Summer "Vacation"

Since I knew we were going to be out of town for two days, before we left on Wednesday morning I completely shut down my computer.  I do not do that often, but with summer storms rumbling across the U.S., I thought unplugging the computer might be a good idea.  However, since this computer is now at least six years old, I held my breath as I booted it up a minute ago.  Would it start?  Would I have a screen image even if it did start?  Your reading this message should confirm that the computer did, indeed, come to life once again. Yet, it has started to post warning signs along the boot-up highway.  For the second time in a row, when I rebooted this computer, I have lost my selection of a desktop background.  The background always reverts to one of the "canned" photos from Apple.  I can almost hear the computer saying, "I am cooperating, sort of, for now, but I am getting old and forgetful, so I may not last forever."  Warning heeded...

We left yesterday morning for a short trip to Spring Green, Wisconsin.  Spring Green is known for three things: the American Players Theater, Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin home, and the House on the Rock.  We availed ourselves of the first two selections. The third we leave to those with little children who enjoy more of a carnival atmosphere than an architectural experience.

The stage for the production of "A Comedy of Errors."

We had tickets last evening to the APT's production of Shakespeare's "A Comedy of Errors."  Although we have seen stage productions of this particular comedy before, we both felt that this company's interpretation of the play was the best we have experienced.  The actors were exceptional. We laughed throughout the outdoor production, enjoying the scenery in the wooded theater, wonderful weather for a summer evening, virtually no bugs (thanks to Deep Woods Off and a few bats who swooped across the stage and ate their fair share of the insects), and an appreciative audience.  We could not have asked for a more enjoyable way to pass a summer's evening.

We stayed at the Spring Green Inn which was located just down the highway from the theater, so our drive back for the evening was not long.  The hotel is well-appointed with Frank Lloyd Wright furnishings and posters.  They carried the theme through from the indirect hallway lighting to Wright-designed furniture and lamps.  Our only complaint was that the mattress was a bit lumpy and our air conditioner was on steroids.  We had a hard time controlling the temperature so that we were not icicles in the morning.

This morning, after a very nice breakfast in the hotel, we had some time to use before our 10:30 tour of Taliesin.  I had found a brochure in the lobby for a nearby cheese factory in Plain that produced one of our favorite cheeses: Butterkase.  "Butterkase" is German for "butter cheese," so named because of the creamy texture of this semi-soft cheese.  A short drive to Plain allowed us to buy a couple of bricks of butterkase and one brick of smoked cheddar.  Yum.  We will enjoy it all.  Ice from the hotel machine and a styrofoam cooler kept our purchases cold all the way back to Green Bay today.

Wright uses buildings and walkways to frame landscape elements and views.

Taliesin was Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin home, built on ancestral Lloyd-Jones property handed down from his mother.  The property originally housed a home-school run by two of Wright's aunts.  The original school Wright designed was a storied Victorian monstrosity that Wright had raised after he had designed a new school for the property.  The second school was in the angular prairie design which we associate with Wright. While the K-12 school no longer teaches students,  Taliesin, since the 1930's, has been the home of FLW's own architectural school.

Wright's use of Oriental and Native American
statues are well-known elements of his houses.

Our tour was doubly fun in that most of the people on the tour were present-day architects on a group tour from a firm in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.  One man in particular was just enthralled with the opportunity to see Taliesin up close and personal. I had as much fun watching his reactions as I did in experiencing the property myself.

Sadly, we have been to several other Wright properties, and I have to admit that I liked Taliesin the least of any of them. The house, while designed to take advantage of the magnificent hilly terrain and the cool breezes of the summer, still felt more chopped up and disassociated than did his design for Falling Water or Wingspread.  The house was typical Wright construction with hidden doors and low entries opening into magnificent, vaulted rooms filled with light from walls of windows.  Wright carefully controlled the entrance into spaces and how the light filled those spaces.  Sadly, both the architectural school and the house itself are badly in need of expensive repairs.

The view of one of the ceilings shows the triple
lines (representing three sunbeams) that are
a symbol of the family name.  Sadly, the
darkened spots shows water damage to the structure.

Wright believed that a house should be a
continuation of the landscape, but in this case,
the tree that he planted is a bit too much for this
wall which Foundation money will have to repair.

Frank Lloyd Wright was not a great structural engineer.  The sagging cantilevered expanses of some decks and the cracked plaster corners of many walls shows how gravity and age have stressed the structures.  Wright also did not understand (or care to pay attention to) the effects of water.  Many of the beautiful wooden ceilings were water-stained, and the majority of windows and floors showed the damage that water has caused through the years.

