era.  I am sure that most of the houses we toured today were built better than most modern construction today.  They literally have stood the test of time and come out as winners even if people today had to invest vast amounts of time and money to bring them back or to preserve what is there for future generations.  We had a good time, got some great exercise, and worked very hard to keep hydrated as temperatures climbed to 88 degrees. Sunscreen in November was necessary today; however, the great thing about older neighborhoods is all of the wonderful shade trees that fill the yards and line the cobblestone streets.  Without the shade and a slight breeze, being outdoors today would have been intolerable.

After we returned to Dunedin, Rick and I took a side trip to Highlander Park to the Fall Art Fest.  We found a few interesting pieces, but none that we could really afford.  That's OK; we can save our money.  I think we will eventually get a reproduction of a Monet that we both like.  It will go well in our dining room.

By 3:30 this afternoon, the heat became unbearable.  Even though we tried to stay in the shade and drink lots of water, the excess heat just evaporated what was left of our energy.  Coming back to an air conditioned house was wonderful.

Both festivals would have been more enjoyable had we had normal mid-70s temperatures for them, but both were worth spending a little time to see.  Driving  home from St. Petersburg earlier, we passed billboards for the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg that is hosting an M. C. Escher exhibit.  We have been to the Dali about three times now, but I will definitely go back to see Escher's work in person.  The great thing about Florida is that we always have new things to see.

Hot, Hot, Hot

Anyone who still doubts that we are experiencing global warming only has to look at the errant weather patterns of the last six months.  Scientists predicted that we would see more frequent and violent storms.  This summer Florida was hit with horrible rains that left the ground soggy for days.  Tornados ripped through the central part of the country.  Currently rains are flooding out Texas, the deep South, and much of the southeastern part of the United States.

Record heat now covers the eastern two-thirds of the country. Both Stephanie and Lindsay told us that Minnesota and Wisconsin are supposed to get record highs in the 70's today, and those of us in Florida are in the middle of an extended heat wave.  The heat is in the high 80's with the heat index topping even that.  The humidity is oppressive.

Today Steve and Chris came over to get our jointly-owned pressure washer to wash down their pavement.  While their job was hot, at least they got to play with water a little bit! However, being in the sun is just no fun.

As they were toiling with that, we decided to go outside to wash the windows.  Even early in the morning, the humidity made us almost gasp for breath.  Working in the shade was uncomfortable but bearable.  Working in the sunshine was impossible.  We were able to wash all of the windows except for those on the south side.  They will have to wait until the area is in shade.  The rest are now clean and looking much, much better.  As Rick tackled the windows on the inside, I scrubbed down the shutters.  Thankfully, we only have six of them, and although they were filthy, they cleaned fairly easily.

Now, at 12:45 PM, the temperature is 88 degrees with a heat index of 91.  We are 10 degrees above normal, and I think everyone is ready to just get back to that normal point.  We came to Gladys to avoid the cold winter weather of Wisconsin, but this heat is a little more than we desired!

Penniless Decorating

Well, OK, we are not quite to the point where we are penniless, but we are to the point in our budget where we cannot spend much money on decorating.  And that is all right since most of what we have is just fine or what we need to do can be done with very little expenditure.

Case in point:  this summer Rick and I bought some pottery items to match our palm tree theme for Gladys.  I already had a small pot that holds pens and a larger pot that holds kitchen utensils.  We added a palm tree mug for pens on my desk, a small spoon rest, and a chip and dip bowl.  The last item was a very small sconce for the wall.  I knew right where I wanted to hang it, but finding the right greens to put into it took a little longer than expected.

Finally, however, I found something that was the right shade and almost the right size.  I bought the leaves for less than $6.00 and used just a small portion of them for the sconce. Now the tiny wall between my kitchen and dining room has a little bit of decoration for visual interest.

A pretty little sconce adds something to view
on our tiny wall.

Yesterday Rick sat on one of our director's chairs that we brought from Wisconsin.  Those poor chairs are pretty beat up, but they are great for taking a break while we are doing something outside because we do not care if we are wearing dirty clothes when we sit in them.  One has paint on it and the other is pretty scuffed.  The blue chair has had a tear in the canvas seat for at least a year, and yesterday it totally gave out.  Rick almost ended up on the ground!

We went to Pier 1 Imports to get new canvas for the chair.  The salesman warned us that the design has changed slightly, so the new canvas might not fit.  In our old chairs, a small dowel is threaded into a slot to secure the seat.  With the new canvas, that dowel has been replaced with a flat, more broad piece of wood.

We brought the canvas home, took out the wooden parts, inserted the dowels in their places, and put the canvas into the slots.  The dowels worked fine, but the canvas seat was too long.

Not to worry.  I dug out my sewing machine, took a scissors to the generous canvas, sewed a new double seam, and slipped the dowel back in the new opening.  While I probably could have made the seat even tighter, for now it will work just fine.  If it stretches, I can always resew it.

The new canvas looks a lot better than the old frame!

A new chair would have cost us over $50.00.  The new canvas cost us $15.00.  For that price, I can make adjustments.

We won't be buying new art for our walls at the area art fairs this year, but with a little craftsmanship, we can add a bit of color and maintain what we already own.  Gladys has finally reached a point where the majority of the inside work is complete.  We have moved from renovations to maintenance.  Maybe that will even afford us some extra time this year on the beach!