Built before air conditioning, Wright's single-pane windows have not faired well with the addition of conditioned air.  They sweat with condensation since the warm outer air clashes on the panes with the cooler inner air.  To restore the whole complex would take millions of dollars, and the Foundation just does not make that kind of money.

One of the many hanging lights designed
by Wright is still functional today.

For now, the genius of his design is still evident.  Students and Foundation members do their best to preserve the past while working for the future.  The school is still run on the principle of leaning by doing, and although the scarred wooden drafting tables are still in the design studio, most have been abandoned for the flat work tables which students now use to hold their computers.  Sketches have given way to print-outs and 3-D printer produced models.

The magnificent estate that surrounds Taliesin highlights
the beauty found in southwestern Wisconsin. The landscape
becomes the focal point for many of Wright's rooms.

We had an enjoyable "vacation" away from Green Bay.  The play was wonderful, and the glimpse into Frank Lloyd Wright's home was an interesting look into the life of a remarkable architect.

Summer 2016 - July and August

July in Wisconsin turned out to be as warm as, if not warmer than, summer in Florida.  The United States had heat waves across the country, and our temperatures in the high 80s and mid-90s were made more unbearable by the high humidity.  Whenever we wanted to do something outside, we made sure that we watched the weather first, and that we completed our tasks usually in the early morning hours. This was a work plan we learned many years ago while working in Florida.

Rick adds paint to Lindsay's
house.

Chris and Lindsay chose some beige (Lindsay says "peanut-butter colored") paint for their house.  We helped them paint the front of the house, and Rick showed Chris how to use Bondo to make the knotholes in the old siding disappear.  The result is a much more attractive house.

Owen takes aim at the ball.

Owen tried his foot at soccer this year.  While we enjoy watching the Parkies try to teach a couple of dozen 3-4 year olds the basics of the game, we also discovered that we have had rain every Thursday for the past five weeks!

The old chandelier was showing
its age.

We compiled a list of 15 improvements that we wanted to make to this house this year.  Some were just scrubbing -- the gutter caps, the siding, the car floor mats, etc. -- while others are taking a little more effort.  We decided that one improvement we wanted to

The new chandelier updates the room.

make was to replace our old 1990's gold chandelier over the table with something that was easier to keep clean and was a little more modern.  We are pleased with our choice.

The completed swings took
a day and a half to build.

July's great building task was in Owen's back yard as we went over to help Chris assemble a new swing set for him.  He loves it, so I am sure that he will use it for many years to come.

This train took hours to piece together.

I have kept my sewing machine busy this summer, making both another picture for Owen's wall (that matches the train on his

Our little pirate will be
cute this Halloween.

quilt) and a Jake and the Neverland Pirate's costume for dress-up and for Halloween.

The butterfly is much prettier
to press than a boring old
door bell.

Our only trip so far in August was to visit Stephanie in Minnesota.  While there, we did numerous small (and not-so-small) tasks including the installation of the Michael Healey doorbell that we bought her for her birthday.

Later this month we will treat ourselves to a little Shakespeare in Spring Green while we also will visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin.  Our summer is far from over yet, so we still look forward to seeing new things, spending time with family, and completing our tasks around our Wisconsin home.

Summer 2016 - May and June

We have had a busy summer so far, but one that has allowed us to accomplish much while enjoying friends and family.  I will let pictures tell most of the story for us.  So this is the first part of the summer of 2016.

Lilacs in the back yard.

  May brought cool, sunny weather which created ideal conditions for the lilacs and other flowers in the yard to bloom.









While the flowers were blooming inside, Owen and I spent part of a day painting flower pots so I could have flowers on the patio table also.

Patio flowers.

Who is having more fun?

Owen received a sandbox from a friend of Lindsay and Chris.  We bought some clean white sand for it, and Owen loves playing in the back yard.  Just watching him have fun as he imagines the towers and towns he is building in the sand makes us smile.










On May 29, the family gathered to celebrate my nephew Jon's wedding. He and his bride, Rachel, asked Rick to make a cross they could use during the ceremony for their wedding braid.  He worked hard to put it together, and the ceremony was a joyful occasion.

June brought the City workers back to our yard as they planted a new tree

Owen blows out the three candles
on his pirate birthday cake.

to replace the one they removed last year.  We also celebrated Owen's birthday and Rick's birthday during that month, so we had lots of cake and ice cream to usher in the first days of summer.

We didn't risk fire damage
by putting on candles to
mark Rick's age!

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.